Looms serve to hold the warp, to separate the warp threads so that the weaver can run the weft threads over and under the warp at right angles. You may see all shapes of designs in textiles: circles, lozenges, deltas, chevrons or florals, but those designs are made with various colored threads or with different combinations of pick-ups in the warp as the weft is threaded under it. The weft always moves over and under the warp at right angles.
Cloth is a web of these crisscross threads. The earliest cloth pieces were woven in narrow bands from a hand full of warp threads of uniform length. One end of those threads could be tied into a single knot and held firmly by one person -- or secured to a steady object such as a tree or pole -- while the other end was held by the weaver, who would have the other hand free to move the weft thread over and under the narrow band of warp. In fact, the band could be woven in half the time if woven from each end by two different weavers. From this simplest of looming methods, there developed two weaving traditions that allowed the band to expand to broad cloth or broad loom -- two terms in modern English that reveal the importance placed on this continuing development that began very far back in human history.
1) The ground loom, first in use in the Near East , Southern Asia and North Africa. It is the type still in use today in the North Arabian Desert -- see http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/text...
Two beams of timber hold the warp threads only a few inches off the desert sands while weavers crouch on either side of the warp and pass the shuttle which holds the weft threads back and forth, going over and under the warp threads.
2) The warp-weighted loom, first in use from Hungary to Scandinavia, including Greece, where it was immortalized on a painted urn.
