Many cities, not just the Italian ones used color coded selvages.. and
there were cases of other cities counterfeiting them. I believe I read
about these in various economic history books studying the wool trade,
probably Carus-Wilson or Bridbury. Lead cloth seals were also used to mark
the origin of the textiles.
Lead cloth seals were used up to modern times. I got a bolt of cotton the
other year with one on it!
I know of no cases of mixing fibers in the thread in Medieval (or earlier)
Europe (with the possible exception of dog/wool blends in the Greenland
finds). Many cases of mixing threads in a cloth however (some quite
famous): silk warp/cotton weft (mulham), linen warp/cotton weft (fustian),
linen/woolen (linsey-woolsey) and silk/woolen come to mind.
Beth
At 12:38 PM 12/11/2006, you wrote:
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 18:25:12 +0000
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [h-cost] Re: striped skirt
Yes, there were laws, but IIRC, the purpose was to keep unscrupulous
weavers and merchants from selling cloth at a higher cost just because
they could say it was "woven with "blank". They'd just leave out the
'percentage' that "blank". Just like the other guilds, they kept a close
watch on their members, for fraud. I think that there might some examples
of guild members being publicly punished, such as bakers, and other such
folks.
Queen Elizabeth, at the urging of different guilds, to do some
proclamations, but nothing specific comes to mind. Drat!
I seem to remember reading somewhere that one of the Italian city-state
guilds had even instigated the use of color coding the selvedges, to keep
track.
I'm away from my books, so don't can't verify right now. And my memory
may be playing me false! Anyone who can help with those vague memories or
let me know that my memory might be out of kilter, please post!
Well, back to work...
Elena/Gia
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