Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World

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Velvet was invented in Lucca, Italy; it was woven by creating ﬁ ne loops

sticking up from the fabric. The thread was looped over thin rods, and the

loops were then cut to create a soft fur-like effect. During the 14th century,

velvet became a more common, though still expensive, fabric. Some cheaper

velvets had linen threads mixed into the ground weaving. As velvets im-

proved, some were trimmed with patterns cut into the velvet, and others

had gold threads mixed in. Pure silk velvet remained one of the most aris-

tocratic fabrics.

Northern Europeans were importing silk thread long before they learned

how to weave it. Silk was used in embroidery and in ribbon weaving; ribbons

were used for decoration and for ﬁ nishing the edges of garments.

Cotton, a plant that bears soft ﬁ bers suitable for spinning and weaving,

was native to India. It spread into the Arab lands during the eighth century,

and it was introduced to Muslim Spain around the ninth century. Its ﬁ rst use

in Europe was simply as padding in quilted linen or wool. Quilts were not

made as bed covers; they were used as winter clothing and as padding under

armor for both men and horses.

Italian manufacturers ﬁ rst imported raw cotton from India and Egypt

and then began to grow cotton as well. The Po River Valley area of Northern

Italy became the cotton-manufacturing powerhouse of Europe. Because

Italian cotton was mostly exported, it developed a more regulated, industri-

alized system than Northern Europe’s home-worker system. A mechanized

spinning wheel made better cotton thread, so its use caught on quickly and

improved output. Italy’s cotton mills produced simple, uniform cotton cloth

for mass market, not luxury printed or patterned cotton. It was used for the

same things as linen and was easier to care for.

The 12th-century doublet, introduced in Italy, was made of cotton, and

its manufacture and fashion depended on the cotton industry. It was ﬁ rst an

undergarment and later was worn outside. The doublet became a fashion

statement of tight ﬁ t and bright colors. Other late medieval hats and cloth-

ing accessories, such as veils, wimples, handkerchiefs, and linings, were de-

pendent on the supply of cotton.

Spinning, Weaving, Dyeing, and Fulling

Most medieval wool and ﬂ ax were spun with a drop spindle. The raw ﬁ bers

were tied onto a staff, called a distaff, that held them above the spinner’s head.

As the spinner began to pull and twist a thread, she tied a weighted spindle

onto it. This spindle helped draw down more wool or ﬂ ax as it spun, and it

wound the thread as the spinner twisted it and controlled its thickness. Spin-

ning one direction made it suitable for warp and the other for weft. Nearly

every medieval European woman carried a distaff and spindle with her ev-

erywhere she went. Spinning remained a home craft long after the Middle

Ages ended.

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The spinning wheel came to Europe in the late 13th century. In the earli-

est European form, the spinning wheel had a large wheel that ran a smaller

spindle to wind the spun thread, which was controlled by hand as the spin-

ner fed wool toward the spindle. The quality was much lower; wheel-spun

thread was not as even, and unsightly thick spots alternated with thin, eas-

ily broken stretches. Because it was faster, wheel spinning spread in spite of

weaving guild bans against it. Wheel-spun thread was used as weft, which

did not need to be as strong as the tightly stretched warp.

All weaving consists of a row of long threads that are held tightly and a

loose thread that is passed back and forth, going over and under each thread

by turns. The tightly held long threads are called warp, and they must be

very strong. In the simplest weaving, they are all the same color, perhaps

white. They can also be patterned in stripes. The loose thread that is passed

back and forth is called weft and is usually what creates most patterning. It

can be wound onto a stick or a bobbin. It is simple for a weaver to change

colors by alternating different weft threads. Plaid is created with both a

striped warp and a regular change of color in the weft. The simplest weaving

pattern is called tabby weave; it is the over-and-under weave children can im-

itate with paper, the weave still used for household sheets.

Early looms were vertical. They could only be as high as a weaver’s head

and as wide as a weaver’s arms. The warp was made up of hanging strings

held at the bottom by doughnut-shaped weights, and the weaver used a hed-

dle stick to lift the warp threads. The heddle stick had strings (heddles) that

were attached to alternating warp threads. These threads were allowed to

hang straight down with their weights behind the loom, which was tipped

toward the wall. Those not in heddles were held forward by another rod. As

the heddle stick raised the back threads to the front, or permitted them to

hang straight at the back, two alternate sheds were created. The weft, held

on a shuttle, was passed through the sheds to create the fabric. In Scandina-

via, weavers tended to begin at the top and weave down, while in central Eu-

rope, they began at the bottom and wove upward, tucking the weft threads

tight with a comb. As the vertical loom was improved, its beams were de-

signed to wind the ﬁ nished cloth and expose more warp for weaving.

Horizontal counter-balance looms were introduced in the 12th century.

After they caught on, vertical looms remained in use only for tapestry and

in Scandinavia, where the customs were more conservative and textiles were

not exported. The new looms were as wide as a weaver could reach and twice

as long. The frame of the counter-balance loom was tall, with beams above

the weaver. Two foot pedals operated racks of heddles that moved up and

down, as in a modern loom, using a harness with pulleys above the loom.

Wooden boat shuttles with iron bobbins moved the weft smoothly through

the shed. The weft was packed against the ﬁ nished cloth not with a pick or

comb, but with a large comb called a reed, which ran the width of the loom

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and hung from the frame. The weaver could get a rhythm going with foot

pedals to change the shed, one hand to throw the shuttle through the shed,

and the other hand to swing the reed to pack the new thread into the cloth

as the feet changed the shed again.

On a horizontal loom, the warp was held tight by being wound around a

beam at the front and another beam at the back, both of which could turn.

A long peg went through the end of each beam so it could be lashed tightly

against the loom’s frame to hold the warp taut. Much longer warps could be

dressed on the looms, since the tautness now came from the way the beam

was wound, not from hanging weights. As the fabric was ﬁ nished, the front

beam rolled it up and the back beam unrolled more warp.

The horizontal loom also allowed for more complex warp patterns. More

heddle frames could be added, with more foot pedals. Each frame could

When looms were designed to be horizontal, weaving turned from a simple home

craft into a technological profession. While vertical looms required the weaver to

adjust a heddle stick with her hands, the treadle loom allowed the weaver (now often

a man) to change sheds with his feet. Weaving was twice as fast this way. The

12th-century loom shown here has only two harnesses for the foot pedals to lift, but

soon there were four-harness looms. By the close of the Middle Ages, professional

weavers invested in eight-harness looms and drawlooms. (Trinity College, Cambridge,

UK/The Bridgeman Art Library International)

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carry one warp thread in four or some other pattern. The weaver could cre-

ate twills and diamonds.

More loom improvements came with time. In the 13th century, they made

wider looms operated by two weavers who threw the shuttle to each other.

By the late 14th century, a very complex loom called a drawloom could make

intricately patterned fabric. It had been invented in either China or Syria,

and it was used there for silk. Its introduction to Europe did not come until

the late Middle Ages, and it was conﬁ ned to the cities of Spain and Italy,

where trade with the Arab and Byzantine lands had been greatest. In ad-

dition to its heddle frames, the drawloom had a vertical set of strings that

could lift individual warp threads. They ran up to a frame of pulleys above the

loom and had to be worked by an apprentice. As the weaver wove with hed-

dle frames and shuttles, the boy pulled on groups of strings in a set pattern

to further complicate the sheds. The drawloom could make shields, ﬂ eur-

de-lis, and animal images. Other specialized industrial looms made velvet

and damask.

Dyeing was a skilled profession separate from weaving. Each step of cloth

ﬁ nishing had its own guild of craftsmen. Dyers needed to use both dyes and

mordants, which ﬁ xed the colors so they would not wash out. The cloth was

soaked in a mixture of plant dyes and a mordant, usually alum, and then

laid ﬂ at to dry. With many wool yarns, the dyeing took place before weav-

ing; skeins of spun thread were dyed and then allowed to dry hanging up.

Three native European plants provided the primary colors to dye most

medieval fabrics: woad for blue, madder for red, and weld for yellow. Weld,

woad, and madder are the dyes used to create most tapestry colors. Weld

with woad created green dye, and weld with madder made orange. Blended

all together, they could make brown, even a brown so dark it could pass for

black. Most medieval woolen clothing was dyed using only these three nat-

ural dyes.

Woad destroyed the soil it grew in, but many farmers in Germany, Lom-

bardy, Picardy, and Flanders grew it anyway. They pulped the leaves and

pressed them into balls, and in that form they were sold wholesale. Dyers

ground and fermented the woad to make it into ready dye.

More expensive red dye came from Spain and Portugal. An insect that lives

on the kermes oak can be collected with its eggs, and the eggs are sieved in

vinegar. This red dye was brighter and more expensive in far-off countries

like England, where it only became a standard import in the 12th century.

Jewish traders were primarily responsible for importing kermes dye.

Lichens collected from places as distant as Norway and the Canary Is-

lands provided most purple dye. The dye was not lightfast, and later wool

dyers used blue and kermes red for a more successful deep violet.

Imported dyes were mostly used in the large cloth productions of Italy,

where imported materials were cheapest. The luxury dyes of Florence’s

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Arte di Calimala guild came from dried insects (kermes), a lichen called

orchil, and an East Indian tree called brazilwood. From these, they made

red and violet, as well as other bright, strong, dark colors. Scarlet cloth

was extremely expensive, so it was only worn by princes of the church and

state.

Dyeing traditions changed during the late Middle Ages. White had been

the color of mourning until the 14th century in the Mediterranean coun-

tries, but black became the new custom. Dyeing mills switched to dark col-

ors. The indigo blue of India was a brighter, stronger blue dye, but it was not

at ﬁ rst used outside painting because it did not dissolve into dye vats. Using

notes from Marco Polo, the dyers of Venice learned how to dissolve it.

Fulling was the last process and another distinct craftsmen’s guild. It is a

process of treating the wool to make it into a stronger, thicker cloth. Not all

woven wools were fulled; ﬁ ne worsteds were left alone. For hard daily use,

though, fulling made a denser fabric that was nearly windproof and water-

proof. The resulting fabric was often called broadcloth, and it was an all-

purpose clothing material.

Fullers put the newly woven cloth into a trough ﬁ lled with water, fuller’s

earth, lime, sand, and either urine or wine. In earliest times, they trampled

the cloth in this mixture with their feet. As water mills became more com-

mon, some fullers set up mills so hammers could pound the cloth. The agi-

tation made the wool shrink to about a third of its original size. Then the

cloth was rinsed and stretched tightly on a tenterframe to dry. The tenter-

frame was a rectangular wooden frame with iron tenterhooks evenly spaced

Dyeing was one of the last steps of

cloth manufacture. Here, a dye worker

is stirring either skeins of thread or

woven cloth immersed in the hot dye

vat. The color red, easily and cheaply

made from the native plant madder,

never lost its popularity for clothing

and decoration. (Jupiterimages)

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around it. The cloth was often softened with teasles that raised the ﬁ bers to

create a nap, which might then be trimmed with large shearing.

In the 1200s, the cloth business model passed the same ﬁ bers through

many hands before they came to market. Cloth merchants initially pur-

chased raw wool and sold it temporarily to home workers, who carded and

spun it and sometimes wove it as a family business. The weavers sold the

cloth back to the merchants, who sold it to dyers and fullers, repurchasing it

each time. The cloth was then sold at a fair or market. The cloth merchant

protected his investment by selling it at each stage so he could opt out of

buying it back if the quality was poor or the market was down.

Novelty Cloth

Knitting was not widely used, but it was known by the late Middle Ages.

A single-needle technique called naalebinding was its precursor and had

been used for socks in the Scandinavian countries. Knitting on two needles

was faster. It was probably used to make some close-ﬁ tting caps; a few such

caps dating to the 14th and 15th centuries have been found in France and

Germany. Knitting was also used for gloves in England and on the continent.

It was not used for larger garments.

Felt is a nonwoven material used to make hats, boots, rugs, and objects like

knife sheaths. The ﬁ bers of wool are covered with microscopic hooks. Water,

heat, pressure, and friction cause the hooks to entangle with each other,

shrink, and become impossible to separate. Wool felt can be cut with scis-

sors and will not fray like unfulled woven cloth. By the 14th century, some

hat styles were made of wool felt, and the 15th century’s fashion of tall hats

for men depended on the stiffness of felt. Some hats were made of beaver

fur combined with wool; Chaucer mentions a beaver hat in The Canterbury

Tales.

Famous holy men were known for wearing hair shirts made from an abra-

sive fabric. This fabric was probably woven from goat hair. Goat hair cloth

may also have been favored for some shrouds to wrap the dead. It had the

suggestion of penitence and humility. In goat-breeding regions, better goat

ﬁ bers probably were used for blankets and cloaks.

Tablet weaving was a simple home craft that made decorative bands and

belts. A woman could carry a tablet weaving kit tied to her belt and work on

it whenever she had spare time. A set of wooden tablets with holes in them

was worked into the narrow warp; as the woman turned them, they lifted

various threads to make a pattern. Other small looms made tabby-weave

ribbons.

Tablet weaving was a craft considered noble enough for queens and no-

blewomen to work on, like embroidery. They worked with the most expen-

sive silk threads and created brocade ribbons that they used to decorate

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shawls or wore as girdles. Convents put even more effort into tablet weav-

ing, and some women did it for income.

Tablet weaving and braiding both contributed to making silk strings for

rosary beads. One complex braiding pattern was created by using ﬁ ve or

more strings attached to a ﬁ xed point, which ended in loops for the ﬁ ngers

to hook through and manipulate. Other kinds of plaiting, using up to eight

strands, made wide decorative strips.

The technique for making knotted ﬁ shing nets was applied to silk thread

to make hairnets. Hairnets begin to show up in the pictorial record during

the 13th century, and over time they became more elaborate, with embedded

jewels. Netting required long needles with an open eye at each end that

were wound with thread-like shuttles. The netter looped thread over a foun-

dation rod and, using a small silver rod to keep the hole sizes even, passed the

needle in and out of loops to create a network of knots.

See also: Clothing, Clothing Accessories, Embroidery, Fairs, Hats, Tapestry.