no real relationship to Machineries of Empire but
Kimono floor loom (Inagaki Kiryo's R-25, six harnesses and six treadles, 48 cm weaving width) assembled! Currently dressing the loom for a small test project. This was NOT cheap a.k.a. "Yoon decided to go all-in on handspinning and hand weaving with earning from writing rather than gamble on peripheral neuropathy symptoms going away." Location-dependent but (e.g.) people in the USA or Europe can often obtain floor looms less expensively without having to additionally pay for international shipping from Japan; that said, they're generally horribly spendy and take up tons of space unless you luck into a good secondhand example. That said, using backstrap looms, tape/box looms, and/or card-weaving techniques, one can produce extraordinarily sophisticated weaves at a fraction of the cost, usually at a smaller scale. I find it wild that the R-25 and the Toika Laila you can see in the background are considered somewhat small by home floor loom standards. O.o
(preparing to dress the loom with a warp: raddle, lease sticks, the rod for the back beam isn't yet tied up in this picture)
Okay, I guess in the background you can see the Machineries of Empire blanket that came with the special edition of the Korean translated version that my daughter hung up during high school to troll me. (She's grown up and on her own now! The LÖÖM Room used to be her bedroom.)
I think on the left is Cheris, the middle figure is Kujen, and the rightmost is Jedao Two. The collage-vibe style probably looks odd to USAns but that's actually an extremely typical "graphic design" approach to illustration in Korean literature; I used to see similar all the time in my mom's magazines as a kid in Seoul. I see everyone's taking inspiration from Chris Moore's terrifically eye-grabbing illustration of /space urchin/ the Fortress of Scattered Needles in Solaris Books's cover for Ninefox Gambit.
