Yes! That was from Drea's site. By the way, I'm not saying that colored
linen should be used for outer layers of outer garments (but I do, because I
can look at a picture of fire and get over-heated) but rather that colored
linen can be reasonably documented as a _part_ of an outer garment.
A few more notes, some of which rely on translations by Katherine Barich:
There's also at least one extant blue linen lining, Queen Margareta's dress
if I remember aright. Yep, here it is:
Blue hip-length linen torso lining dated to early 15th century: Drottning
Margaretas gyllen kjortel i Uppsala Domkyrka (The Golden Gown of Queen
Margareta in Uppsala Cathedral). Geijer, Agners, Anne Marie Franzen,
Margareta Nockert. Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien 1994
(1st print 1985).
and also:
Black, waxed full linen lining of a Burgundian man's coat (mid 15thc),
Textile Conservation. Flury-Lemberg, Mechthild. Schriften Der
Abegg-Stiftung, Bern, 1988. pp. 156-157.
The 'Textiler Hausrat' by Jutta Zander-Seidel has inventories that
reference (colored?) linens used in garments (sorry, my notes on this one
aren't clear enough for me to understand them). TH certainly includes a
reference to a black linen lining in 16thC Nuremberg, and the book includes
a ton of excellent fabric terminology stuff, such as: 'Gugler' is a term for
a type of linen used in clothing that could be sold either unfinished or
dyed. A linen version of taffeta was available in 1582, as seen in a 1582
inventory of a newcastle merchant: "viii yards lennen taffety 12/." Damasks
and velvets intended to imitate more expensive fabrics were also made with
linen, and therefore would have almost certainly been dyed. TH (or possibly
'Das Nuernberger Kunstbuch,' below--unclear notes again) also has recipes
for dyeing linen red, green, yellow, and brown.
'Das Nuernberger Kunstbuch,' 2nd half of 15th C, has another recipe for dyed
linen, but I don't have a word for word translation of it--the key phrase at
the end of the recipe is "vnd du mach leines oder wulleins also verben"
which, not word for word, means "this is how you dye linen or wool." The
Vision of Piers Plowman, passus 1 (B-text, written c 1376), mentions linen
clothing: "1.003: A lovely lady of leere in lynnen yclothed" but of course
there could be symbolic reasons for that one. According to someone who's
read them (not me) the Rules of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem specify a
habit of black linen for Hospitaller nuns in Jerusalem in the 12thC.
From natural dyers in general: Linen takes tannin-based dyes well, but not
ones that require another mordant. So, colors achievable with tannin-based
dyes, such as yellows, browns, and almost-blacks, would all be reasonable
colors.
I once heard a scholar refer to legal restrictions on linen dyers in
medieval Germany (something like not being allowed to dump their dyebaths
in the local river), but I'd like to get a better citation before I take
on faith that this wasn't a misreading of a restriction that mentioned
both linen processors and dyers in the same ordinance, since both
procedures do nasty things to water supplies.
Textiler Hausrat would be a good place to check for this, if you can find a
helpful translator.
-E House
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