Weaving with wool

Posted on May 25, 2013 by Ruth

Home and commercial weavers in medieval Europe were mostly working with linen and wool. Cotton and silk weren’t woven in Europe until the late Middle Ages, so we’ll talk about them later.

When linen was woven, it was pretty much finished. It was used for sheets, towels, shirts, and chemises, so it was not usually dyed or finished in other ways. It just had to be stout, soft and white.

Wool, on the other hand, went through many finishing steps. Of course, like linen, it took some processing to become thread. It didn’t need to be retted and broken; it only had to be cleaned (for dirt, dead bugs and burrs) and carded. Carding required two combing tools; one was usually fixed to a table or stand. After the wool had been raked between the two combs a number of times, its fibers were all aligned in the same direction.

Like linen, wool then went onto a distaff and was spun by hand. Wool was easier to spin, due to the nature of the material. Unlike the slick, dry plant fibers of flax, wool’s fibers were naturally oily and covered with microscopic barbs. An experienced spinner could make fine, smooth wool thread because it naturally stuck and twisted together.

Wool was usually dyed after it was spun. Dyeing could be done as a home craft, but by the 11th and 12th centuries, it was also a commercial guild trade. Dyers bought skeins of thread from home spinners and then lowered them into large, boiling vats. Each vat had a mixture of plant colors and a mordant, usually alum, that fixed the dye so it wouldn’t all bleed away. There were three main dye plants: woad blue, madder red, weld yellow.

Weavers bought colored skeins from dyers, strung their large looms with as much warp as they could hold, and wove long, wide sheets of fabric. Most everyday cloth was one plain color, but of course, Scotland’s home weavers were already making tartan plaids. As horizontal counter-balance looms improved, weavers could create patterns such as overshot. In this technique, plain white thread forms a basic repeating over-under-over-under cloth, while bright colors of thicker yarn cross its surface in diamonds and stripes. More harnesses of heddles allowed weavers to make more intricate patterns of goose-eye, twill and eventually damask. (White linens especially permitted the weaver to play with patterns, as we still see in fine white tablecloths today.)

Some cloth went straight to market after it was woven. But a large percent of wool cloth had one last step of preparation. In a time before the discovery of rubber, wool was the closest thing to a waterproof coat. To make it shed water, it had to be felted a little bit. Soaked in stale urine and agitated to make the microscopic hooks bind tightly, woven cloth *filled in* the holes between threads. After it was rinsed and dried, it was brushed; you see the same flannel effect on today’s “camel” wool. The tradesman doing this work was a “fuller.” Fulled cloth was used for outerwear: curtains, cloaks, and blankets.

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Medieval weaving

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Ruth

In the early Middle Ages, most weaving was done at home for the family’s own use. By the late period, most weaving was commercial, carried out as a full-time craft by professionals. The key shift was in equipment cost, and this took place when the horizontal loom’s greater efficiency made it a mandatory investment.

The loom used all across Europe, until the 12th century, was the vertical frame loom. It could weave a piece of cloth as large as the frame, and no larger. In Scandinavia, where vertical looms were still used long after they’d been abandoned in the south, the warp threads hung down straight from the top beam, held tight in clusters by metal doughnut weights. The weaver began at the top and worked downward. Outside Scandinavia, the warp threads were tied to the bottom of the frame and looped over the top beam—and then hung down, held tight in clusters by metal doughnut weights. These looms were worked by starting at the bottom and moving up.

I have to admit here that I’m not super clear on how the vertical loom was managed, but this is the best I was able to figure out: the warp threads looped around a beam so that the threads did not lie flat with each other, but were at first separated by the width of the beam. It was easy enough to pass a shuttle between them. The trick was to reverse the order, so that the behind-lying one came forward. This was accomplished with a long heddle stick; it had short strings tied to these back-lying warp threads. When the weaver pulled it forward, the warp threads crossed and now the weft shuttle’s pass locked the previous weft in place. Without forward tension on the heddle stick, those threads again hung back. Every other shuttle pass required the heddle stick to be pulled forward. Another method just used two heddle sticks, with each one attached to a different set of alternating warp threads.

There were some real drawbacks to this loom. It required three hands: one to pull on the heddle stick, and two to pass the shuttle through. It made the weaver stand up all day, and eventually the weaver was bending in an uncomfortable position and then squatting. Chiefly, never mind these discomforts, it could only make a piece of cloth as big as the frame. Some late improvements allowed the top or bottom beam to wind up finished cloth and expose more warp, but most of the time, this wasn’t so. Ship sails were pieced together out of squares. Ever notice that cartoon viking ships had striped sails? Each stripe would be as wide as the frame loom.

The horizontal counter-balance loom is familiar to us because its technology has changed little since the 12th century. Back and front beams wind up the warp, slowly rolling up finished cloth at the back and unrolling more thread at the front. In the center, a vertical “castle” has free-moving racks that can lift (via foot pedals) every other thread or any other pattern you want. Once these looms had two heddle frames, it wasn’t long until weavers noticed that four or six made the loom no harder to manufacture or operate but allowed for twills, diaper weaves, and even weaving a tube. Not only that, but the looms could be made double-wide with a bench for two men to sit, each one throwing or catching the shuttle that now moved slickly along a floor of warp threads.

The problem was that these looms were very expensive. Home weavers couldn’t build them out of a few sanded tree trunks, and they needed special metal parts beyond lead doughnuts. So weaving became a professional craft. Weaving workshops tended to be staffed by men who did not own the equipment, so they were the first step toward factories with hourly laborers, in an economy otherwise filled with tool-owning self-employed craftsmen.

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Medieval cloth: linen

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Ruth

Linen was Europe’s native plant fiber. FLax grew in every region; it’s a field grass with little blue flowers.

Flax seeds are edible and very nutritious, but Europe’s chief interest was in the fibers running along the inside of each long stem. The fibers were stronger than cotton, but they were not easy to work with. In the first step, the stems were soaked and the fibers separated. Bacteria helped to rot the plant material attached to the linen fibers. After this soaking and “retting” process, the fibers must be detached from other plant material by feeding it through rollers or smashing and bending it in a hand-held tool.

Some of the flax fibers are inferior and were used as tow to make rope. The valuable fibers were very soft and fine, and each was as long as the plant stem had been cut. When they had been combed, they could be spun into thread. Linen weaving could be coarse or very fine.

Since linen fibers were so strong, it was among the most durable fabric. It was used for hardest everyday use: towels, undershirts, chemises, sheets, tablecloths and napkins. White linen tended to bleach out stains in the sun.

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The rude garb of barbarians

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Ruth

On the other extreme from the urbane Mediterranean Byzantines were the tribes drifting in from the Central Asian plain. Asia birthed several waves of people who took turns pushing each other into Europe: first the Germans (Goths, Franks, Burgundians, Vandals, Lombards…), then the Huns, then the Mongols and Turks. Each group seemed tougher and more militant than the last. They were all shaped by one important fact: the horse was native to their region. There was never a time when horses were not vitally important, so their native clothing was based on needing to sit astride a horse.

That means one thing: pants. The ancient Mediterranean world seems to have used horses mainly for chariots, perhaps since they were imported from Central Asia, so their clothing was based on the idea of a draped robe. Not so on the plains, where distances were far and everyone rode ponies.

“Breeches” and “braes” were the early English words for pants. Dark Ages breeches were of a very simple cut, tied with a drawstring, and made of homespun wool or linen. Poorer men wore them shorter, since shorter ones used less fabric and were less likely to fray. Their shirts were simple tunics. We don’t have any samples of them, and few images. Instead of socks, they wrapped strips of linen or wool around their feet and as far up the leg as they could reach, tucking in or pinning the end. Shoes were leather moccasins or boots. Fur-lined wool cloaks and hats completed their outfits. Cloaks were usually pinned with simple T-shaped pins, but these pins could also be heavy and expensively carved. They are known as square-headed brooches.

Women wore linen dresses. We don’t know much about their early costumes, since there were no paintings and none of the clothing has survived. We do know that women generally wore round brooches, pinning something in their garments, but we’re not sure what. We find these brooches in graves, situated near the shoulders. Did they pin straps to an apron or jumper? Or did they pin a hood and mantle to the dress? Were they pinned on the dress for decoration? Some of the saucer brooches were linked with amber beads and might have been merely decorative. Did all women wear them, or were they marks of wealth? We don’t have enough information to tell.

Men probably wore their hair long and braided, as in Viking images. Women definitely did. Women also wore hijab-like mantles over their heads, but in the Dark Ages, it was for warmth and custom, not to cover all skin.

When the first Germanic tribes met Romans (both the real Roman type and the Byzantines), the clash in fashions began to produce change. Working men never altered their clothing much for several centuries, but men who had servants could afford to dress like Romans. To ride horses, they probably still wore breeches. But to sit around and look impressive, they wore embroidered robes. Not wearing pants became a sign of wealth! And the longer a man’s robe was, the more it suggested that he didn’t need to work. This is why our images of fairy-tale medieval kings always show them in long robes. It’s a little remaining folklore of the time when only the kings could dress in a Byzantine style.

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More about Byzantium

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Ruth

Constantinople, or Byzantium, was a city unlike any other in the medieval world. Modern equivalents don’t spring to mind, though perhaps readers will spot one.

The city was walled and inbred to a high degree. Geography shaped its character. Surrounded on three sides by salt water, it had only one natural freshwater river. Since ancient times, the city had built a system of underground aqueducts. Some municipal cisterns, located under city streets, were as large as modern sports fields.

The side of the city that was accessible by land could be defended very, very heavily since the other sides didn’t need fortification. It had concentric walls that were never breached except by treachery until the Turks brought in a huge cannon.

The social city had a mindset to go with these traits: it was heavily developed internally, in ways that the outside world never saw, and it was walled against outside social order. Social class was rigid, with rare individual exceptions like Empress Theodora. Sumptuary laws governed what fabrics the lower classes could wear, so that no lower person could be mistaken for a prince.

The lowest classes lived in squalor and darkness that horrified outsiders when they saw it. Their neighborhoods grew like shanty towns, but up to four stories of rickety height. While the upper classes had the finest urban planning, the shanty towns had no sanitation or sunlight.

Foreigners were not welcome. When they were permitted to enter the city at all, they were restricted to closed neighborhoods where they could be watched. These closed neighborhoods kept all Venetians, Jews or Arabs away from the native population. Only the ghettos had mosques or synagogues.

But the city also had more public works than any other city of its time. In addition to the water system, the city kept up Roman traditions of public entertainment like chariot races. They had large, centrally administered prisons. They also had hospitals that went far beyond the standards of any other time. Maintained on public money, hospitals offered the poor not only old age care and nursing, but some limited surgeries.

The city’s wealth was based in collecting tolls for passing in and out of the Black Sea, but it was also a manufacturing center, shipping its own goods to the rest of the world. It operated like Willy Wonka’s factory, keeping craftsmen virtual prisoners so that their trade secrets could not become known. Silk-making and fine glass were among its secrets that eventually got out.

Rich and poor never met in the city, except when the poor rioted on occasion, and then there were atrocities and fire. The Byzantines did atrocities like nobody else until modern times. Rich and poor, they all flayed alive, cut out tongues, and poisoned people.

Medieval Constantinople reminds me of The Simpsons’ Mr. Burns.

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Byzantine clothing fashion

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Ruth

We know the culture of Constantinople mainly through its own art, especially wall and floor mosaics that lasted through time. We don’t seem to have many images, certainly not as many as from later medieval Europe, but what we have shows a very consistent culture of opulence and religious devotion. The best known mosaic portrait shows the Empress Theodora around the year 530 (she died in 548).

Theodora’s dress is very simple in its cut. She is still wearing something not far off from the Roman robes. During Byzantium’s height, there was one basic improvement on Rome’s “tube clipped at the shoulders” design. The tube around the body had sleeves added to form a T shape, with a neck hole. The T-shaped dress could be covered with a Roman mantle or cinched with a belt. We don’t have any evidence that dress shape evolved beyond these two simple cuts during their time.

But if you look closely at Theodora and her companions, you will see a wealth of detail. Theodora, born into poverty and raised to supreme wealth and power by her beauty and intelligence, is dripping with pearls. She is wearing a collar or necklace covered with other rare jewels. But let’s assume the pearls and gold, and look instead at the fabric details on the three in the picture. Theodora’s dark robe shines; it is probably purple silk. At the bottom, a wide hem of hand embroidery stands out.

The Empress’s companion on the right has three outstanding fabric details. First, her mantle is made of figured silk. At this time, silk was made only in China, and the technique of weaving in such a complex pattern was unknown in Europe. The mantle is generously large; it covers most of her dress. The dress itself seems to be made of dark figured silk with a wide embroidered border like the Empress’s. The man to her left has a very simple white robe, probably the T-shaped kind with a real sleeve. But it, too, has a rich embroidered border on shoulder and skirt.

That’s how Byzantine fashion ran: it was about yards and yards of imported fabric, many square inches of dense embroidery in silk or spun gold, and jewels. Clothing for the wealthy used as much fabric as possible, as suited a society that was both devout and luxuriant. Pious Byzantine women covered their skin with silk, gold and crosses.

The other thing to note in Theodora’s mosaic is how the two women have their hair in some kind of “up do” (as it’s called now) with a hat covering most of it. Their hats are modeled after Eastern turbans to some extent. Although their robes and mantles copy Rome, their hats are characteristic of the Near East.

The Empress was married to Emperor Justinian, who has his own mosaic. The men in it are dressed simply, though as your eyes adjust to the detail, you’ll notice some figured silk on the Emperor and bands of embroidery on other men’s shoulders. His warriors seem to have their own rules of fashion, much less Roman in their gaudy colors.

But look carefully at the Emperor’s shoes, and the other shoes in his retinue. They all look like women’s shoes to us, but putting that too aside, notice the detail in leather cutting. The shoes’ straps are fine and look like they would not last long outside the palace. All have cut leather designs that allow skin or hose to show through. The Emperor’s shoe leather has been dyed red, and the cut leather has perhaps been painted with other colors. Such impractical shoes prove that the wearer rarely sets foot on real sand or grass. He goes from tile to paved courtyard to horseback or litter.

Byzantine fashions were longer-lived than Byzantium’s rulers (who were notoriously insecure of life). Their height of opulence lasted for a little while longer, but by 700, they were losing tax base to invading Arabs, and in the centuries after, the city was under increasing economic and military pressure. The Emperor’s daughter in the 12th century, Anna Comnena, didn’t look much different from Theodora, though six hundred years had passed.

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The Fall of Roman clothing

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Ruth

The “Middle Ages” period is defined as the time after Roman hegemony centered in Rome itself. After Rome was overrun by Goths and ceased to control its empire, Constantinople was called the New Rome or Eastern Rome. Its cultural domination extended over the eastern Mediterranean, but not past Greece. Western Europe was no longer dominated by any one single people, but instead it was unsettled and wild. Various groups from the north contested for power.

Let’s look at the map before Rome’s influence ended. (link to Wikimedia map) On this map, Mediterranean culture has spread as far north as it could. There’s one large block of geography resistant to Roman culture, in the areas of modern Germany and Poland. Between 200 and 600 AD, most of these groups pushed east and south, taking over warmer lands. The Vandals and Lombards went to Italy. The Visigoths settled in Spain. Burgundians went to France. Some Saxons and Angles (not shown on Wiki map) moved into Roman Britain.

Medieval fashion began with two very divergent poles: Byzantium (Constantinople) with its Roman-like robes and wealth and the uncouth Germanic people who wore pants. Medieval fashion history is about the influence of the East on the West in repeated cycles, with the West each time altering the East’s clothing notions into forms more appropriate to their hard northern winters.

So in considering medieval clothing, we have to look at two radically different ways of covering the human body. Byzantium was relatively warm and already a crowded urban center. Northwestern Europe was forested with only scattered human settlements; wolves and bear roamed through the snow. Byzantium’s fashions were based in gold and imported silk; Germany’s fashions centered around fur. Byzantines wore slippers, robes and tunics; Franks and Saxons wore pants and boots, with many layers of wool and fur on top.

Flax was Europe’s native fabric material. Wool-producing sheep and goats, brought north from the Mediterranean, were a welcome addition. Silk was a rare import from China, not at first known outside the huge urban center. Cotton was yet unknown.

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Modern European cooking begins

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Ruth

1400: firewood is scarcer than ever, with just one iron forge using up to 100 oak trees per year. Wild game animals are hoarded by aristocrats on their shrinking forest estates (parks). But beer is flowing, with a surplus of wheat for the smaller population. There’s more bread in bakeries and some people can afford 2 1/2 or even 3 meals a day.

Cheese and smoked pork are the two first big changes in protein foods. Both are ways of preserving surplus food, a rarity just one century before. Butchers begin stuffing ground meat and blood into intestinal casings, creating the famous sausage types of later European cuisine. Cheese is still mostly from sheep’s milk in some places, but cow’s milk is more and more available.

Around this time, bakers start borrowing brewer’s yeast, perhaps first in monastic kitchens where brewing and baking were done in neighboring rooms. Country bread is still sourdough, but wealthier institutions and families start eating light, risen, sweet bread. Of course, baking skill is applied to the new breads, so soon there are breads of all shapes, including sweetened and with imported dried fruits.

There are more sugar refineries and plantations in the Portuguese-controlled islands off Africa; sugar is still expensive but it’s starting to be used more by the rich. This bumps honey downscale into greater availability for the upper middle classes. Sweet desserts proliferate. The spice trade is growing; pepper, cinnamon and ginger are becoming available for the upper middle classes.

As merchants and goldsmiths start peppering their brewet and mixing cinnamon with honey in dessert, aristocrats lose interest in spices. Game animals are now the best show of wealth; roast boar is classier than ever. A new trend starts among the aristocracy that will alter cooking again: serving food in set courses, one type at a time. The fad comes from Spain to Paris. The emphasis is now on volume, since the Fish Course must concentrate enough fish to serve everyone, ditto the Meat Course, rather than spreading everything out in fancy dishes served in random clusters.

The Little Ice Age is making travel in the North Sea difficult. Stockfish’s importance in daily diet drops as fewer ships go out for cod near Iceland and Greenland.

Italy has been developing its characteristic pasta, a quick-cooking wheat food for a region doubly short on firewood. In 1400, you can eat tortellini, ravioli and lasagna as well as pasta soups. Spain’s food has long been influenced by Arabic tastes, chiefly in sweets but also in pickles. Fashionable people in Paris and London begin serving these exotic foods instead of last century’s colored tromp l’oeil dishes.

By 1500, European food as we recognize it has arrived, and there my special knowledge ends.

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Side note: Jews and the Black Death

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Ruth

Why did Jews get targeted during the plague? Here’s what happened (copied from FB comments string on “The Great Mortality” post):

By this time, England and northern France had expelled their Jewish populations. Jews lived in Spain, southern France (Marseille coast), Italy and Germany.

The plague came first to Italy, then to southern France and Spain. They didn’t know what it was, but they pretty much knew it had come from the Genoese death ships. Some Jews in towns near Marseille were attacked, but it wasn’t directly connected with the plague, it seems. The Jews maybe did statistically better (I haven’t seen that claim), but it was no better than maybe 20% of them died instead of 30%. That’s still a lot of death and it’s very plain to everyone that you’re not exempt.

Germany was assaulted by the plague from west and east, but it had a full year to hear news from Italy, France, England and even Sweden, and tremble. Italy was hit too suddenly to anticipate the tragedy, but Germany had time to think. They wanted desperately to turn away the dreadful thing that was headed their way, ready to plunge them into exquisite suffering.

I don’t know the true story on this, but a Jew in Switzerland confessed to local authorities that he had a letter from the Chief Rabbi in Toledo, Spain, telling them to start poisoning wells. The Rabbi sent out the poison packets, too. He took the town council to the well he had poisoned and showed them the packets. Or something like that. In medieval terms, it was a full investigation with proofs beyond doubt; I have a feeling it fell short of CSI standards.

The Swiss sent warning letters to the German towns, telling them that the way to avoid the plague was to prevent the Jews from carrying out their plan. Each major town received a copy of this letter with official seals affixed.

Some rulers doubted the story; after all, the Jews had done a pretty bad job at avoiding their own “poison” in Spain and Italy. What kind of a conspiracy was that? A few governing authorities (don’t make me look it up, but I will if you ask) tried to protect the Jews. But for the most part, terrified German towns bought the whole story.

Thus began the first mass murder program in modern history. Each town arrested all of the Jews and disposed of them in some way. The most dreadful, to me, was the town that rowed the Jews out to an island in the river, where a wooden house stood. The Jews were stripped (clothes were valuable) and herded in. The door was locked, the house set on fire, and the boats rowed back to the city.

Of course, the Germans still died like ants when the plague hit. And the Jews who heard of the crisis in time left Germany and moved to Poland, where the King welcomed them and gave sanctuary. Which is why so many of them were in Poland during the modern era. No other place in Europe was safe; they had to move to the margins, to the recently-Christianized lands.

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Post-plague diet shift

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Ruth

The collapse of the medieval farm economy had a very wide impact on European society. Farming had been based on semi-slavery in which tenants owed the landowner certain days of free labor. They weren’t allowed to leave this contract without buying freedom, although I’ve never heard of any problems with runaway serfs being tracked down like slaves. For the most part, the conditions were just good enough to be accepted, and the landowners owed the serfs things like a harvest feast, which made it feel okay.

But the price of labor skyrocketed after the third visitation of the plague. Survivors demanded wages; landowners could not easily pay, since there were also fewer food customers and the price of wheat dropped. There was a long period of social instability in which landowners petitioned the King to control wages, and the peasants refused to cooperate or mounted armed revolts. Inevitably, towns (by definition free of feudal farm duties) grew and manor farms shrank. Landowners had to pay wages; farms had to make do with fewer workers. There were no significant technological leaps in farming at this time, but the progress of the past centuries (horses, harrows and plows, better seed) allowed them to tinker, improve and do more with less.

The political upheaval led directly to modern institutions and was a big part of the later religious wars that shaped modern Europe. But at table, the main effect of all of this change was that old women who survived through several plagues saw unbelievable price changes at market.

Wheat became affordable; there was a surplus of wheat for the first time in Europe’s history. Not only could more people eat bread on a daily basis, but there was even wheat left over for beer. The working classes had always drunk watery ale in preference to contaminated water, but now they could actually afford a pint of beer that contained enough alcohol to feel the effect. Tavern business boomed, and so did the associated cook-shops.

Animal products became affordable, too. Eggs and a lump of hard cheese, previously the highest protein to which a poor man could aspire, became taken for granted. Although cows had been affected by the plague (and murrain, an animal disease, regularly carried off flocks of domestic animals), there were more farm animals per human mouth now. Cheese-making expanded, creating export markets for isolated Swiss and French villages.

Game animals were scarcer than ever, and so was firewood. But pigs (who could and did catch the plague) became plentiful. Europe’s diet began to swing decisively toward pork consumption…

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