Recettes

1769 · 2211 — Frohburg 1769. Manuscript on paper 186 x 160 mm. 47 leaves plus two blanks. Fraktur & cursive script. Illustrated with 11 pages ff. 41v-46v of weaving patterns. No visible watermarks. Leaves 2-8 with remnants of red wax adhesive. Some soiling and staining. Contemporary half calf sheep the boards covered in very crude comb-marbled paper worn. An 18th-century weaver's manuscript recipe book and collection of weaving patterns containing over eighty recipes for dyes and twenty-one weaving patterns. The manuscript appears to be in one hand. An addition is dated 1789. The versos of the first six text leaves have small blobs of red wax along the foremargins apparently the remains of an adhesive: the text implies that color samples were affixed in those places. The Gottlob Friedrich Rose for whom the recipes and patterns were recorded was presumably an apprentice or offspring of the weaver. Each recipe contains a heading in Fraktur identifying the color and detailed instructions for its preparation including quantity in cursive script. The many recipes for shades of grays greens blacks and browns give a snapshot view of the street scene on cold dark winter days; but at least as many reds greens blues violets yellows and shades of gold and silver enliven the scene. Gradations of color and varieties of textile bases account for the quantity of different recipes: thus scarlet-red differs from red-scarlet madder-red Krapp-roth carmine-red English madder-red red on linen rose-red and rose-red on wool. Gold-yellow olive-green English-black flesh-color Leib-Farb wood-blue violet-brown.together these colors evoke a pre-industrial world of local self-sufficiency. The weaving patterns with names of popular weaves like "Everlastin" sic are for looms with different numbers of shafts vier-schäftige sechs-schäftige zehn-schäftige etc. Frohburg is a small town located midway between Leipzig and Chemnitz. Before industrialization weaving was its most important local industry. Architectural evidence of the craft subsists today in a few traditional artisans' houses in which the ground floor contains the workshop or weaving room and the upper floor the living and sleeping areas cf. Gestaltungssatzung Frohburg. Örtliche Bauvorsschrift der Stadt Frohburg Frohburg 2000. hardcover books