The Snarsisians have a wide variety of traditional crafts many related to their underground lifestyle. Most methods and tools have become modernized over time and are no longer as common as they once were.
Textiles
Snarsisians have a variety of traditional textiles at their disposal, with the most common being hand-woven fabrics. Typically, the use of treadle looms and backstrap looms is seen as the most traditional, but drawlooms were also developed and used, especially expensive fabrics that included patterns and decorations woven in.
Patterns may be woven into the fabric or may be added through painting, resist dying, etc. Expensive traditional fabrics will often have patterns added through embroidery or the use of a drawloom in the weaving process.
Silk from the Bonrat Slug is used to make the most prestigious of traditional fabrics. More modern fabrics will often use artificial materials rather than natural ones as they are cheaper and quicker to work with.
Modern factory-made fabrics have become more common but traditionally made fabrics are still often used in formal traditional clothing, especially by the wealthy.
Embroidery
Snarsisian fashion tends to focus on texture over contrasting colors. As such, embroidery is often used as a way to add texture to clothing using knots and crisscrossing designs that are slightly raised and texturally different from the base fabric.
The embroidery may also be used to add beads, gemstones, and small mirrors to the fabric, creating subtle color changes and more texture. They may also use embroidery to hold pleats or folds in place alongside decorating the fabric.
Most embroidery designs do not include imagery but rather are unspecific geometric or organic shapes often crafted into a symmetrical design. Designs are often loosely based on architectural or geographical elements like pillars or rivers.
Stone Carving
Snarsisian Stone carvers are considered some of the most skilled in the coalition, with the planet being known for its vast underground cities carved from stone.
They used rock-cutting techniques to carve homes and rooms from the stone walls of the underground. They also used this technique to carve out pillars, bridges, and even lattice work for windows
Stone carving is also used on smaller individual pieces of rock to create pendants, statues, and other decorative items. They also are known to use hardstone carving to carve precious and semi-precious stones.
Products
Bonrat Silk
Bonrat Silk is a kind of fabric made from the silk threads produced by the
Bonrat Slug. The silk threads are used by the Bonrat Slugs to protect their eggs, encasing them in a cocoon. Silk Farmers will collect the cocoons and boil them in hot water which kills the eggs inside and loosens the silk treads allowing it to unravel.
The treads -which are too thin to use in this state- are then gathered and spun together with other threads to form a stronger thread and collect them on a spool. Waste fibers from this process may be blended into other textiles to make silk blends.
The threads are then arranged on a loom and the fabric is woven. Bonrat Silk woven on a drawloom, which allows the creation of patterns and designs on the fabric itself, is considered the most precious and expensive form of the fabric.
Besides being used for fabric, Bonrat silk threads may also be used for embroidery and other forms of decoration.
Comments