I was asked for some information on kinds of cloth available in the early 17^th century. This information is going to the interpreters who portray the Plymouth colonists in the 1627 English Village and on Mayflower II. As I was putting it together, I thought it might be interesting to you, too.

Kinds of linen cloth available in the early 17^th century.

Unless noted, the following information comes from The Great ReClothing of Rural England: Petty Chapmen and their Wares in the Seventeenth Century, Margaret Spufford. PLDL = Plain Dealing Linnen-Draper, published in 1696 and quoted in Spufford’s book. The Plain Dealing Linnen-Draper listed different types of linen and cotton cloth and described the common uses for each. *Please note that the PDLD, while a wealth of information, was not published until 70 years after the date represented in the 1627 English Village. [12 p (pence) = 1 s (shilling); 20s = 1Ł]

This is not an exhaustive list.

Holland: sheets for better people; shirts/shifts. This was fine, bleached linen. I believe the white linen the Colonial Wardrobe Department uses for shirts and smocks is similar to Holland.

1628 – the probate inventory of John Uttinge, chapman, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, lists Holland at 18p, 20p, 21p and 22p. PDLD recommends Holland yard-wide for shirts & shifts for most; ell*-wide for the same for large women; ½ ell-wide for children.

Cambric/lawn. This is fine bleached linen, usually used for collars and cuffs.

1605 In one of the dialogues in The French Garden cambric is offered for sale at 20s/ell and is bargained down to 16s/ell.

Canvas – thick and heavy. Could be made of linen (product of flax plant) or hemp (whose Latin name, cannabis, is the origin for the name of this cloth). In 1636 a kind of yellow canvas made in England was used by the overseers of the poor to make sheets for a deserving man. In 1696 the PDLD said canvas would last 11-12 years in constant wear.

Linsey-woolsey – sometimes called a “union cloth” because it is a union of 2 different fibers. The warp is linen, the weft, wool.

Osenbridge/osnabrucks – from Germany, PDLD recommends it for shirts and sheets for the humble, and says that 3 breadths make a sheet which would last more than 6 years. Coarse grey osenbridge sold for 6-8p/yard.

Fustian – linen warp with cotton weft, another union cloth. This fabric was brushed or rowed to raise the nap, and then either singed to burn off the fuzz, leaving a smooth cloth, or shorn (cut) to trim the nap. Uttinge’s 1628 inventory listed fustian at 14p/yard; white cut fustian at 13 or 14p/yard; black & white cut at 12p/yard.

Callico – cotton, most likely plain, originally imported from Calcutta (hence the name). Uttinge’s inventory lists it at 11p or 15p/yard.

Diaper – linen woven in an all-over diamond pattern; can be fine or coarse, used for table linens (tablecloths, napkins, towels). There is precious little information about 17^th-century hygiene, including what was used for diapering babies. It seems that in the early 17^th century, old, worn-out linen was used for baby diapers (nappies) as described in the following rare quote:

“Dear father, . . . that you will speak to my lady to send me some clouts (cloths) and I shall think myself much bound to her for she promised me some when I was with child of my first but I was so well provided that I thought to reserve them till I had need of them, which is now, for I have had so many children that they have worn through all my things and therefore I must try my friends again for I trust that you have some old shirts in a corner for me or some old things . . .”

Lettice Gawdy to her father, Sir Robert Knowles, in Weston.

Quoted in Women’s Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England: A Sourcebook edited by Patricia Crawford & Laura Gowing, London: Routledge, 1999, pp101-2.

The above letter is undated, but the writer was dead by 1630. She sounds overwhelmed.

According to the PDLD a cloth called Hamburg sleasy diaper which was selling for 7p/yard was highly regarded for softness and therefore used for baby diapers. Spufford has a footnote to this information: “Dr. Margeret Pelling, of the Wellcome Unit of the History of Medicine, tells me that very little indeed is known about this subject, and that there also seems to be a gap in the 17^th-century secondary literature.”

Mary Ring’s 1633 inventory lists a diaper tablecloth at 5s. (Mary Ring arrived in Plymouth County in 1629.)

*In the early 17^th century in England an ell = 45”. A Flemish ell was only ¾ of an English yard (therefore 27”). This was confusing to contemporaries, too.

“An undated note written by an anxious clerk in the office of the Great Wardrobe during the early years of Elizabeth I’s reign makes this very plain:

‘Memorandum that every Flemish ell is iij quarters of a yarde sterling, so that iiij elles Flemyshe is iij yards sterling, then viij [elles] makith vj yards …’” and it goes on and on, the poor confused thing. This is quoted at length in Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion: The cut and construction of clothes for men and women c.1560-1620, p.124.

Tonight I have another reading suggestion.

Epstein, Kathleen. An Anonymous Woman Her Work Wrought in the 17^th Century. Curious Works Press, Austin: 1992.

This is one of my very favorite embroidery books. It’s a gem, packed with historical background and excellent how-to instructions. Sadly, it is also out of print.

The whole little book (52 pages) is an analysis of a 17^th-century band sampler in the author’s collection. The patterns are stitched in Spanish stitch (also known as double-running or Holbein stitch) and variations on cross stitch, with some detached buttonhole fillings. There are a few color plates, but mostly the illustrations are line drawings and black-and-white photos. The notes on materials, both the originals and modern substitutions, are valuable.

The stitch diagrams and instructions are probably the best part; if you’re interested in Spanish stitch patterns, you’ll want to dig up a copy. Even if you’re not, it is well worth seeking out. Maybe if there’s enough demand it will even be brought back into print.

By the way, Kathleen Epstein is the same person as Kathleen Staples, frequent contributor to several embroidery journals, and one of my favorite writers on the subject of historical embroidery; I reviewed another volume of hers here.

It’s been pretty hot and humid here in southeastern Massachusetts, and it feels like everything has sloooowed down accordingly. As a consequence, there isn’t a great deal to report.

The frames are slumbering quietly behind the office door, each one neatly encased in its canvas bag.

On the way from England is some special “sparkle” thread. This sort of silk was used extensively on the jackets and other embroidered items in the early 1600s, but has been unavailable for decades, if not centuries. Tricia, armed with her formidable powers of persuasion and the fact that, if developed, we’d be instantly buying enough to make it worthwhile to produce, convinced one of the Artisan Manufacturers she mentioned yesterday to bring it back into production. I hope I’ve piqued your curiosity. That’s all I’ll say here, except that if the customs agents are benevolent the thread will be debuting during the August stitching session. I know Tricia is planning a blog entry describing the research, development and testing process, along with some photos.

I mentioned the log sheets that Tricia created to enable us track the exact amount of time spent and thread used for each motif. The other day Tricia whipped them out and did a quick bit of math to figure out how many stitching hours our June session yielded, and what sort of pace that worked out to.

We’ve decided to add two small sessions, one in November and another in early December, intimate gatherings, 6 stitchers maximum. Are you interested? We can set the dates to be most convenient to those who are able to come. Email me with your availability.

Here’s Tricia:

This project has come together in a way none of us could have imagined. What is amazing is that if we can dream it – the way becomes clear. Well, we have some big dreams, we will outline some of them and how you can help them to come true over the next few months. One of our dreams is that this project can be used to preserve what is a rapidly disappearing art. In fact, we will call it an endangered species. What do I mean by that?Well, for an art form to survive it must be transferred from person to person and also be well documented for others to study and learn. This is obvious to us all. But we can’t only teach others the embroidery skills, but the materials used to perform the art form have to exist. One thing that I have learned well is that without the right materials, certain stitches can not be made because the stiffness/limpness of the thread prevents it from being formed. This means that the manufacturers that make these materials must have a healthy business and be able to bring on employees that can learn the art to continue the firm once they retire. When we embarked on this project I felt the time was ripe. There are a number of the essential materials which are being used on this project that are on the edge of extinction. We might be just in time to prevent it.

As a consumer culture, we have been trained to expect cheaper products and large corporations with anonymous workers in foreign countries. This is the farthest from the case in the embroidery business. Most businesses that produce materials, especially those that I will call ‘high end’, are companies of three or less people. Shockingly, many of the major brands of threads you use come from family-owned businesses with less than 15 employees. The embroidery business has not been strong for awhile and these manufacturers don’t have an obvious transition plan for when their owners decide to retire.

As I teach across the country, I have tried to explain the situation of many of these businesses. I like to call them Artisan Manufacturers, as they truly use the knowledge from the past – usually from an unbroken chain of family going back in some cases for hundreds of years. Their unique understanding of how the threads, fabrics, and needles are made is something that must be preserved for future generations.

When making our choices of materials to use on this project, we not only looked for those which most closely replicated those of the time period, but gave preference to Artisan Manufacturers. Their knowledge base has been indispensable in reproducing new threads. But we also want to create awareness of their techniques and compare them to the materials of the past. Future blog entries will examine these Artisan Manufacturers and their connections to the past. We hope that it will educate our blog readers and you will lend your support to saving our embroidery heritage.

Tricia

Here’s Tricia:

I had to get these pictures up on the blog as it just shows the magic of doing this project. Here we see the last day of session 1 after moving back to the Wardrobe department. One of our intrepid stitchers, Carrie, is working away and one of the interpreters marched in to do a little work after her shift in the village. The meeting of the old and new. I didn’t get a picture of her making copies at the Xerox (so funny), but it is always fun when the interpreters walk in and can finally speak in our current century. Being able to share the project back and forth puts you in a bit of a time machine! That is the magic of living history.

Now a bit about our stitchers. The young lady in this picture is Carrie Midura. She runs a business in making historically accurate clothing for re-enactors (www.cherrydawson.com). I found her profession so interesting. Being a professional – Carrie embroidered like a woman on fire and made wonderful progress all week. As a young embroiderer myself, I was really happy to look around the room and find many of the women there in their early 30’s. As we are hoping that this knowledge base won’t die, I was thrilled to find many who were working at a high level of skill and were interested in being involved. Now we have to pass it along to our younger friends.

Tricia