THE DIGITAL DEPICTION OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL WOVEN FABRIC BASED ON ARAHNE CAD/CAM FOR WEAVING
THE DIGITAL DEPICTION OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL WOVEN FABRIC BASED ON ARAHNE CAD/CAM FOR WEAVING

Summary/Abstract: The conservation and restoration of archaeological woven fabrics are faced with many practical challenges. In case of damask fabrics, besides the identification of structural characteristics of the woven fabric, one of these challenges is referred to the reconstruction of the ornamental depiction. In the attempt to obtain a better correlation between the structural characteristics and ornamental depiction of damask fabrics, the traditional working techniques are based too much on subjectivity of archaeological understanding and interpreting of the textile conservator-restorer. The digital techniques can create a scaled unit of repeat of damask design and can simulate ultra realist the damask fabric, thus saving time, money, effort and other valuable resources. The paper presents the results of research on one monochrome silk damask woven in Italy from about the 16-17th centuries. The large scale of the pattern, richly ornamented with stylized vegetal motifs which show the Far East influence, was used extensively for home textiles, especially for curtains and wallpapers, but as well in fashion clothes. A detailed photographic documentation of the damask fragments was made for the stage of reconstruction of scaled unit of repeat. For this purpose was used a graphic art software to obtain the motifs configurations, which then, like the pieces of a puzzle, have been arranged in the damask repeat pattern. In order to simulate the damask fabric were used the programs ArahPaint and ArahWeave of integrated software Arahne CAD/CAM for weaving. At the beginning, the damask repeat pattern was designed and saved in ArahPaint program. To create the two-dimensional simulation of woven fabric, the damask repeat pattern was imported in the Jacquard conversion window of ArahWeave program and have been introduced all structural characteristics of the fabric, previously determined by using non-destructive methods of evaluation. This paper aims to draw attention to the digital reconstruction of archaeological woven fabric not only as a method for the dissemination of research findings, but further, as a viable possibility to be woven.

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