Viking Knit (Trichinopoly) Jewellery

[Tricia - Tricky's Boutique]

Recently, I have been making a lot of handmade jewellery using the viking knitting technique (also known as trichinopoly). This is an ancient method of weaving which dates back to the 8th or 9th Century.

The two pictures shown above are ancient examples of jewellery made using this type of chain (Please click to see bigger pictures and read more about them).

Viking chain is made using wire which is woven around a mandrel to form a woven tube as shown to the left.

This tube is quite rigid and needs to be passed through a drawplate, before it can be used in jewellery, this smooths and stretches the tube and turns the tube into the final chain which is extremely lightweight and flexible as you can see in the picture to the right.

I bought my drawplate & mandrels from abbyhook.co.uk) . Abby Hook also does a fab tutorial if you would like to learn how to make viking chain yourself!

To make this chain I used almost 10 meters of 0.6mm (22 gauge) wire wrapped around a 15mm mandrel. This formed a tube about 20cm (8") long which then turned into a chain 48cm (19") long and 7mm in diameter after it was passed through the drawplate.

This is a single knit chain, it is also possible to make double or even triple knit chains which give a different finish to the completed design.

Please click here to see all of my viking knit jewellery.

Tricky's Boutique Handmade Jewellery & Gifts