Nettle weaving was one of the traditional crafts of the Khanty and Mansi peoples. The process of preparing nettle fiber was rather lengthy. Nettles were cut in September and dried during the entire winter. In the spring, they were processed: the woody part was taken out of the stems, and the fibers were cleaned off green outer bark by repeatedly beating them with a pestle and scutching.

The resulting nettle tow was spun on a spindle, obtaining threads of dissimilar thickness. The coarsest ones were used to weave nets, and the finer ones were woven into cloth. The yarn was rolled into skeins, and then stretched out right inside the house using pegs and fed into a horizontal loom.

One of the mandatory elements of a spindle is a spindle whorl, a disc-shaped or cylindrical weighted object with a through hole in the center. This device was used to weigh down the spindle and secure the yarn on it for spinning. In the dictionary of Vladimir Ivanovich Dal, the Russian word “pryaslo” corresponds to the aforementioned definition of a spindle whorl. Back in the mid-19th century, the Russian word “ptyaslitse” (a spindle whorl) was understood to mean “a plate for the tow” or “a pole… for the tow”. Sometimes these two parts together were known as a “ptyaslitse”. Despite some attempts of historians to explain the differences and to separate the concepts, nowadays they are perceived as synonyms.

Bone, stone or, as in this exhibit, clay were used as the material for spindle whorls; sometimes potsherds were recycled and made into whorls. Thanks to their small size and strength, many ancient spindle whorls have been preserved: archaeologists often find these items during excavations.

Spindle whorls made of slate stone (pyrophyllite slate) became popular in Rus in the middle of the 10th century: they were manufactured near the Ukrainian town of Ovruch, where a mineral deposit was discovered. The craftsmen gave them a biconical shape: each spindle whorl consisted of two truncated cones connected by wide base plates. Production stopped in the 13th century after the destruction of Ovruch by Tatar-Mongol tribes.

Nettle weaving retained its position until the late 19th century, when the indigenous northern peoples began purchasing fabrics — cotton, cloth, and less often silk.