Voufa or loom:A very old traditional wooden tool that offered a lot to the Cypriot housewife. There were a lot of weavings that you could make with different kinds of patterns and fibres ,men’s wear and women’s, sheets, carpets, curtains, table clothes, mosquito nets, bed covers, disatsia, hramia and many others.
Depending on the kind and the use they were decorated with patterns during the weaving, with frills, beads et.c.In Drynia and generally in at Cyprus villages they were frequently used during different times. Today it is not so used and in some of our villages it is kept as an ancient folk traditional symbol. The name voufa comes from the ancient texture that means weaving. This tool of weaving is also called atelier from the verb work because weaving was considered to be one of the main households of the woman.
Let’s see further down how a weaver works to make her weavings: Four vertical wooden poles are supported on the ground in a parallel shape. Two other cylindrical pieces of wood are put in the front part (antin) and at the back (pisantin). The two cylindrical pieces of wood roll and in the one the long threads of the future weaving are rolled (the so called warp)while the other is rolled in the completed weaving. The threads of the warp pass one by one from the mitarka (vertical threads) and from the teeth of a wooden brush begging from pisantin and ending in antin. The mitarka go up and down with the help of a simple mechanism that goes into move with the wooden legs whose use takes place with feet. The threads go up and down with the mitarka. With the pressing of the one wooden leg half of the threads go down so there is a void between the total threads. From this void the weaver passes the weft widthwise (a thread rolled in an arrow called makoutzin). Pressing the second wooden leg the other threads go down while the first go up .So the threads are crossed with each other and with the thread of the makoutzi.In order for the wefts to be supported better the weaver strikes with the brush which goes back and forth.
So the weaving goes on and the threads are continually unreeled from the pisantin in order to be weaved in the antin, as a texture. With the use of different thread colors in the weft a variety of colors in the weavings is achieved.
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