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. -- Cathy Raymond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "Physics is like sex; sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it."--Richard Feynman _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
