This is my favorite type of book: lots of juicy facts, seasoned with little-known tidbits. And it’s the perfect book to read on my Kindle, because on every other page, I found myself stopping to Google more information on something she mentions in passing. Or find a picture. So… let me share the best parts with you, along with my Photo-shopped illustrations:
EGYPT St Clair starts with Egyptian linen mummy wrappings. She explains that the linen (which was laboriously processed, spun, and woven) was as valuable as the gold in those sarcophagi….but much of it was thrown away by early archaeologists. Even in a highly deteriorated state, the linen wrappings held a great deal of information.
Photo ( and more info) at https://www.britannica.com/story/thats-a-wrap-methods-of-mummification
CHINA The chapter on China begins with an ancient poem embroidered on silk: the Star Gauge by Su Hui (Below)
St Clair explains that although the original is long gone, “ The work originally took the form of a grid, twenty-nine characters by twenty-nine characters, painstakingly embroidered in different colors onto a silk panel. It is both part and the apotheosis of a type of Chinese poetry called hui-wen shih, or “reversible poems.” This genre relies on the fact that, unlike western languages, Chinese characters can be read in any direction. Reversible poems, as the name suggests, can be read both forward—starting top right and moving down—and backwards. Su Hui’s Star Gauge, however, goes further. Its unique structure allows the reader to wander in any direction through the text horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stumbling across different readings as they do so. In all, it contains over three thousand possible poems” I’m struggling to get my mind around that…
VIKINGS
I was amazed to learn that Viking sails were made of wool. Of course, you can’t grow cotton in Norway, but wool? Wool is too fuzzy to properly block the wind, and incredibly heavy when it gets wet. However, ancient wool wadding, recovered from a church renovation, shows how they did it. An ancient breed of sheep had wiry, more water-resistant wool, and after weaving “The finishing touch was a two-stage process known as smörring. First the fabric would be brushed with a mixture of water, horse fat or fish oil, and ocher, a naturally occurring reddish earth. When this had dried, hot liquid beef tallow or fir tar would be smoothed into the sail. The greasing helped smooth out differences between individual webs, so that the air would flow easily over the joins, while the particles of ocher plugged the gaps between the woolen fibers.”
COPPERGATE
Coppergate is an archaeological site with many textile tools:
She gives a remarkably clear explanation of the evolution of lace, from early filet to the rococo-like extravagance of Venetian gros point lace, with “Its evolution reflected in a hopeless muddle of descriptive terms” . Entirely handmade, requiring obscene amounts of poorly-paid labor, lace was an elite luxury item. Oh, and they had lots of black lace in Elizabethan times, but the dye was acidic and eventually ate through the lace.
SPIDER SILK
She tells about some guys who spent years amassing the golden silk of special spiders in Madagasgar and created this magnificent golden spider silk garment. But while noodling around looking for that image, I ran into….drunken spiders! Yes, some people have experimented with feeding drugs, alcohol and coffee to spiders and watching how it affects web production:
Questions: How did they get the spiders to consume coffee? How much did they pay people to wander through the forests in Madagascar to catch spiders? Why does this all sound like an article you’d find in The Onion??
That’s all for now. Stay safe, stay sane, see you next week