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~Historical references to using thumbs in making 9-loop fingerloop braids~

Using thumbs to braid 9-loop fingerloop braids (using the V-fell method, also known as Method 2) was documented in Finland in the first half of the 1900’s — see L-MBRIC news, issue 11. [Learn how to find broken L-MBRIC links by using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Instructions here – you will have to copy and paste the broken link.] This isn’t widely known – Noemi Speiser was unaware of those references when she wrote her books on loop braiding. Masako Kinoshita of L-MBRIC apparently only came across them in 2007 or 2008.

To me this 9-loop ‘thumbs’ method is very obvious if you are used to the V-fell braiding method – the thumbs are the obvious next-in-line digits to hold more loops after making a 7-loop braid. This isn’t the case if you use the A-fell method, because the thumb is on the wrong side of the active braiding finger for holding loops. (With Slentre there actually is a way to use the thumbs to hold loops, but it requires the active braiding index finger to perform a very non-intuitive extra move, and I have never heard of anyone doing it!)

The V-fell method (though not necessarily the use of 10 fingers) has been documented in Asia, the Pacific, India, S. America, and one location each in Russia and Finland.

Loop braiding traditions have declined or died out over most of the world since the advent of braiding machines and international trade, so we probably won’t ever know how common this 9-loop method was in previous years.

For more info on all three basic fingerloop braiding methods, see A-fell, V-fell, and Slentre.

UPDATE: At Braids 2012 I met Europa Chang Dawson, who learned how to loop braid when she was living with her grandparents in China during the second World War. She told me that her grandfather taught her how to loop braid, and she learned how to braid 9-loop square braids using thumbs as well as fingers, using the same method that I teach in this tutorial.

Update Dec 11, 2023: I have to revise this info from Europa! Back when I met her at Braids 2012, she knew she had learned this in China as a child (her parents sent her from England to live with her grandparents in China during WWII), and she believed she had learned it from her grandfather, who encouraged her to learn all sorts of things. However, she recently found out from a cousin that the person who taught her to loop braid was in fact the wife of a Japanese colleague of her grandfather. This was in China, but assuming the colleague’s wife was Japanese as well (?), that would make Japan the source country, rather than China.

There is no documentation I know of in China in modern times of loop braiding except in non-Han minority areas. However, there are ancient Chinese literary references to loop braiding, and a depiction of loop braiders in bronze sculpture that is thousands of years old (google: Omura, “www.lmbric.net”).

In any case all this reinforces my belief that this 9-loop ‘thumbs’ method is obvious and intuitive if one knows how to braid 7-loop braids using the V-fell method. Nobody even showed me how to do it – Dana (the person who taught me a five-loop braid) simply told me it was possible to add fingers and loops to make larger versions of the same braid up to a limit of nine loops.

When I checked back with her years later, she confirmed that she holds and manipulates the loop on the thumb just as Ms. Dawson and I do. (1. Holding the thumb always pointing up, and 2. transferring loops between thumb and forefinger by inserting them them into the loop from opposite directions (tip-to-tip), not inserting the thumb into the loop in the same direction as the forefinger is inserted).

Last updated Dec/11/2023
©2011–2023 Ingrid Crickmore

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