Traditions and Inovations of Yarns in Lithuanian Folk Fabrics (19th Century)

It is actually for history of textile technologies and Lithuanian culture heritage to investigate deeply peculiarities of manufacturing and appearance of folk textile, to establish local and global tendencies of their distribution. This investigation seeks to discover alternation of home weaving traditions establishing raw material of yarns, types of yarn structure and features of threads colours in authentic folk fabrics used in Lithuanian villages in the 19th century in peasants clothing and showing yarns types territorial distribution in Lithuanian regions Zemaitija and Aukstaitija. It was investigated 468 pieces of clothing of this period from the album saved in National M. K. Ciurlionis Museum of Art. It is unexpected that cotton yarns are very common in warp of hand made clothing fabrics at the end of the 19th century. Cotton yarns replaced flax and wool in warp. It was established that plied yarns dominate in warp and plain yarns - in weft. Fancy dyed, mouline, melange and yarns with multiplex winding were identificated in the fabrics. Also it was innovative to found the metallic thread in weft of two examples of the fabrics. Frequency of colours distribution was established analyzing colours of yarns. The analysis of territorial distribution of fancy yarns types showed the tendency to spread the novelties of yarns and threads in traditional textile from the West part of the country.