WORLD TEXTILE

The history of the world can be read in textiles; the rise of civilizations and the fall of empires are woven into their warp and weft along with the great adventures of conquest, religion and trade. The greatest highway ever made, the Silk Road, was not for the transportation of gold or armies, but for the trading of the most luxurious and desirable commodity of all, silk textiles.

Study of the traditional textiles of the world reveals at times an amazing diversity of techniques and styles, while at others we can only wonder at the way in which cultures separated by vast distances have developed such similar solutions to problems of design and construction. Sometimes only a limited number of solutions may be possible, but the frequency of similarities in techniques and the choice of motifs and symbols makes one wonder if this is evidence of ancient unrecorded trade routes or if it is the substantiation of Jung’s theory that we have a collective unconscious.

WHAT IS A TEXTILE?

TEXTILE is a flexible material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibers (yarn or thread). Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, hemp, or other materials to produce long strands. Textiles are formed by weaving, knitting, crocheting, knotting , tatting, felting, or braiding. The word “textile” comes from the Latin verb texere, a word which was used by the Romans to mean ‘to weave’, ‘to braid’ or ‘to construct’. It is a fairly versatile word, open to interpretation, which was even used by Livy in the context of building when he wrote of ‘casae ex arundine textae’ (huts built of reeds).

THE HISTORY OF TEXTILES

TEXTILES are made of perishable materials and only survive the millennia when preserved under exceptional circumstances such as the felts discovered buried in the permafrost of Noin Ula in Mongolia which date from around the 4th century BC, or the weavings found in the pre-Columbian tombs preserved by the dry air of the Peruvian coast. However, much has been learned from written sources and even from ancient carvings and artifacts. Egyptian tombs contain paintings of spinning and the weaving of linen while, in the Odyssey, the Greek poet Homer describes how Penelope, the hero’s wife, evaded the attentions of her unwelcome suitors by weaving a large and delicate shroud for her father-in-law, Laertes, a scene illustrated on a 5th-century BC vase. The story of the development of textiles is therefore largely a yarn spun from deduction and conjecture rather than hard evidence. Archeological finds, though, point to a high level of skill and sophistication at an astoundingly early date.

THE FIRST FABRICS

ONE of the most basic needs of mankind is protection from the elements. Early hunters utilized the skins of animals they had killed for food. The excavation of Neolithic sites has yielded evidence that tools were used to scrape the hides clean and that needles made from bone slivers were used to sew them together. The first prestigious garments were probably the skins of rare or dangerous animals worn by daring hunters. In many northern regions, such as amongst the Inuit of the Northern Territories of Canada, skins are still the preferred mode of dress since a satisfactory substitute for the insulation they provide against the cold and damp has never been found.

In some tropical regions, such as Fiji, Samoa and Central Africa, an alternative to leather was acquired by stripping the inner bark off certain trees and beating it until it became soft and flexible. A similar material — felt — was developed by pastoral communities who were inspired by the matted coats of sheep and goats.

As the craft of basket-making became more and more refined, it became feasible, with twining and interlacing, to employ an enormous variety of animal or plant fibers in the construction of flexible fabrics. Experimentation by succeeding generations also saw the development of techniques to make more flexible fibers and the invention of spinning which was used in different parts of the world to make yarn from wool, linen, cotton or silk.

The development of better-quality yarns and further experiments with their manipulation resulted in fixed structures on which warp threads could be stretched out to maintain tension, while a weft thread was painstakingly woven in and out with the fingers. The true loom was developed from this structure with the invention of the heddle, a device that made the process quicker and simpler by raising alternate warps all at once, opening a shed through which the weft could be passed.

THE DECORATION OF TEXTILES

THE evolution of the decoration of textiles followed several unrelated routes. One developed from the textures produced by the actual process of construction and the effect of color variations such as stripes, bars and checks. From these humble beginnings weaving specialists ultimately explored the complexities of tapestry, brocades and supplementary warp or weft patterning.

Another route, that of decoration applied to the surface of a piece of finished cloth, was probably developed from body painting and tattooing, initially employing the same pigments and dyes, and eventually achieved the sophistication of batik, ikat and multi-colored printing.

From the experience of tailoring cloth, patching and mending it, and the need to use every available scrap of material, the sewing skills required for the making of appliqué, quilting and patchwork were developed, while the decorative possibilities of the stitches themselves led to the refined art of embroidery.

SPINNING A YARN

THROUGH the history of textiles run tales of magic, romance and industrial espionage. The very act of telling a story is known as ‘spinning a yarn’.

The gods themselves are the greatest exponents of the textile arts. Athene, goddess of wisdom, was challenged to a weaving competition by the conceited Arachne. The latter, of course, lost and for her presumption was turned into a spider to spin and weave forever. In Scandinavia parents told their children that the stars we now know as Orion’s belt represented the distaff with which Frigga, the wife of Odin, spun the clouds.

Penelope is not the only heroine whose fate was raveled up in her textile skills. Vassilisa the Beautiful, a Russian peasant girl, eventually married the Tsar who was impressed by her needlework, and many a princess or lazy girl has needed the assistance of a goblin or spirit such as Tom Tit Tot or Rumpelstiltskin to weave prodigious quantities of yarn or even straw into gold.

As for industrial espionage, the secret of silk, so one story tells, was smuggled out of China by a princess who hid silkworms in her elaborate coiffure, while the arcane knowledge of Flemish weavers was stolen in the 14th century by an English cat burglar who climbed on the roof of a weaving shed in Bruges.

TRADITIONAL TEXTILES

THE availability of a particular material has led to localized specialization in specific techniques. When this is combined with the dictates of social values and the influence of climate and lifestyle, a community’s textiles develop distinctive traditional characteristics. A cut-pile raffia cloth from the Congo (formerly Zaire) bears little resemblance to a silk brocade sari from Benares, India, but each epitomizes the culture that has produced it. Tradition is not static. It is a living thing that evolves gradually with all the influences on a community — contact with outsiders, prosperity or hardship, climatic change. Within a community, rural or urban, a sense of identity and belonging is marked by the clothes that people wear and the textiles they make. Tradition does not exert a strangle hold, but provides a foundation on which a fertile imagination may build. Within this framework the opportunity to display one’s wealth or status through the use of expensive materials such as silk and metal thread, or the construction of outfits requiring time-consuming weaving or embroidery such as the ‘eight knives’ robes commissioned by Yoruba men in Nigeria exists. As does the chance to show one’s marital status, which is the case in the Andes where unmarried men advertise their availability to potential wives through the patterns knitted into their caps. All over the world a major part of a girl’s youth has traditionally been spent sewing a trousseau or dowry for her bottom drawer in preparation for the day she begins a new life in her own home as a married woman.

In many places, whatever the religious inclination, garments are embellished with magical designs to protect the wearer from evil spirits and accidents or to attract good luck and the protection of supernatural powers.

Much time and expense is lavished on textiles for no better reason than vanity and the love of beauty. The most sublime outlet for innovation must surely be the clothing lovingly embroidered by devoted mothers for their children such as the sparkling mirrorwork jackets embroidered by women in Gujarat, India, and Sind, Pakistan.

It could be argued that the manufacture of traditional objects by hand gives a very real sense of identity and belonging, something so often lacking in the depersonalized world of mass-production. Communities grow and change. Tradition and textiles evolve. It is only when a way of life ceases to be viable and a community dies that tradition dies out. There have been many instances in the past of attempts to subjugate cultural groups by banning their traditional dress. Such was the case after the defeat of the Jacobite army at Culloden, Scotland, in 1746 when an Act of Parliament was passed banning the wearing of tartan on pain of transportation for seven years. At the beginning of the 20th century Kemal Atatürk, the first President of modern Turkey, banned the wearing of the fez as part of his plan to drag Turkey into the modern world. During the Cultural Revolution (1966—68) the Chinese government banned the wearing of the traditional costumes by ethnic minorities such as the Tibetans. However, even today, many communities around the world retain their traditional costume as a living symbol of their cultural identity.

MATERIALS

The Earth has so many diverse regions, such climatic, topographic and biological variety that many different materials have been exploited and methods have evolved to process them. Different regions are home to different flora and fauna, sheep require grazing, silk worms need warmth, raffia palms only thrive in the tropics. For millennia, the only materials that could be utilized were those that were locally available and specialized expertise was developed in the exploitation of specific resources. Over the centuries the evolution of the global market and the establishment of trade routes have made the same materials available at a price to everyone who inhabits this planet.

LUXURY

MATERIALS that are not easily obtained, because they are difficult to grow or must be acquired through trade, become desirable as a sign of wealth and status. Specialized, often city based, ‘luxury’ crafts have evolved to process these materials, frequently to a high level of sophistication.

RELIGION

RELIGION has been another powerful influence on the use of certain materials. In Hindu and Buddhist cultures the orthodox shun the use of leather and other byproducts of the slaughter of animals, while Muslim men are traditionally forbidden to wear silk next to their skin. Paradoxically, this led to the invention of Mashru, a silk textile woven in satin weave with a cotton weft, that lies next to the skin. Mashru means ‘permitted’ in Arabic.

The other side of the coin is that religious ceremony, particularly in the Christian church, has always been enhanced with fine embroidery and expensive materials. For all the major creeds, workshops, specializing in many of the textile crafts, have grown up to supply the market.

MODERN MATERIALS

Industrialization and new technology have led to the development of many cheap synthetic materials which have often supplemented or replaced natural fibers.

Although ‘synthetic’ and ‘traditional’ are not harmonious terms, in many places manmade fibers have been adopted enthusiastically into folk textiles. In West Africa, the Yoruba of Nigeria have created dazzling effects by weaving lurex into their cloth and in Pakistan it is possible to find embroidered blouses of which the main feature is couched cellophane.

SKIN AND HIDE

SINCE prehistoric times, the skins of small animals and the hides of large ones have provided a though, but flexible, material suitable for making clothes and a wide range of useful equipment.

Rawhide

FRESH skin begins to rot very quickly and must be cured by drying or salting, all the flesh having first been scraped away. This produces a strong, but inflexible, material called rawhide. When wet, rawhide can be bent and moulded and then it becomes stiff and hard when left to dry. The Plains Indians of North America, who pursued a nomadic lifestyle largely dependent on the herds of buffalo, used rawhide to make large envelopes or parfleches for transporting food and belongings, and as shields for battle and frames for saddles.

Leather

To produce the flexible and versatile material we call leather, a longer process called tanning is necessary. After the flesh and hair have been scraped away and the curing completed, the skin or hide is either smoked, rubbed with animal or fish oils, or immersed in a solution of vegetable matter or chemicals. In much of the world this is traditionally carried out in pits. Some solutions, such as that of oak bark, require immersion for as long as a year. Finally, the leather is rinsed, dried and oiled to make it waterproof.

Uses

FATHER may be dyed, tooled, cut, moulded or stitched to provide a wide range of strong, hard-wearing items including shoes, belts, bags and protective clothing. For centuries, the leather work of Morocco, using hide transported across the Sahara from Sokoto in Nigeria, has been particularly admired for its quality, suppleness and craftsmanship.

WOOL HAIR

THE hairy coats of many wild animals provided our ancestors with fibers that could be manipulated in a number of ways to create textiles. Clothes made of wool were worn in Sumerian at least 4,000 years ago. In most parts of the world one species, or sometimes more, has been domesticated and bred selectively to produce high-quality wool or hair — for instance, sheep and goats in Europe, Africa and Asia, camels in Central Asia, and alpaca and vicuna in South America. The Salish people of the American North-West coast even kept packs of small, white-haired dogs, probably Pomeranians, for their wool. The most widely reared animal is the sheep and the finest wool is cashmere, which is actually made from the soft chest hairs of Himalayan goats

The properties of wool and hair

ANIMALS have hair or fleece to create an insulating layer to conserve their body heat and to repel rain. Woolen textiles retain these properties and are therefore greatly valued in cold regions. Wool also keeps heat out and is widely used by desert peoples for tents and clothing. Each individual hair is covered in tiny scales which not only repel moisture, but also cause the fibers to mat together, giving greater strength and density. These scales impart a lustrous appearance. Natural oils, such as lanolin, are secreted from glands near the hair follicles. Clothing made up without losing this greasiness remains to some extent waterproof and is very practical for sailors and fishermen. The pullovers of the Aran Islands, off the West coast of Ireland, and Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands, retain a distinctive oily smell.

Finally, wool has a wavy quality called crimp which causes the fibers to wrap around each other during spinning, thus making a stronger yarn. The springiness of the crimp also means that woolen clothes keep their shape well.

FELT

ALTHOUGH the oldest known felt textiles, those discovered at the Scythian burial site of Pazyryk in Siberia, can only be dated to about 500 BC, it seems likely that felt was the first wool fabric used by mankind. Wool felts unaided — the scaly surface of the fibers ensures that damp wool quickly becomes matted and irreversibly tangled even while still on an animal’s back. In spring, wild sheep molt and shed lumps o matted fleece. For our ancestors to have observed this and then to have tried to induce the effect artificially would have been but a small innovative step.

Traditional felt making

IN Central Asia, where felt making has an ancient history, felt has been made in the same way for many generations. The sheep are washed in a river and shorn and the resulting fleece is then beaten with sticks to remove grit and burrs — spiny seed heads or any unwanted particles of vegetable matter. To separate the fibers further, the wool may then be combed or carded and if colored felt is required, the wool may be dyed at this point. Next, the wool is spread evenly on a reed mat that has been sprinkled with soapy water and then the wool is sprinkled with hot water, rolled up inside the reed mat and tied up into a bundle. This is rolled backwards and forwards for several hours, usually under the forearms of a group of kneeling women. The result, when the bundle has been unwrapped and dried, is a densely intermeshed fabric that can be cut, stitched or molded.

Uses

FELT, in a variety of thickness, is used in Europe, Asia, North Africa and South America in the construction of warm boots, hats, coats, bags, rugs and coverings for the tents, yurts or gears in which they live.

WOOLLEN YARN

To convert wool fibers into a form that can be manipulated more easily they must be spun into yarn. First the wool needs to be carded or combed to remove impurities, disentangle the fibers and align them in one direct

Carding

THE Romans are credited with the invention of carding. By mounting the prickly heads of teasels on a wooden cross called a Cardus (Latin for thistle) they were able to brush or tease the fibers into alignment. This eventually evolved into a pair of wooden blocks with rows of bent wire teeth set into a leather pad on each surface. A small amount of wool is carefully stroked between them until all the fibers are parallel. It is then removed and gathered into loose bundle, called a rolag, ready for spinning.

Combing

By combing wool from a longer haired sheep with long-tined combs, longer, better-separated fibers are produced that are used to weave smooth-surfaced worsted cloth.

Spinning

THE simplest way to twist wool into Strands is to roll it between the fingers, but a spindle is employed to achieve greater uniformity and length. The spindle is basically a stick with a weight, or whorl, at the bottom. Fibers are drawn out from the rolag, which is sometimes attached to a distaff, and fastened to the top of the spindle which is then set spinning either freely suspended in the air or with its tip on the ground. The spinning twists the fibers together into yarn. As the spun yarn gets longer it is wound around the spindle and more fibers are drawn out from the rolag. A spindle spun clockwise will produce a Z twist and spun anti-clockwise it will produce an S twist. The spinning wheel is merely a more mechanized method of achieving a consistent yarn.

Uses

As yarn, wool can easily be knotted, twined or interlaced into a diverse range of warm, flexible textiles suitable for everyday wear in cooler climates such as Northern Europe and the high altitudes of the Andes or the Atlas Mountains of North Africa.

COTTON

COTTON is obtained from the hairy fibers surrounding the seed-head of a semitropical plant of the genus Gossypium. It can be spun into a strong, fine thread or yarn that is ideal for even weaving and so has become one of the most popular and widely used of all textile materials, although garments made from it are most suitable for warmer climates. The oldest known cotton yarn was produced in Mohenjo-Daro in Pakistan 3000 years ago.

Processing cotton

WHEN the fluffy cotton seed-heads or bolls open they are plucked and ginned. Ginning is the removal of the seeds by rolling the bolls under an iron or wooden rod or by squeezing them through a special mangle called a cotton gin. Then the fibers are untangled and fluffed up into a loose mass by beating them with sticks or by plucking the string of a bow against them. Finally, the mass is gathered into a rolag and spun, with spindle or wheel, into yarn or thread.

 Uses

BECAUSE of its strength, smoothness and fineness, cotton is excellent for making densely woven, hard-wearing rugs and cloth. Calico, for example, is a sturdy, unbleached cotton fabric named after Calicut, a town on the Indian Malabar coast, where it was originally woven. On the other hand, this strength and fineness facilitate the weaving of delicate, loosely woven fabrics such as muslin which originally came from Mosu] in Iraq.

SILK

FOR generations, the secrets of silk manufacture, shrouded in myth and mystery, were known only to the Chinese. The desire for this most fabulous of fabrics led to the establishment of the greatest trade route the world has ever known — the Silk Road — which stretched from Lanzhou in China to Rome in Italy, where silk togas cost their weight in gold. Legends tell how in the 6th century AD two monks smuggled the cocoons of a few silkworms to Byzantium in hollowed-out walking sticks and so brought the knowledge of sericulture, the rearing of silkworms, to the West.

Sericulture

THE finest silk is made by the caterpillar of the silk moth, Bombyx mori, which only feeds on the leaves of the white mulberry tree, Murus alba. As it is a delicate creature, sensitive to noise and draughts, it is impossible to rear on a large scale and so a cottage industry grew up which carefully nurtures the greedy grubs until they reach three to four inches long and spin themselves a cocoon. The cocoon is dried in the sun to kill the pupa inside before it can become a moth and damage the filament by eating its way out.

Reeling silk thread

REELING silk is a specialist’s job. The cocoons are thrown into a cauldron of boiling water to soften the gum that binds the filaments together. With great care several filaments at a time are reeled onto a bobbin to make one long, smooth thread. The more filaments that are wound together, the thicker the thread will be and therefore the heavier the cloth woven from it. The finest shawls are woven from thread made by reeling together the filaments of only four cocoons.

Floss silk and embroidery threads are spun using damaged and inferior filaments. Wild silk is collected in China, Eastern India and Africa from the cocoons of uncultivated Antiheroes moths, but it yields a coarser thread. The Ashanti people of Ghana, among others, acquire their silk threads by unraveling silk textiles imported from Europe.

Uses

SILK is highly prized as the raw material O of luxury fabrics since it is soft and has a beautiful sheen. It is easy to dye, has surprisingly good insulating properties and is strong enough to have been used in the manufacture of parachutes.

BARK

ONE of the oldest methods of obtaining clothing without weaving cloth on a loom was to make it from the inner bark of certain trees. This method was fairly widespread, and is still found in well-wooded areas in Africa, South-East Asia and Polynesia

Bark cloth

IN Indonesia and Polynesia, the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree, Broussonetia papyrifera, is used to make cloth, while in Central Africa the preferred source is a species of fig tree, Ficus natalensis. In Central Africa a sheet of bark is removed from the tree, steamed to soften it and then placed over a log and beaten with grooved wooden mallets until the fibers become felted together. The fibers lie longitudinally and beating causes the fabric to stretch width ways, resulting in a large sheet of cloth.

In Tonga tapa cloth is made by stripping a whole sapling of its outer bark, soaking it in seawater for about two weeks and then stripping off the inner bark. This is cut into thin strips which are then beaten against a flattened log with a hardwood beater. This process felts the bark, giving it strength and flexibility, and more than doubles its width. The strips are then pasted together with arrowroot to form a very large cloth and painted or stenciled with the sap of certain trees, which stains them black or brown.

The bark of the fig tree oxidizes to the rich reddish brown typical of African bark cloth, while the tapa cloth made from the paper mulberry remains off white.

Bark fiber

ON the American North-West coast the Tlingit and Kwakiutl wove blankets from the shredded bark of the red cedar. The Ainu of Hokkaido, Japan, traditionally wear garments woven from the thin bark of the atsui tree or of elm-bark fiber.

Uses

BARK cloth was once common day-today wear, but its use has largely been superseded by cotton except for ritual and ceremonial use. In Fiji, the creamy ground of tapa cloth is stenciled with bold floral and geometric shapes in brown and black.

LINEN

BAST fibers are obtained from the stalks of certain dicotyledonous plants. Th supreme example of a best fiber is linen, which is made from the stems of the flax plant, Linum usitatissimum. A shirt-like garment (c. 2800 BC) from the Egyptian Early Dynastic period is the oldest surviving specimen of linen cloth.

Processing flax

FIRST the seeds are removed by rippling or pulling the stems through coarse comb. The stems are soaked in water so that the bast fibers can be separated easily from woody parts. This is called retting. Then the stems are broken by beating or crushing them in a hinged wooden device called a brake. Finally, the stems are tapped and stroked to free the bast fibers from the unwanted woody portions and combed through a hackle with iron teeth. The end product is a fine fiber that can be spun into tough thread or yarn.

Uses

SINCE Ancient Egyptian times linen cloth has been used for making fine-quality clothing worn by the wealthy or by the general populace on special occasions. It is a popular base for needlework and to this day, although cotton has replaced it for Daily shirts and blouses are preferred costume for weddings in Eastern Europe. The terms “bed linen” and ”table linen” are still in common usage, although most sheets and tablecloths are now made from cheaper materials.

OTHER BAST FIBRES

MANY other plants are prepared in much the same way as linen, although the bast fibers they yield are generally much coarser and more suitable for finger weaving than loom weaving.

In West Africa a large number of plants of the genus Hibiscus are used, notably Urena lobata and Sida rhombifolia. In Borneo the lemba plant, Curculigo latifolia, which grows wild, is harvested for its fibers. The Indian province of West Bengal has an economy largely based on the processing of jute, Corchorus capsularis and C. olitorius. Various members of the nettle family, genus Urticaceae, have been exploited in Asia and North America including ramie, Boehmeria nivea, a native of China and the East Indies.

The milkweed, genus Asclepia, was widely used by the indigenous peoples of North America. The plant most extensively cultivated for its bast fibers must be hemp, Cannabis indica, which has been grown in Asia, Europe, Africa and North America.

Similar fibers

IN the Philippines the abaca palm, Musa textiles, a small banana-like plant, provides tough, silky fibers used in the weaving of warp ikat.

Uses

MOST bast fibers are used in the manufacture of matting, netting, robe and string. Strong bags, belts and burden straps constructed from bast twine are also widespread. Canvas woven from hmp and linen is a tough material that can be made up into bags, tarpaulins, tents, sailcloth are much valued in South-East Asia as they keep their pleats much longer than skirts made cotton.

RAPHIA AND LEAF FIBRES

RAPHIA, or raffia, is a grassy fiber extracted from the leaves of a palm tree, Raphia ma or R. taedigera, that grows extensively round the fringes of the tropical forests of Central and West Africa and on the island of Madagascar. The mature leaves can grow as long as fifty feet (15.25 meters), but only the young leaflets are used.

Preparing raphia

THE leaflets are cut from the palm before they reach six feet (1.8 meters) in length. The soft tissues of the underside of the leaf are stripped away with the edge of a knife or peeled off by hand to leave behind the upper epidermis. These translucent fibers are tied in hanks and dried in the sun. Finally, each fiber is split lengthways with the fingers, a comb or a snail shell to produce a silky strand three to four feet (90 cm—120 cm) long.

Uses of raphia

RAPHIA is most familiar in Europe and North America as a grassy string used by gardeners, but in fact it is used to make some silky, even luxurious, textiles. Most raphia textiles, like those of the Congo (formerly Zaire) and the Cöte d’Ivoire, are smaller than four feet by three feet (120 cm x 90 cm) as their size is limited by the length of a raphia strand, although dance skirts are made by sewing several woven pieces into a long strip. The Kuba of the Kasai River area of the Congo (formerly Zaire) make distinctive velvety textiles using embroidery and cut pile. In Madagascar raphia fibers are twisted together to make a yarn long enough to weave on a loom, while in Nigeria lengths are sometimes simply knotted together.

Other leaf fibers

ON the Tanimbar Islands, warp-ikat cloths are woven from fibers obtained from the lontar palm, Borassus fiabelliformis, and in other parts of Indonesia threads are obtained from Sago and Pandanus palms. In the south-west region of North America the fibers of the yucca, Yucca aloifolia, were once used in the making of sandals and baskets, while another New World plant, Agave sisalana, was introduced to the Canary Islands by the Spanish for the manufacture of sisal and its use has since spread to many other tropical parts of the world.

References:

World Textile – A Visual Guide to Traditional Techniques, John Gillow, Bryan Sentance