Introduction - an excerpt from The Book Of Tents
The modern tent isn't very far removed from its ancestor, even though tents may be considered the oldest form of man made structure. When man first moved out of his cave, his first house will have been animal hides stretched over small branches. Three million years later, we, as tentmakers and erectors, are still dragging their equivalent around with us, so we may justifiably call ourselves the second oldest profession.
History
Since the beginning of time, man has used tents to house his family. Either as temporary cover, as emergency shelter, or as used by Nomads, who often live nowhere else.
Modern people tend to look at the massive tented constructions at trade fairs, music festivals, and mobile exhibitions as an ultimately modern concept. But, as in many spheres, we find that this is not true. From the ancient Roman 'Volariums' used to provide shade over Coliseums and the 12th century Spanish 'Envalet's', strung from buildings to cover streets, to the massive German beer tents in the late 1800's, we can see that far from being an emergency tool, the tent is an appliance as old as the dawn of time.
The Vikings used tents extensively in their travels to the extent that some never knew an existence other than in a tent. The Old Norse word for tent is tjald. Tepee's were used by North American Indians as dwellings throughout the year. The structures were easy to manufacture, easy to maintain, and had the ability to circulate air while a fire was burning inside.
The most influential early tent was the Mongolian Ger (also more commonly known as a Yurt, the Russian name for the Ger), which are a portable tent house which use triangulated wooden members almost in the form of a tepee, but with vertical sides supported by a trellised framework of wood.
These structures have been used on all major land masses. They are still in use today yet originally became popular over four thousand years ago. The same shape, i.e. that of a pitched conical roof with vertical sides, can be seen around to the world to this day. Different coverings replaced the hides (which were usually made from woven goat hair or animal skins, but sometimes covered with leaves, vines or straw), till they evolved into the structures that can be seen in every form of civilisation and also in modified form for wattle and daub huts in Africa and South America. This mud and straw covering was eventually to replace the fabric skin and was (and indeed still is), used by most nomadic tribes other than the Arab countries where the differently shaped 'black' tent became widely used.
Yurt's (or Kibitka) can still be seen in Europe today, recreated for cultural festivals such as the Glastonbury music festival, covered with a wide range of fabrics. In design terms the logical progression from the medium sized Arab black tent, (or family tent), was the Envalet (also known as Toldos) which was a Spanish tent popular in the Catalunia region of Spain which was erected for festivals suspended on wooden poles around the perimeter of the roof and guyed to cables suspended across the span of the roof. These covers are still used in a simpler form for festivals in Valencia and Seville. Although the Envalet was popular in the latter part of this millennium, prior to this, (around the time of Christ), across the civilised world were some of the largest fabric covered spaces ever built, known as Volariums. Used by the Romans to cover the various coliseums including the largest in Rome itself, the Volarium used a series of ropes suspended over the top and rearmost wall of the coliseum, then pulled and hoisted into place by tensioning the ropes down to the base of the coliseums outer wall. Examples of this were to be seen in several other countries such as the El Jem stadium in Tunisia. (see photo). The Volaria, which the Romans used to cover stadiums such as the coliseums, provided similar shade cover to the Toldos, which covered streets in southern Spain, and achieved their cover by hanging fabric from a series of ropes stretched between buildings over the area to be covered.
From Morocco across the Arab heartland's to the plains of Iran and into Pakistan, India, and all the way to the borders of China, Nomadic tribes used shelters made out of stretched fabrics or animal hairs or hide. While western tribes tended to use a cloth made of black woven fibres, (the 'black' tent), in the east the fabric is woven from goat or camel hair of a lighter colour and the tents are generally smaller, the size being limited by the carrying capacity of a camel. Some of the better quality tents were made out of woven wool and goat hair with cheaper tents made from the fibre of dwarf palms. The nomads dig a ditch around the tent to drain off rain water and in bygone days, ostrich feathers were used to decorate the tent to show that the family belonged to the religious aristocracy. Occasionally, the Makhzen tent were used, these being much larger than the Nomad tents, having as many as four poles in the largest examples. These were made from white canvas decorated with dark motif's symbolising the Qandil or oil lamp (almost certainly the origin of the English word, candle), and on the outside are horizontal rows of crenellated motif's. The most important tent was surmounted by three bowls as a sign of authority. During the Mawsims (religious or tribal feasts) several hundreds of tents could be made up into virtual cities for as little as one day.
Up to today Moroccans have continued to use the tents not only as shelters but also as spaces of celebration - for weddings, traditional and religious events, and parties. They have succeeded in preserving their historic roots up to present time, keeping their uniqueness alive.
Go to the massive 10th-century gate of Bab Zuwayla, in old Cairo, cross the small square in front of the gate and you are at the beginning of one of the oldest thoroughfares in Cairo - Shari Khayyamiya. Khayma means "tent" in Arabic and here, in the Street of the Tentmakers, the ancient craft of making huge tent pavilions, or suradeq, out of appliqued cloth patterns has been carried on for hundreds of years.
"In the tomb of Princess Isinkheb was found an entire tent- its inside lined with animals and flowers, the blue ceiling studded with appliqued stars..."
Because the Baghdad tent is to be a sewan, a big tent, three work sites are in use: a workroom where the hundreds of patterns are drawn to scale and transferred to the cloth, and where some of the sewing is done, a courtyard area across the street for machine-sewing the completed pieces; and a large worksite on the roof, a large open area where sections of the tent can be laid out and the thousands of colored pieces appliqued, or "applied,"to the enormous tent.
WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY JOHN FEENEY
(From the ARAMCO WORLD MAGAZINE, November/December 1996)
In the 1870's, 80's and 90's circus tents were being developed based on machine woven calico, hand stitched to hemp ropes and supported by centre or 'King' poles. As the span of these tents was increased, additional support poles or 'quarter poles' were inserted (called quarter poles due to 'quartering' the span), and at least one example used three rows of 'quarter poles' to give a total of seven supports across the span, not counting the side poles. In the 1940's and 1950's the circus reached it's zenith in terms of travelling size with as many as 10,000 people being accommodated in giant canvas structures. Traditionally built circus tents as large as 50 metres wide and 90 metres long, (160 -170 ft wide and 300 ft long ), were toured by Circus's in America such as Clyde Beatty Cole Brothers, King Brothers Christiani and Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey, and in Europe with Krone in Germany, Chipperfields in the UK and Togni in Italy.
Around the time of the wide introduction of television in Europe, Circus's generally declined as audiences in Europe reduced (perhaps due to the influence of television and other pop cultures) and the circus's in America moved indoors to the civic centres and indoor stadiums owned by organisations such as the Shriners. In Europe, the circuses made use of tents as large as the American versions, but with a different layout due to the inherently different methods of presenting the performance. In the Americas, the multiple spectacle of the three ring circus forced a long layout for the tents, while elsewhere, the focus was on the single ring to highlight individual performers. Satellite tents were introduced for entrance, concession, animal stabling, catering and even for sleeping.
Through the twentieth century, the tent was used in many areas of the world as the primary habitation for many people. When the use of tent as a living structure declined, it was still used ( indeed to this day), by the military as its main means of keeping mobile. It would be nice to say that the large military budgets of recent years (and centuries) had directly contributed significantly to the development of the tent, but this isn't true.
Indirectly the research into barrage balloons, airships, and vehicle tyres contributed to the development of plastic coated synthetic fibres, but initially this helped the air supported structure rather than the tent. Even so, the catalyst for the birth of high performance fabrics came from the background of war, as with so many industrial developments. The space industry is developing high strength-low weight fabrics for use in orbit, both as protective clothing and as possible shelter from the sub zero temperatures and the boiling effect of sunlight with no atmosphere to filter it. It seems that sunshades will be an accessory in space as on earth, and some prophesy fabric dome cities as the only realistic space covers to contain the artificial environment.
The main change in the design and manufacture of tents and tensile structures happened after the turn of the century and later with the general optimism at the end of the first World War, the recreational use of tents again became paramount. Although a patent was issued to William Lanchester in England in 1917 for an air supported tent, it was never constructed due to a lack of suitable materials. Another fifty years would pass before the air dome had materials truly suitable for their use, by which time the design benefits of tensioned membranes made their use less necessary. It seems that by the time a product is fully developed, it is no longer needed, which seems to mirror human development as a whole.
After the Second World War, fabric covered radar domes were constructed for the American Military by Walter Bird and by the 60's his BirdAir company was building air supported domes of more than 60 m diameter. These early air supported domes were the direct antecedent of the massive stadium covers or the 1970's. To this day, BirdAir are one of the world leaders in the permanently installed fabric structures field.
Manufacturing Methods
No formal design methods were in use in the early years with the tents tending to be made from a combination of hemp ropes sewn into a form of netting or grid upon which calico was hand stitched. These and others made from Jute or Flax were hand, (later machine), sewn to form the basis of early structures, some of these being as large as 40 metres in diameter with an impressive standard of longevity and performance under wind and weather.
Over the years these manufacturing techniques have been refined by a seat of the pants approach and the black art of tent making has evolved. With use of engineering principles in the 1950's, and the advances of fast, cheap, computing power in the 1970's and 1980's, to the present situation of comparatively simple 3D modelling and interactive analysis, the age of the computer designed (and in some cases) built, tented structure has arrived.
THE BOOK OF TENTS
The Book Of Tents Trilogy
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