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Kekomäki Iron Age Trim
This is a well-known early pattern dating to the Iron Age, sometimes called “Finnish Diamonds,” based on a find from Kekomäki cemetery in Kaukola, Finland. The bit of woven trim found was attached to a dress in a grave, and can give us a sense of the ornamentation of Finnish women’s dress in period. The original fragment has been lost, and only the illustration of the fragment from Theodor Schwindt’s 1893 publication Tietoja Karjalan Rautakaudesta (About the Karelian Age) remains, numbered 379 and reproduced to the left, remains.
For general weaving and documentation, see here
The pattern has been published in Karisto and Pasanen’s Applesies and Fox Noses: Finnish Tabletwoven Bands, where I found it and recreated it using cotton. I also read and made use of fellow reenactor Shelagh Lewins’ textile analysis of the fragment, in which she hypothesized that two border cards were used in the weaving of this fragment, to ensure a stronger border for the finished fabric. I used two border cards in my weaving as well.
References:
Karisto, Maikki, and Mervi Pasanen. 2015. Applesies and Fox Noses: Finnish Tabletwoven Bands. 2nd ed. Salakirjat.
Lewins, Shelagh. 2015. “Finnish Diamonds Motif: A Possible Reconstruction of a Late Iron Age Band From Finland.” Tablet Weaving for Dark Age Reenactors (blog). 2015. Accessed March 1, 2026. https://www.shelaghlewins.com/tablet_weaving/Finnish_diamonds/Finnish_diamonds.pdf.
Schwindt, Theodor. 1893. Tietoja Karjalan Rautakaudesta. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Tietoja_Karjalan_Rautakaudesta/CEwTAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&kptab=overview.
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