Eric Boudot
Independent scholar, researching, writing and teaching on archaeological and ethnographic compound textiles structures and loom technology in China and along the Silk Road. Fluent in Chinese, English and French, I obtained my diploma in Historical and Philological Sciences at the École Pratique des Hautes Études - PSL in Paris in February 2021, with a thesis entitled De la Chaîne à la Trame – La Mutation des Soieries Façonnées Chinoises (IIIème siècle avant notre ère – VIIème siècle de notre ère).Author of The Roots of Asian Weaving, co-written with Christopher Buckley (published in 2015), of the introduction to the book A World of Looms (published by the China National Silk Museum in Hangzhou, 2019), as well as several publications in Asian arts journals from 1994 to the present. After spending more than 30 years in Asia (China, Turkmenistan), teaching and giving conferences in Chinese at various institutions (museums and universities) in China since 2016, I am currently based in Dijon (France).My current main topic of interest concerns the technological and iconographic exchanges in the field of weft-faced compound textiles along the Silk Road between the 3rd and the 7th centuries CE.Contact: [email protected], 33 (0)7 8863 8661
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Videos by Eric Boudot
'Textiles in Motion & Transit', Leiden, the Netherlands, October 7th, 2020.
Chinese weavers have been exclusively decorating silk compound weaves with multi-coloured complementary warps on horizontal looms since the first half of the first millennium BCE.
In the West, from Eastern Mediterranean coastal areas (Egypt, Syria) to Persia, all polychrome compound woolen or cotton textiles were decorated with complementary wefts, woven on vertical looms, since the early 1st century CE at the latest.
By the middle of the first millennium CE, Chinese weavers started to adopt weft-faced compound tabby (taqueté) techniques, while central Asian weavers started to weave taqueté with silk made of long/continuous fibres.
This conference addresses several unanswered questions about the major cultural and technological exchanges that characterized silk weaving across Eurasia during that period.
Papers by Eric Boudot
Through the in-depth structural analysis of seven archaeological fragments dating from the Warring States to the Tang dynasty, this thesis illustrates and explains the gradual change in the weaving of Chinese compound textiles and suggests hypothesis regarding the technological evolution of loom mechanisms used to produce them.
Through the in-depth structural analysis of seven archaeological fragments dating from the Warring States to the Tang dynasty, this thesis illustrates and explains the gradual change in the weaving of Chinese compound textiles and suggests hypothesis regarding the technological evolution of loom mechanisms used to produce them.
1.1 The Origins and Conservatism of Weaving Traditions
1.2 The Relationship Between Woven Structure and Loom Technology
1.3 New Research Directions in the Study of Loom Evolution
1.4 Weaving Traditions Today and in the Future
Books by Eric Boudot
This ground-breaking book documents the weaving traditions and textiles of one of Asia’s most ethnically diverse areas, placing them in a regional context. It represents a novel approach to anthropological and ethnographic studies, based on detailed field reports and an explicitly comparative approach, integrating both statistical (Bayesian phylogenetic, Neighbornet) and classical methods to present a unified picture.
The first three chapters describe the ethnographic and linguistic and historical background to the region, focussing on the diversity of ethnicities, and their (sometimes turbulent) relations with the dominant Han Chinese polity. The authors review historical and archaeological remains of textiles and looms from the region, and present a revisionist account of the development of loom technologies.
The core of the book consists of detailed fieldwork, based on more than a decade of first-hand study. The authors record the traditions of Miao, Yao, Buyi, Dong, Zhuang, Maonan, Dai and Li weavers from Guizhou to Hainan Island. Their investigation focuses on decorated textiles made on the loom (as opposed to embroidery or appliqué), since these are the most complex and most conservative part of the weaver’s repertoire. They describe the looms and techniques of these groups, including diagrams, descriptions and photographs of the weaving processes and woven structures. Interviews with active weavers reveal the social dimensions of weaving and the items that are made from woven cloth, including marriage and burial related customs. Each tradition is illustrated with precisely provenanced examples of textiles from each sub-region, drawn from the He Haiyan collection in Beijing, including many nineteenth century examples. The research was carried out with a sense of urgency, since many traditions are disappearing, and in some cases are limited to a small number of elderly weavers. These accounts form a primary ethnographic source for weaving cultures in the region, many of which have never been documented before.
In the final chapter the authors present a comparative analysis of loom technology across the Asian mainland, using techniques derived from linguistics and biology (Bayesian analysis and Neighbornet plots). They use these to chart the evolutionary history of looms in Asia, demonstrating that all the major traditions in East Asia, Southeast Asia and Island Southeast Asia are structurally and functionally related, in spite of their apparent diversity, and have their origins on the Asian mainland in the same region that includes the apparent homlands of many of the major linguistic groups. The results have far-reaching implications for the understanding of how complex culture develops and spreads. The findings also shed light on widely-discussed topics such as the development of the Chinese Drawloom, showing how key features of the complex patterning device on this loom were derived from Tai-Kadai looms.
'Textiles in Motion & Transit', Leiden, the Netherlands, October 7th, 2020.
Chinese weavers have been exclusively decorating silk compound weaves with multi-coloured complementary warps on horizontal looms since the first half of the first millennium BCE.
In the West, from Eastern Mediterranean coastal areas (Egypt, Syria) to Persia, all polychrome compound woolen or cotton textiles were decorated with complementary wefts, woven on vertical looms, since the early 1st century CE at the latest.
By the middle of the first millennium CE, Chinese weavers started to adopt weft-faced compound tabby (taqueté) techniques, while central Asian weavers started to weave taqueté with silk made of long/continuous fibres.
This conference addresses several unanswered questions about the major cultural and technological exchanges that characterized silk weaving across Eurasia during that period.
Through the in-depth structural analysis of seven archaeological fragments dating from the Warring States to the Tang dynasty, this thesis illustrates and explains the gradual change in the weaving of Chinese compound textiles and suggests hypothesis regarding the technological evolution of loom mechanisms used to produce them.
Through the in-depth structural analysis of seven archaeological fragments dating from the Warring States to the Tang dynasty, this thesis illustrates and explains the gradual change in the weaving of Chinese compound textiles and suggests hypothesis regarding the technological evolution of loom mechanisms used to produce them.
1.1 The Origins and Conservatism of Weaving Traditions
1.2 The Relationship Between Woven Structure and Loom Technology
1.3 New Research Directions in the Study of Loom Evolution
1.4 Weaving Traditions Today and in the Future
This ground-breaking book documents the weaving traditions and textiles of one of Asia’s most ethnically diverse areas, placing them in a regional context. It represents a novel approach to anthropological and ethnographic studies, based on detailed field reports and an explicitly comparative approach, integrating both statistical (Bayesian phylogenetic, Neighbornet) and classical methods to present a unified picture.
The first three chapters describe the ethnographic and linguistic and historical background to the region, focussing on the diversity of ethnicities, and their (sometimes turbulent) relations with the dominant Han Chinese polity. The authors review historical and archaeological remains of textiles and looms from the region, and present a revisionist account of the development of loom technologies.
The core of the book consists of detailed fieldwork, based on more than a decade of first-hand study. The authors record the traditions of Miao, Yao, Buyi, Dong, Zhuang, Maonan, Dai and Li weavers from Guizhou to Hainan Island. Their investigation focuses on decorated textiles made on the loom (as opposed to embroidery or appliqué), since these are the most complex and most conservative part of the weaver’s repertoire. They describe the looms and techniques of these groups, including diagrams, descriptions and photographs of the weaving processes and woven structures. Interviews with active weavers reveal the social dimensions of weaving and the items that are made from woven cloth, including marriage and burial related customs. Each tradition is illustrated with precisely provenanced examples of textiles from each sub-region, drawn from the He Haiyan collection in Beijing, including many nineteenth century examples. The research was carried out with a sense of urgency, since many traditions are disappearing, and in some cases are limited to a small number of elderly weavers. These accounts form a primary ethnographic source for weaving cultures in the region, many of which have never been documented before.
In the final chapter the authors present a comparative analysis of loom technology across the Asian mainland, using techniques derived from linguistics and biology (Bayesian analysis and Neighbornet plots). They use these to chart the evolutionary history of looms in Asia, demonstrating that all the major traditions in East Asia, Southeast Asia and Island Southeast Asia are structurally and functionally related, in spite of their apparent diversity, and have their origins on the Asian mainland in the same region that includes the apparent homlands of many of the major linguistic groups. The results have far-reaching implications for the understanding of how complex culture develops and spreads. The findings also shed light on widely-discussed topics such as the development of the Chinese Drawloom, showing how key features of the complex patterning device on this loom were derived from Tai-Kadai looms.