BA1 CLASS READING - INTRODUCTION TO TEXTILES AND CULTURE  - CLOTH AND TEMPORAL POWER (MONEY, TRADE, STATUS AND CONTROL) GROUP SEMINAR PRESENTATION - this reading is extracts (...) from the set text.


MONEY, TRADE, STATUS AND CONTROL


The value of cloth

In this era when we operate on the principle that 'time is money' - i.e. we think about the hours put into a task and calculate its value as a kind of cost-benefit analysis - we can barely comprehend just how much time and human energy was once invested in every piece of cloth. There are astonishing stories of the time it would take to complete just one luxury textile: four to five weavers working steadily for at least a year for a Baroque tapestry, for example, or thirty men working for approximately nine months for a very fine Kashmir shawl. The magnificent Renaissance-era velvets were prestigious precisely because they were time-consuming to make; as three-dimensional fabrics that had an additional warp pile layer, they took more than twice as long to weave as a flat cloth. These statements about production time are, in fact, only part of the story, for they usually consider only the weaving itself, which is one of the last steps in the creation of the textile. Prior to the moment when the weavers sat down to work, the fibres had to be prepared and made into thread, dyed, reeled, or wound onto bobbins, and set up on a loom ... This might seem reasonable in the case of a luxury fibre such as silk, but even with a more ordinary woollen fabric, the flocks had to be attended to, the wool shorn and washed, fluffed or combed into a spinnable form, and then spun. It is important to remember (and hard to imagine) that every bit of cloth used in daily life -  clothing, household linens, ships' sails, feed sacks, and so forth - involved this kind of preparation ... Spinning literally went on from dawn to dusk ...

Fibres that were rare or difficult to procure or process added to a fabric's value. Cloth made with gold and other precious metals is an obvious example. The process not only involved obtaining the ore, through mining or trade, but also converting it into thin strips or wire that could function in a flexible cloth ...

Rare colouring agents (dyestuffs) added value to cloth as well ... For many thousands of years - as long ago as the 18th century BC according to recent discoveries - 'Tyrian purple' was equated with wealth and power ... One could be 'born to the purple' (i.e., into the royal family) or be granted kingly power by receiving purple garments and status from the sovereign himself ... The 'born to the purple' phrase was very suitable for imperial children of the Byzantime Empire, who were raised in rooms hung with perfumed purple drapes. Byzantine sumptuary laws regulated the sale, production and wearing of purple, imposing severe penalties on those who disobeyed ...

It was the fact that it was so difficult to extract the colour ... that ... gave purple such kingly associations ... the mollusks had to be lured to particular beds by the shore, and harvested at the appropriate moment. Each animal yielded just a drop or two of the colour, and an enormous number were needed for a textile of any size ... The person who wore a purple garment had to be powerful enough to afford such concentrated labour. (Gordon, 
2013, pp.150-2).

Clothes displaying status and wealth

... Among the Asante and related people in Ghana, 'kente' and other strip-woven cloth was part of the royal regalia. This cloth ... is unnecessarily labour intensive to produce; rather than make a wide piece of fabric, strip-weavers make separate woven bands about 6 inches (15.5 centimetres) wide, each of which includes complex pick-up patterns (patterns made by picking up individual threads one at a time by hand). These are then hand-stitched together into a composite cloth. Traditional kente was made with silk, an expensive trade good that further added to the value of the finished product. Kente was stored in special 'ancestral' rooms, and left in the care of a dedicated official who was charged with maintaining the cloths and selecting them for public appearances (the king was, ideally, to appear in a different textile on each occasion) ...


Conspicuous display of wealth and power was routinely demonstrated in textiles hung in  public places ... Wealthy individuals in the Middle Ages might commission a set of tapestries, for example, that could be displayed on castle walls or brought outside for a procession or encampment. These two were stockpiled as a kind of capital investment. (Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, had to build a new hall just to hold his tapestries, and then hire six guards to watch them constantly). The importance of conspicuous textile display was dramatically demonstrated at the meeting that took place between King Henry VIII and Francis I in 1520 near Calais ... Henry set sail across the English Channel with nearly 3,000 horses and a retinue of more than 5,000 people, including noblemen, clergy, and servants. His ships were outfitted with magnificent fabrics, including banners and even sails made of gold cloth. The parties set up camp, creating a temporary city with elaborate pavilions. One of the main French tents was made of blue cloth adorned with golden stars to stimulate the heavens ... Henry not covered his wooden pavilion with gold and silver cloth, but also lined its ceiling with costly tapestries. (Gordon, 2013, pp.156-63).


A woman's place?


... women's textile work, especially sewing and embroidery, has often been devalued - even denigrated - in patriarchal societies, especially (but not exclusively) in the West. It is important to remember that firework and cloth-making are not universally female pastimes ... many men engaged in these activities, but typically men made cloth that had economic, ritual, or political significance, and worked in professional context ... In pre-industrial cultures, women were usually the spinners - the ones who created thread, much as they created children. They were also the ones made the utilitarian household cloth such as clothing and bedding ...


In Ghana and other parts of West Africa where men weave and wear the prestigious strip cloth, women weave the everyday fabrics used for their own garments and for carrying babies, food, and other necessities. (Gordon, 2013, pp.184-5).



REFERENCE

Gordon, B. (2013 [2011] ) Textiles. The whole story - uses, meaning, significance. London: Thames and Hudson.