From: The Medieval Review <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: February 20, 2008 9:30:46 AM PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: TMR 08.02.19 Netherton and Owen-Crocker, Medieval Clothing
(Ball)
Netherton, Robin, and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, eds. <i>Medieval Clothing
and Textiles</i>, vol. 2. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006. $42.20.
ISBN: 1843832038, ISBN-13: 9781843832034.
Reviewed by Jennifer L. Ball
Brooklyn College
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unlike many volumes of collected papers stemming from conferences,
<i>Medieval Clothing and Textiles</i> makes no attempt at cohesion;
rather, in this second volume in the journal, it compiles essays that
use a breadth of approaches to the subject of dress and textiles.
This is the forte of this journal and several of the essays can be
used as case studies in methods to be applied to one's own research.
As a vehicle for dress and textile studies, rather than simply a
publication of DISTAFF sessions from the Leeds and Kalamazoo
conferences [1], the quality of papers is notably high and will be of
interest to others beyond medieval historians of textiles and dress.
The eight essays are, with few exceptions, truly interdisciplinary
encompassing the fields of archaeology, paleography, sociology, art
history, literature and economics, and have a broad scope
chronologically (seventh-seventeenth century). Geographically
speaking, however, this collection is limited to Western Europe with
essays about Ireland, England, Italy, France and Germany. Due to the
constraints of the short review, I list the contents here by author
and abbreviated subject, but speak of the articles thematically rather
than writing a complete review of each of the articles. The essays
arranged chronologically are: Whitfield on dress in Irish "Wooing of
Becfhola;" Owen-Crocker on the Bayeux Tapestry; Wright on textiles in
French Romance; Farmer on Paris' textile markets; Jaster on English
sumptuary laws; Leed on Renaissance cleaning techniques of textiles;
Sherrill on fur in the Renaissance; and Nunn-Weinberg on English
embroidered jackets in painted portraits. The journal has a few black
and white illustrations, no doubt an economic decision, and concludes
with some helpful short book reviews and a detailed index; color
illustrations, and a greater number of them, is a needed addition if
funds ever permit.
<i>Medieval Clothing and Textiles</i>, volume 2, will reach
medievalists outside of the field of textiles and dress studies due to
its use of material culture to illuminate broader aspects of medieval
daily life, beyond the making of cloth and wearing of clothes. Monica
Wright's essay, among the strongest in the volume, illustrates the
shift from gift to mercantile exchange and from women's/domestic work
to men's/professional work, through an examination of French romance.
Textiles were repeatedly used in the resolution of conflicts;
characters withhold items they have made or make and give textile
items. Wright concludes that these acts uphold a traditional societal
system in which women are the primary makers of textiles and a profit-
economy had not yet emerged. Textiles play a crucial role in this
body of French literature and point to the larger dialogue about the
professionalization of the cloth-making industry occurring at the time
these romances were written.
Also demonstrating the great economic impact of textiles is Margaret
Rose Jaster's examination of sumptuary laws at the point that they
were rescinded in early seventeenth-century England. A distinct
anxiety about the "impoverishment of the realm" (92) due to the
consumption of foreign apparel and textiles presents itself in
homilies, pamphlets and other writings of the day. The texts the
author discusses are often funny, while the laws themselves conversely
seem like frantic attempts to put out a fire already out of control:
the rage for garments and cloth from abroad. The legislation, repeal,
and subsequent discussion in the various forms of popular literature
can't help but remind one of our (American) fretting the loss of the
automobile industry to outsiders or our current obsession with oil;
textiles were such a major economic force in medieval Europe, as essay
after essay in this volume demonstrates.
Some of the essays have paradigmatic frameworks that we expect: Paris,
noted often as the birthplace of fashion, has a larger textile market
than previously noted by scholars (Farmer essay) and Italian sables
were markers of extreme wealth (Sherrill essay), for example.
Exceptional however, is Drea Leed's fascinating look at the business
of cleaning textiles. An examination of the tips for stain removal in
the fifteenth-century <i>Kunstbuch</i> illuminates value in a highly
original way. The manner in which a velvet or silk is cleaned is a
strong indicator of value; soaking, in the water from boiled peas no
less, is a method for less precious textiles, while targeting spots
(of wagon grease, as one instruction notes) for removal is important
for the most expensive velvets and silks (103-4). Here again, the
interest of the essay to non-textile specialists will be great as it
demonstrates an advanced knowledge of chemistry at the time and points
to a sub-industry of professional cleaning that we might normally
overlook.
Many of the essays in the volume use texts as evidence, as so many in
the field of dress studies must due to the lack of surviving garments.
Niamh Whitfield's comparison of garments described in the Irish story,
"The Wooing of Becfhola," presents a sound methodological approach
that should be read by anyone who reconstructs garments from literary
descriptions. Additionally, the author moves easily between
paleography and archaeology, making the most of limited evidence to
convincingly conclude that the dress described in Becfhola's story is
contemporary to the writing of the tale. I suggest, however, that the
author commission professionally drawn reconstructions for future
work, as the amateur sketch of Becfhola and Flann distracts from the
solid arguments made in the text.
Gale Owen-Crocker's highly original essay on the Bayeux Tapestry also
focuses on text. In this case the design process is imagined through
careful reading of the inscription. She posits a Norman, Latin-
speaking patron telling an English artist the major scenes to be
included and distinguishes other parts of the inscription and
accompanying scenes that were, perhaps, <i>ad hoc</i>. At first
glance the close attention to punctuation, syntax, diction, and the
like seems to have no place in a volume on textiles, but in her
concluding pages, she demonstrates the importance of studying text and
image side by side. Significantly we gain a glimpse into little
understood workshop practices and imagine how patron and artist(s) may
have worked together on this famous embroidery.
In addition to text, some authors use images as evidence for
understanding textiles and dress--Whitfield uses sculpture and metal
objects for comparison with the descriptions of dress to imagine early
Irish clothing and Sherrill mines portraits for representations of the
<i>zibellini</i>, fur stoles, often decorated with jewels, originating
in Italy that became fashionable at the various courts of Western
Europe. It is the final essay by Danielle Nunn-Weinberg, though,
which is most compelling with regard to the use of images as textile
evidence. Through a contextualization of the embroidered jackets worn
by dozens of women in the early seventeenth-century, the author gives
us new readings of English painted portraits of noble women. The
jackets point to the practice of amateur theatre at court, known as
masque; this exclusive hobby, open only to the court favorites,
involved the wearing of costumes in high contrast colors--often dark
embroidery on light ground--with a heavy use of metallic details to
stand out and impress the audience. Here it is also most unfortunate
that we must rely on black and white images because we are forced to
trust the descriptions in her essay, but that is no fault of the
author's of course. Nunn-Weinberg's work is made even more
interesting by the inclusion of a case study of <i>Elizabeth Vernon,
Countess of Southampton</i> (unknown, 1600) in which the subject
critiques her queen through the masque portrait. This reader however,
was left with further questions, especially about the intended
audience for such a portrait.
The deeper contextual reading seen in the Nunn-Weinberg essay is
unfortunately lacking in the article on fur stoles by Sherrill.
Surely more could be said about the context for the social role of
stoles beyond their obvious status as markers of great wealth. The
author leaves the suggestion that they were at one point fertility
symbols or associated with the Annunciation largely unexplored. The
catalogue of representations and references to the stole will
nonetheless be helpful for further study.
Volume 2 of this series will engage anyone interested in the study of
textiles and dress of western medieval Europe; additionally scholars
of economic history, social history, literature and art history will
find articles of interest. However, as a Byzantinist, it is my hope
that future volumes will reach beyond the West; there is no need,
especially when discussing the textile industry that united east and
west through trade and shared material culture, to limit the focus to
Western Europe. In fairness to the editors, this may be due to
submissions received rather than editorial choice; if this is so,
perhaps the journal needs to solicit papers in Byzantine, Islamic and
other medieval studies newsletters. Nevertheless the editors have
kept the level of scholarship admirably high, particularly in the
methods and interdisciplinary approaches used in the present volume,
which bodes well for the future of the journal.
Notes:
1. DISTAFF is Discussion, Interpretation, and Study of Textile Arts,
Fabrics, and Fashion. While many of the papers come from the sessions
at Leeds and Kalamazoo, papers are peer-reviewed by an editorial board
and some are submitted without first having been identified through
the conferences. <i>Medieval Clothing and Textiles</i>, vol. 2, ed.
Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Woodbridge: Boydell Press,
2006), xiii.
