Resumen

Weavers in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Laos PDR) often use a complex heddle system to store and replicate their two dimensional geometric woven designs. In this paper, I briefly describe the weaving practices of one family of weavers, in order to demonstrate how a daughter was able to use the design storage system encoded by her mother in order to learn her practices of weaving at a time of need after her passing. I present in detail the operation of the Lao handloom technology, describing how the parts of the system enable the production, storage, retrieval and transfer of complex two dimensional geometric supplemental weft textile designs among members of a community of practice.