{"id":9319,"date":"2009-02-03T23:29:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-03T20:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yrmegard.net\/treasury\/?p=9319"},"modified":"2025-04-23T22:46:30","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T19:46:30","slug":"the-right-to-make-mistakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yrmegard.net\/treasury\/en\/handicraft\/tablet-weaving\/the-right-to-make-mistakes\/","title":{"rendered":"The right to make mistakes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s fascinating how a woven band from Cologne<\/a> repeatedly prompts the same question: was this pattern intentionally designed to look as it does, or are we looking at a random result caused by a mistake made during threading the tablets?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the latter is true, then we would expect it to be discarded. But the concept of a flaw serious enough for that is highly relative. We’re used to living in a world filled with mass-produced items, where any two objects are practically indistinguishable. Anything which deviates from an established standard is deemed unusable – even if its functionality remains intact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, to decide to discard an item that took months of manual work because of a single error – that\u2019s a matter of an entirely different order. Declaring a large piece of cloth unusable because of a minor inaccuracy in the pattern would, in my view, be an extraordinary act in medieval conditions, even from a purely practical standpoint. If we also consider the religious context – the belief that a craftsman is merely an extension of the Creator\u2019s hand – then the discussion shifts from human error to the artisan\u2019s capacity to embody divine intention, or even to the boldness of questioning that divine plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From this perspective, the question posed at the beginning of this post loses its relevance \u2014 because by asking it, we are applying a mindset utterly different from that of the people who once wove or wore such a band.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

P.S.<\/strong> In fact, historical objects often contain what we might call \u201cmistakes\u201d. For example, a Westphalian embroidered cushion<\/a> features no identical medallions – each one is unique. In Anna Neuper\u2019s Modebuch<\/a>, many designs contain missing or duplicated rows or incorrect symbols. Even without obvious errors, handmade items are always one of a kind. And that\u2019s precisely where their value lies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s fascinating how a woven band from Cologne repeatedly prompts the same question: was this pattern intentionally designed to look as it does, or are we looking at a random result caused by a mistake made during threading the tablets? If the latter is true, …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9340,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[570,558,573,33],"tags":[607,609,596,702,704],"class_list":["post-9319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-embroidery","category-handicraft","category-historical-embroidery","category-tablet-weaving","tag-applied_history","tag-historical-items","tag-links","tag-technology","tag-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yrmegard.net\/treasury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yrmegard.net\/treasury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yrmegard.net\/treasury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yrmegard.net\/treasury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yrmegard.net\/treasury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yrmegard.net\/treasury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9320,"href":"https:\/\/yrmegard.net\/treasury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9319\/revisions\/9320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yrmegard.net\/treasury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yrmegard.net\/treasury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yrmegard.net\/treasury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yrmegard.net\/treasury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}