On Dec 2, 2005, at 9:40 PM, Catherine Olanich Raymond wrote:
On Friday 02 December 2005 3:55 pm, Robin Netherton wrote:
[snip]
Clearly there's some dyed linen floating around in medieval
Western Europe
-- e.g. there's a surviving garment with black linen lining, IIRC
-- and I
want to make very sure no one thinks I'm saying there was no linen
dyeing
done in this period. But I don't think it's safe to assume from
that that
the linen was frequently dyed, and that dyed linen was typically
used for
the visible layers of clothing, which is what my focus was in my
earlier post.
I know of no examples of linen outerwear from the later Middle
Ages. However, in an essay published in "Cloth and Clothing in
Medieval Europe" Inga Hagg published the results of a stratographic
analysis of grave finds at Birka, which indicated that some of the
linen fragments found did not come from a shift (i.e. underwear)
but from a "caftan" or "mantle"--an outer garment. In a different
essay (of which I've read reports but do not have a copy) she has
posited that some of the outerwear layer linen fragments belonged
to the so-called "apron dress". To my knowledge, however, the
Birka linen fragments have not been exposed to the sort of analysis
that would enable a determination of whether they had been dyed or
not.
It also strikes me that those descriptions don't rule out the
possibility that the linen was used as a lining for the caftan or
hanging dress respectively. (I keep forgetting what the current
standard English term is for the not-an-apron dress.)
Heather
--
Heather Rose Jones
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.heatherrosejones.com
LJ:hrj
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