Margrethe Hald Archive

I have spent too much time being, alternately, busy, exhausted, and sick, to want to blog much. But the discovery I made on the Internet today is worth sharing. The Centre for Textile Research at the University of Copenhagen has made the Margrethe Hald Archive available on the Internet! The archive consists of PDF copies of papers that Professor Hald authored or co-authored during her lifetime, free to download. The page you need to access is here. Please note; most of these papers were written in Danish, not English; the PDFs are of pre-computer age originals. I first learned about Professor Hald with regard to her work on Danish textiles and shoes worn during the Iron Age, she also worked on other ancient textiles, notably in Peru. Enjoy exploring!

Stone Age Fabric

Happy Easter!  It's been a long time since I've had time to blog and the energy to blog at the same moment.

Today I found an interesting article from phys.org about cloth specimens found at Çatalhöyük, a Neolithic (New Stone Age) cite located in the area now call Turkey. Çatalhöyük was inhabited about 8,000-9,000 years ago.  Lise Bender Jørgensen, a respected textile archaeologist, recently published an article, along with other researchers, in Antiquity, an archaeological journal, about research into Çatalhöyük fabric finds, the oldest woven fabric finds currently known.  

The research showed that the textiles found at Çatalhöyük were made from plant fiber.  Interestingly, the plant fiber found turned out not to be flax or ramie.  Instead, several of the specimens found turn out to have been woven from bast fiber from oak trees.  Oak timber was used for building construction in Çatalhöyük, and apparently the inhabitants derived fiber from the oak bark for their clothing as well.  

The phys.org article may be read here.  I commend it to my readers' attention.  I do not know at present how to find the Antiquity article on the Internet, and I cannot afford to obtain the relevant issue.  If I do locate the Jørgensen article I will revise this post.

EDIT:  No, it didn't take long to track down how to obtain a copy of the article. Cambridge University Press is making the Antiquity article available on line for $26.00 USD here. I may wait until my finances improve to buy myself a copy.

Textile Search of the Ashmolean Collection

Today I learned that it's easy to search, and locate pictures of, historical textiles in the Ashmolean's Eastern Art collection in Oxford, England.

To do that, hit the "Online Collections" button (it's aqua in color) to get to this page, and then hit the "Collection Online" link at the type of the second page to get to this page, which has a search box.  Type "textile" into the box and click the word "search" or "advanced search" to get to this page and look for what you want.  It's a great resource for finding non-textile artifacts in the Museum's collection as well. 

Returning to Gokstad?

The Gokstad Ship.  Photograph by Karamell, 
found on Wikimedia Commons

In 1880, a 9th century CE Viking ship was discovered in a burial mound on farmland at Sandar, Sandefjord, Vestfold, Norway. The ship, the largest Viking age ship found in Norway,  is on display at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, Norway. 

The mound contained more than just the ship.  It contained the grave of a man, aged approximately 40 to 50 years old, powerfully built and between 181 and 183 cm (roughly 6 feet) tall.  The bones of twelve horses, six dogs, and a peacock were laid out around him.  The grave contained other goods, including three small boats, a tent, a sledge, and riding equipment.  Gold, silver, and weapons were surprisingly lacking, suggesting that the grave may have been robbed in antiquity.

Or so the current state of public knowledge goes.  I learned tonight that Aarhus University Press is planning to augment that knowledge with a three-volume series of books, called "Returning to Gokstad," that will review the Gokstad finds: 1) in light of other visits to the site over the last few decades; 2) other ship mound burials from Hedeby, Ladby and Sutton Hoo, and 3) the results of applying new scientific techniques to those finds, such as iron provenancing, aDNA, isotope analysis, osteology, and new dendrochronological results.  

What interested me in the book is the suggestion that there may be new textile information in it also.  Specifically, I found a rumor that there is an article in the first volume of the series about the textiles at Gokstad, written by Marianne Vedeler.  

The first volume is listed on the Oxbow Books website with a projected publication date of this year, but it is not yet available for purchase.  However, it can be preordered through Oxbow (but not through Oxbow's American affiliate Casemate Academic; I could not find any mention of the book at that site).  Likely it may be available for pre-order from bookstores in Scandinavia as well, though I haven't attempted to track such stores down.   

I doubt I will be able to afford the first book, let alone the set, but I am making a note to myself to look for the first book, and try to obtain it by interlibrary loan after it comes out, to see what textile information I can find. 

Elizabeth Tudor's Gown

Last night, I found this video on YouTube.  It tells the story of the survival of one of Elizabeth I's gowns--as an altar cloth in a church in Bacton, which is a town in Herefordshire, England.

The Bacton church was the burial place of Blanche Parry, Elizabeth's Head of the Privy Chamber in Elizabeth's later years.  Parry was buried in the church.  There was a fabric used as a altar cloth, for a time.  After that the vicar ended up storing it under his bed.  Very early in the 20th century, another Bacton vicar raised the money to have the cloth professionally framed and hung on the church wall, where it remained until recently when a woman, a scholar researching Tudor fashion, saw a picture of the Bacton altar cloth on line.  She visited the church and realized that the "altar cloth" had once been a dress.  A dress made from cloth of silver--something only a queen was likely to have.

Subsequent research confirmed that it had been a Tudor period dress, probably one owned and worn by Elizabeth I.  The cloth is currently on display at Hampton Court Palace, beside the famed Rainbow portrait, which the design on the fabric strongly resembles.  Is the former altar cloth the remains of that gown?  We may never know for certain, but it's still amazing that at least the fabric of the dress remains after more than 400 years.  Those who are interested and can't make it to England or view the video can check out this web page about the fabric and the project.

Some Interesting Articles about Viking Age Clothing

Within the past week, I discovered some articles on Academia.edu about projects in Viking clothing and textile manufacture.  They are less formal in style than traditional academic papers because they were written by SCA folk, but they have interesting and useful information all the same.  If you are interested in Viking age clothing, you may want to check them out.  

• Verborg, Rolf. Weaving broken diamond twill fabric to create a Viking age apron dress.    Describes the entire process, from making a warp-weighted loom to cutting and sewing the finished dress.  Assumes more knowledge of the actual warping process than non-weavers are likely to have, but gives interesting and different information than other accounts of Viking-style weaving than I have read.
• Verberg, Susan. Women’s Set of Viking Winter Clothes: Based on 10th Century Haithabu garment finds.  Describes the cutting and sewing of a complete winter outfit, based primarily, but not exclusively, upon Haithabu archaeological finds.
• Verberg, Susan. The Klappenrock: A Viking Warrior's Coat From 10th C. Haithabu,  Similar to her "winter clothes" paper but about the wrapped coat believed to have been worn by Viking men.
• Thunem, Hilde. With a Pleated Front - a Possible Reconstruction of the Hangerock (selekjole) in Grave ACQ from Køstrup, in Lyngstrøm, H, ed. Refashioning Viking Age Garments (SAXO Institute, University of Copenhagen 2015).   Shortened account of the reasoning Hilde employed in designing her apron dress based upon the Køstrup find.

The Academia.edu pages may ask you to "connect" or log in to read or download the articles, but an account on the site is free.  Happy reading!

Odds and Ends

Here are a few interesting tidbits that I discovered on the Internet over the past few days.

Archaeologists are still recovering textiles and other material culture finds from the Lendbreen glacier in Norway.  One such find is a quite large piece of textile still colored a deep blue (scroll down the page to the second picture from the bottom).  My thanks go out to Jenn Culler for directing me to this article.

Here's something rather different than the developments I usually discuss:  an article from the journal Asian Social Sciences discussing Chinese textiles from the Han and Tang Dynasties found on the Silk Road.   The gist of the article is that embroidered Chinese textiles of the period greatly influenced embroidery motifs used in textiles made along the Silk Road.

It is now possible to purchase of the back issues of the Archaeological Textiles Newsletter/Archaeological Review from 1985-2007 as a matched set of three bound volumes for 1000 Danish Krone (about $151.35 USD or 134.45 Euros).  The volumes are a bit more expensive if purchased separately.  For more information, go here.

Finally, Leiden University in the Netherlands recently made available a new dissertation for free in PDF format.  This book is a detailed analysis of archaeological textile finds with a view toward deducing what the clothing from which the finds came was like, including photographs of some interesting reconstructions of men's and women's headwear found at sites in the Netherlands.  The specimens range in age from 400 CE (late Antiquity) to about 1000 CE (late Viking Age).  The entire book, or various portions thereof, may be downloaded in PDF form from this page and the citation is:

C.R. Brandenburgh. Clothes Make The Man: Early medieval textiles from the Netherlands. (Leiden University Press, May 10, 2016).

Chicago University Press is the distributor of the hard copy of the book in the United States, in case you wish to track down a paper copy.  Thanks, once again, to Jenn Culler for pointing me toward this discovery.  

An Interesting Viking Fabric

Fabric found against tortoise brooches from Bryndum
Church Grave No. 12  (Photo: Sydevestjyske Museer website).  

Happy (only slightly belated) New Year!

Yesterday, I found a news article from late 2016 from the Sydevestjyske Museer website.  The article, written in Danish by museum curator Michael Alrø Jensen, was about a new archaeological dig in Denmark; it can be read in Danish here.

The dig is of a Viking age burial ground, located at Bryndum Church.  Fourteen graves were found, and although only a third of them contained artifacts, some of those artifacts were very interesting.

In particular, Grave 12 contained a pair of tortoise brooches of a new type, along with an unspecified number of beads, and the remains of a knife that appeared to have been hung from one of the brooches.  The brooches preserved several layers of fabric, a close-up photograph of which appears in the article.   Interestingly, the caption in the article refers to the stripes shown above as "diagonal stripes" ("diagonalstriber" in the original).  I'm not quite sure what is meant, as the stripes above do not appear diagonal to me (though the fabric does have the diagonal ribs of 2/1 twill).  However, this fabric fits in well with the few other Viking age clothing textiles known to have involved a pattern, in that the stripes are small and modest, and small, fine patterns rather than bold large ones seem to have been characteristic of Viking age clothing.

The article closes with a promise of "exciting studies", and I agree.  I will be on the lookout for publication of a scholarly report about these fascinating finds.  The new brooch type is very interesting, and the layered textile clump measures roughly 5 cm by 10 cm (a substantial size for a Viking textile specimen).  Just thinking about what information can be gleaned from these items is thrilling to me.  If your costume interests involve the Viking age, put Bryndum Church on your radar; you'll want to read any publication of these finds too.

EDIT:  Corrected caption on photograph above, consistent with Anna-Carin's comment, since she reads Danish much better than I do.  She says that the textile was found on the front of the brooches, not the reverse as I'd originally reported in the caption.

Historical Tidbits

A while ago now, I found an interesting book on the Casemate Academic (formerly David Brown Book Company) website.  Casemate is the American affiliate of Oxbow Books, which sells many wonderful books relating to archaeological research, including archaeological research involving clothing and textiles.  Because the price was low (only $12.00 USD).  I purchased it. Here's the bibliographical information:

Nosch, Marie-Louise, Feng, Zhao, & Varadarajan, Lotika, eds. Global Textile Encounters (Ancient Textiles Series vol. 20) (Oxbow Books 2014).

As the title implies, the theme of all the essays in the book is how clothing and textile designs are inspired by contacts with foreign regions.  Most of the essays are short and informal--perhaps a bit too informal for publication in most academic journals.   However, they still have interesting snippets of information for students of historical textiles and costume.  The amount of photographs in this volume are limited, but the ones that appear are in color and of excellent quality. 

For the convenience of my readers, I have replicated below the list of the essays in the book, to make it possible to judge whether the book is worth $12.00 USD to you.  I found most of them--including those relating to clothing and textiles outside of my primary period of interest--to be fascinating.  

1.   Textiles and Elite Tastes between the Mediterranean, Iran and Asia at the end of Antiquity: Matthew P. Canepa.

2.   Palla, Pallu, Chador: Draped clothing in ancient and modern cultures: Mary Harlow.

3.   From Draupadi to Dido: The duties of dress in paintings inspired by the Mahabarata and the Aeneid: Linda Matheson.

4.   The Kaftan: An unusual textile encounter in the Scandinavian Late Iron Age: Ulla Mannering.

5.   Ancient Running Animals: Tablet-woven borders from China and Norway: Lise Ræder Knudsen.

6.   The Development of Pattern Weaving Technology through Textile Exchange along the Silk Road: Zhao Feng.

7.   The Earliest Cotton Ikat textiles from Nahal ‘Omer Israel 650-810 CE: Orit Shamir and Alisa Baginski.

8.   Northerners – Global Travellers in the Viking Age: Eva Andersson Strand.

9.   Unravelling Textile Mysteries with DNA analysis: Luise Ørsted Brandt.

10. The Traceable Origin of Textiles: Karin Margarita Frei.

11. The World of Textiles in Three Spheres: European Woollens, Indian Cottons and Chinese Silks, 1300-1700: Giorgio Riello.

12. Chinese Silks in Mamluk Egypt: Helen Persson.

13. Woven Mythology: The Textile Encounter of makara, senmurw and phoenix: Mariachiara Gasparini.

14. Textile in Art: The influence of textile patterns on ornaments in the architecture of medieval Zirikhgeran: Zvezdana Dode.

15. Coromandel Textiles: The Changing Face of Consumer Demand and Weavers’ Responses 16th to 18th Century CE: Vijaya Ramaswamy.

16. The Jesuit Dilemma in Asia: Being a naked ascetic or a court literate?: Selusi Ambrogio.

17. “The Colourful Qualities of Desire”: Fashion, colours and industrial espionage: Vibe Maria Martens.

18. Fashion Encounters: The “Siamoise” or the Impact of the Great Embassy on textile design in Paris in 1687: Corinne Thépaut-Cabasset.

19. The Chinoiserie of the 17th to 18th-century Soho Tapestry Makers: Mette Bruun.

20. Exoticism in Fashion: From British North America to the United States: Madelyn Shaw.

21. Textile symbolism and social mobility during the Colonial Period in Sydney Cove: Judith Cameron.

22. The Impact of British Rule on the Dressing Sensibilities of Indian Aristocrats: A case study of the Maharaja of Baroda’s dress: Toolika Gupta

23. Re-imagining the Dragon Robe: China Chic in Early Twentieth-Century European Fashion: Sarah Cheang.

24. Sari and the Narrative of Nation in Twentieth-Century India: Aarti Kawlra.

25. From Cool to Un-cool to Re-cool: Nehru and Mao tunics in the sixties and post-sixties West: Michael Langkjær.

26. Too Old: Clothes and value in Norwegian and Indian wardrobes: Ingun Grimstad Klepp, Lill Vramo and Kirsi Laitala.

27. A ‘stinging’ textile: Cultivation of nettle fibre in Denmark and Asia: Ellen Bangsbo.

28. Fist-braided Slings from Peru and Tibet: Lena Bjerregaard.

29. Parsi Embroidery: An Intercultural Amalgam: Shernaz Cama.

30. The Navjote Ceremony and the Sudreh Kushti: Lotika Varadarajan.

31. Globalization, Identity and T-shirt Communication: Karl-Heinz Pogner.

32. India to Africa: Indian Madras and Kalabari Creativity: Joanne B. Eicher.

33. Textile: The non-verbal language: Jasleen Dhamija.

Anna Zariņa's Legacy

From Balticsmith's post on the Facebook group Viking Era Textiles and Fiber Arts, I learned tonight that archaeologist and costume historian Anna Zariņa passed away earlier this year.

I knew that Professor Zariņa was the authority on early Latvian costume, but Balticsmith's post includes a short obituary/biography that underscores the impressiveness of her achievements.  She was born into a farming family.  Her original degrees were in agriculture and home economics, but while she was at university she was exposed to Latvian folk costume and began to study it. Eventually, she learned archaeological field methods and began expanding her research into Latvian prehistory, as far back as the Bronze Age.

In short, if you know anything at all about Latvian costume, chances are you are recalling something Professor Zariņa wrote, or a summary of something Professor Zariņa wrote that was written by someone else.

Balticsmith's post includes a link to a PDF copy of a book by Professor Zariņa whose title means, in English, "Garments in Latvia from the 7th to 17th Centuries." That book can be downloaded from here.  It is written in Latvian, with a German language summary, but it is well-enough illustrated that it should be of use, and of interest, to costume scholars who don't read Latvian (or German).  I am passing the link on in the hope that it will be of use to researchers interested in clothing of the Baltic countries.  Professor Zariņa's legacy is the knowledge she researched and published, and I can think of no better way to honor her than to use and spread that knowledge.

Good Early Period Links

Even though I'm still dealing with more personal, professional, and household problems than doing costuming, I continue to trawl the Internet in my spare time for interesting information on historical costume (particularly Viking costume).  Recently, I've found some links that I'd like to share.

SCA member Álfrún ketta has a lot of good information on her blog, A Wandering Elf's Journey. Like me, she writes about early period clothing and books that address it. In particular, I recommend the following articles from her blog:

• Viking Textiles: A Deeper Look at Plaids, Stripes, and Checks. A summation of textile finds from the Viking age that are plaid, striped, or checked, with lots of pictures. The big news, other than how few of them there seem to be, is that the plaids, stripes and checks tend to be very subtle.
• Viking Embellishment and Embroidery. A three-article series on how the Vikings ornamented their clothes. Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here, and Part 3 is here. All three are illustrated with excellent photographs of existing finds.

I have also found some interesting early period studies on Academia.edu. 

• Rast-Eicher, Antoinette & Berghe, Ina Vanden.  Altrier (LUX): A fresh look at the textiles. A study of textiles in a cremation grave at Altrier, Luxembourg that are dated to the early La Tene period.  One appears to be silk, possibly the earliest silk found in Europe.  This is another article from NESAT XII (pp. 117-123).
• McConnell, Alexandra J. Re-Examining the Evidence:  A Study of Medieval Irish Women's Dress Between 750 and 900 CE. This claims to be a thesis submitted as part of the author's studies at Oregon State University, but it's only 33 pages long.   Make of it what you will.

Finally, I found a paper that Nille Glaesel wrote about her reconstruction of the Køstrup apron dress. She reaches some interesting conclusions, based upon her knowledge of use of the warp-weighted loom and her own reading of Hilde Thunem's paper about that dress.   I can't find the place I've downloaded it from; when I do, I'll post the link here.  I also intend to blog about my thoughts on Ms. Glaesel's paper soon. 

Vikings and Silk

One of Sofie Krafft's watercolors, depicting a silk fragment
from the Oseberg grave along with reconstruction of the full
 pattern. Photo:   Kulturhistorisk museum/Museum of Cultural History, Norway

Recently, I obtained and read Marianne Vedeler's latest book, Silk for the Vikings(Ancient Textiles Series Vol. 15, Oxbow Books, 2014).  Silk for the Vikings is a well-written piece of research that will be the most useful to historical costumers who have made themselves familiar with a goodly proportion of the published archaeological finds, and the existing scholarship about Viking era costume.  

Professor Vedeler focuses primarily upon the availability of silk fabrics to the Vikings and the social and cultural signals given through its use. Nonetheless, the book also contains some lovely full-color photographs of silk finds, as well as some useful information to fuel the deductions of  archaeologists, reenactors, and costumers interested in Viking age clothing.  Some of the details that form the basis of Vedeler's deductions about how silk fabrics ended up in Scandinavia are more interesting than the deductions themselves. Here are some of the details that surprised or intrigued me:

• Of the Viking age Scandinavian graves where silk has been found and a determination of gender has been made, the overwhelming majority were female graves.   Vedeler notes, "Silk has been found in 94 graves in total.  Of these, 52 are interpreted as female graves while 19 are male.  Nine graves contained both a man and a woman, and in 14 cases the silk were [sic] found in graves where the gender of the deceased is unknown, or in another context."  (Page 33, fn. 147).  

• There is clear evidence that some women, at least, used strips of samite silk to trim the tops of their apron dresses.  Vedeler says:  "In some cases, samite silk has been found on the back side of oval brooches, indicating that the silk was part of the suspended dress in the chest area."  She cites examples from Veka in Voss (Norway) and in Tuna in Badelunda (Sweden).  (Page 37).  However, silk strips have also been found in graves without tortoise brooches, indicating that silk was used to trim other kinds of clothing also.  (Page 38).

• Most of the silk found in Viking age graves is from Central Asia, Byzantium, or other regions close to those areas.  However, a few that appear to be Chinese have been found at Birka.  (Page 38).

• There is evidence that Vikings who served in the Varangian Guard in Byzantium were sometime rewarded with silk collars and strips taken from skaramaggia.  A skaramagion is a overtunic with long sleeves associated with the Emperor of Byzantium and other Byzantine men of high rank.  This suggests that some of the silk strips found in Viking graves may have come to Scandinavia in that condition, and not as larger pieces.  (Page 106).

After reading the book, I started searching for real silk fabrics with a design similar to the Sogdian samite silks of the period, since they are a known Central Asian type, though Vedeler notes that most samites found in Viking graves are too faded to be identified readily by pattern.  (Page 35)  Unfortunately, judging by Google, there doesn't seem to be much of a market for reproductions of the stylized patterns characteristic of Sogdian silks.  I will just have to keep looking out for plausible patterned silks to cut into suitably-sized strips to decorate my Viking clothing.

Hot News for Medieval Textile Fans

I was checking out the York Archaeological Trust's website this evening, and discovered that Textile Production at 16-22 Coppergate by Penelope Walton Rogers, is now available for free download!  This book, like her other book Textiles, Cordage and Raw Fibre from 16-22 Coppergate, has been out of print for a long time. It appears that the Trust has decided to make its out-of-print works available for free download, so I hope to see the other Rogers textile book, eventually. In the meantime, I now have the Textile Production book to read.

The YAT download page is here.

EDIT: (June 5, 2011) Textile Production at 16-22 Coppergate isn't on the download page anymore! I don't know what happened (nothing else is missing), though I hope it will be back soon.