On Nov 18, 2004, at 4:58, Jean Barrett wrote:
While the development of the cotton gin undoubtabley enabled fine cottons to be spun it didn't kill out fine linens quite as immediately as you say. I bought Fine linen DMC threads (150, 200, 300) in the 1960's. Likewise I have fine linen hanks from Harris of Cockermouth which date probably from the 1930's, and Knox's linen was produced until the 1960's I think and I have 150/2, 300/2 reels from them.
In addition to the "crowded environment" for growing flax (which produces longer stalks) and then harvesting the longest ones by hand - a process which is no longer used, in addition to the possible loss of flax strains which tended to produce the longest/strongest strains, in addition to non-viability (finanacially speaking) of producing fine linen, etc, etc - all the reasons mentioned here before - I seem to remember one more. The processing machines themselves.
It might have been mentioned in the same lecture that Clay was talking about (at the IOLI Convention in Bethesda, '99), or I might have read it somewhere - my memory is almost completely gone in some areas - but the essence was that the modern machines which process flax into linen thread "prefer" the stalks to be of a uniform 30cm (ca 1 foot) length; the longer ones get *cut*, instead of being cherished.
Which would, naturally, eliminate the pursuit of growing long stalks - why bother? It would also account for the different look of linen now and, say, 80 yrs ago; "now" has more slubs and more thin/thick rapid changes.
Just as the older lace-making machines (originally made in England, now sold to France, where the best machine-made laces are made still) were capable of reproducing lace which could fool most people, so were the older flax-processing machines closer to the hand-processing (for that matter, look at the early cars, and see how close they are to the horse-carts <g>). So, if a thread producer had an early set-up, he could produce fine thread for as long as the machine worked, and there was a supply of long-stalked flax and a demand for the thread - into the 60ties, as Jean says. Once one of the 3 factors - supply, demand, middleman - broke down, it was pffft..., and "progress" marched in, replacing quality with quantity.
I would, BTW, recommend to anyone who comes to Virginia, to visit the Frontier Culture Museum located in Stunton, VA, despite some bad publicity from the PC Police.
http://www.frontiermuseum.org/
The place is - more or less - a "living skansen". It illustrates the 3 predominant "plies" - Irish, English and German - in the "plait" of Virginia's history. It consists of 3 *working* farms/households, each operating as close to the time of immigration as possible - the buildings have been moved in from their countries of origin, the farmstock strains have been rescued for the purpose, the curators/interpreters hump bull sh (literally <g>) while telling you about the advantages and disadvantages of leaving the old country... My DH sneers, but I find it totally fascinating (and, because it's so much closer to me, more fun that Williamsburg <g>)
But, to come back to the "thread" and the thread... :) The Irish homestead grows flax for home use (which is then hand spun and woven, as it would have been whenever the family immigrated). When I last visited it - late June of '01 (*had to* show the place to a friend from Poland), the "man of the house" was gearing up for flax harvest. Many of the flax stalks were about my height (5ft2in; 62 inches, ca 157cm), some were above my head, some no higher than my waist (all were in a "cramped environment", as the whole "field" is miniature). Naturally, I was *extremely interested* in how he was going to deal with that, and, like all the other curators/interpreters, he responded with relish to genuine interest...
He wasn't going to hunt up the longest stalks one by one, the way they might have been hunted even in his lifetme (late 18th century I think), but he still wasn't going to wade in with an undiscriminate scythe, cutting everthing at the same level (as low as possible). He was gonna take a sickle, and harvest the clumps of longest stalks first - they'd make the finest fabric - for handkerchiefs, childrens' wear, women's underwear, etc. Only then he'd take a scythe to the rest. But, even so, the slightly shaded spot, where the flax was stunted and the stalks short, would be harvested separately - "only good for sacks", he said.
When you're hand spinning - a relatively slow process - the longer the thread is, the fewer the joins which slow the spinner down, so extra-long is prized, both for speed and for the results. And, a human is endlessly "adjustable"; 100 cm in one strand and 150 in another aren't going to throw her off. But a machine works to a pre-set gamut of paradigms and anything "out of the box" is going to confuse it (it's like the Cuisinart, or any other "kitchen robot"; if I cube by hand, I can have a big pile of pieces which *look* the same but aren't. If I use my Cuisinart for the same function, I'll have a small pile of *perfect* cubes, and another - about the same size - of "shavings")
--- Tamara P Duvall http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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