The crios weaver
Meet traditional crios weaver Aideen Macken in N Magazine No.5
Like all good stories, this story begins with a woman following her intuition.
Aideen Macken saw a picture of a traditional Irish woven belt or Crios (pronounced Kris) in a book, thought she might like to try it and just a few days later, stumbled across a beginner’s class nearby in the Liberties Weavers. This is a group stubbornly keeping crafts alive; it was here that her Swedish teacher Marja Almqvist guided her through the basics, which Aideen quickly learned.
‘I felt like my hands were remembering something.’
The crios was worn as part of traditional Irish dress across the country; Penal law suppression pushed language, dress and even haircuts further west until the traditional crafts survived only in isolated pockets such as the Aran islands. Once again the story pops up about drowned fishermen being identified by family-specific weaving patterns; paging JM Synge.
Unlike Aran jumpers, there are examples of criosanna from the early 1600s in the National Museum; originally made from horsehair, these coloured belts were woven between stools or between hand and foot.
The endangered craft of crios weaving is kept alive by only a handful of people and the crios has increasingly moved from a simple belt to a powerful symbol of a suppressed culture.
Today, in between trailing 18 year old plants and a three legged cat named Seamus, criosanna are woven on a handheld loom in Aideen’s house, an oasis of peace and creativity in the city. Art lines every wall, bookshelves are filled to the brim.
A crios is constructed with a very long warp to yield a belt of 2-3m. Warp faced weft… All visible colours are found in the warp. The belt is woven so tightly that the weft is invisible except for the very edges…
You can find Aideen’s weaving on Instagram @aideen.macken and her Pilates classes at aideenmacken.com
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