Cardes and tisores d'abaixar (carding and cloth shears)

What is

The tools of the paraire : the cardes comb the wool and lift the hair from the cloth; the d'abaixar tisores cut it. Together they form the escut dels paraires de Mallorca.

How is

• Card: board with handle, covered with leather on one side and bristling with slightly hooked wire spikes.
• Embossing card: the thickest, to prepare the wool.
• Priming card: the one that does the carding itself.
• Cardencha cardencha: thorny plant heads on a handle, to refine the woven cloth.
• Shearing shears: large scissors for shearing the cloth (exact shape to be verified).

How is fa

• Wooden board, leather and wire spikes nailed in rows (local manufacturing to be verified).

Com s'usa

• The wool is carded between two cards.
• The cloth is hung on the perxa and the cards are passed over it (perxar); then the hair is trimmed (abaixar).

Vocabulary

• carda: paraire instrument for combing wool.
• emborrar / emprimar: prepare / card fine.
• perxar: hang the cloth on the perxa and card it.
• abaixar: trim the hair from the cloth (technical sense to verify in DCVB).
• cardador: who cards (in the escut of the barreters).

History

• 1551: «two parells de cardes, les vnes emborradores, les altres emprimadores» (Catalan doc.).
• 14th century: escut of the paraires of Mallorca with shears between two cardes (chapel of Santa Creu).

On veure'n

• Key to the vault of the Paraires chapel, Santa Creu (Palma).
• Museum of Mallorca, Muro (to be verified).

Why is it design

• Functional surface: thousands of oriented bristles: an industrial comb at hand.
• Tool-emblem: the guild is represented by its tools.

For the project

• Photograph old cards; graphic series of tools-emblem.

Sources

• dcvb.iec.cat/results.asp?Word=carda
• dcvb.iec.cat/results.asp?Word=emborrar
• dcvb.iec.cat/results.asp?Word=perxar
• dcvb.iec.cat/results.asp?Word=abaixar
• ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraire

Working text from the Disseny Indígena knowledge base, machine-translated from Spanish.

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