Medieval textiles.pdf

Issue 28 June 2001

Complex Weavers’

ISSN: 1531-1910

Medieval Textiles

Coordinator: Nancy M McKenna 507 Singer Ave. Lemont, Illinois 60439 e-mail: nmckenna@mediaone.net

In this issue:

Woven “Viking” Wall Hanging

p.1

Woven “Viking” Wall Hanging

By Jacqueline James, York 2001

Medieval Color and Weave Textiles

p.1

Hangings About The Hall

p.3

One of the most interesting custom orders I have ever

undertaken was in 1989 when I was approached by

Heritage Projects Ltd. and asked to weave a wall

hanging for permanent display in one of the recon-

structed houses at the Jorvik Viking Centre,

Coppergate, York.

The Discovery of Woad Pigment

p.7

A Renaissance Cheese

p.7

Trade Cloaks

p.8

Medieval Color & Weave Textiles

by Nancy M. McKenna

Research for the project began with consultation with

Penelope Walton Rogers at the textile conservation

lab of York Archeological Trust. I was privileged to

see some of the results of Penelope’s research of

textile fragments from Coppergate Viking-age site.

Color has always been important to people. As noted

in Textiles and Clothing, plaids are not uncommon in

Figure 1: From Textiles & Clothing,

Fabric #172. Only madder was

detected on this cloth, the background

being pink and the stripes being near balck. Because

of waterlogged conditions, it is suggested that the

background may have been origionally undyed. Late

14 c.

One of the woven fragments I examined was thought

to have originated from a curtain or wall hanging. The

sample, wool twill 1263 , was used as a reference to

determine the fiber content, weave structure, sett and

dye I would use to produce the woven fabric. Al-

though the piece has two adjacent hemmed sides, and

is not square, it is easily seen that it has been pulled

out of square by hanging from the corner and other

points along one edge, an indication of it having been

used as a wall hanging or curtain. Another interesting

feature of this textile is a single s thread that turns

back upon itself to create a gore in the fabric. This is

indicative of being woven on a warp-weighted loom

where no spacing device is used to keep the warp

evenly distributed. Because this gore can only occur

in the weft, it also indicated the direction of the warp,

which is a Z spun system.

The completed wall hanging measured 45” x 75” and

was made with 5s Z-twist wool yarn dyed red with

madder root. I dyed the yarn prior to the weaving

process. The structure used was balanced 2/2 twill

with a 12 epi sett. As I do not have a warp weighted

loom, commonly used during the Viking era, the

weaving was done on my Glimakra countermarche

loom. The finished fabric was washed, but not fulled.

A small hem was hand stitched along all four sides.

the medieval period. They have been found in many

areas of Europe, and even in China. As a general rule,

older textiles are generally woven in 2/2 twill, and

later textiles in tabby. Diamond twills often use color

in one direction and another in the other to show the

pattern formed by the weaving. Textiles woven in

cont’d on page 2

Cont’d on page 6

Complex Weavers’ Medieval Textile Study Group

Color & Weave cont’d from page 1

Slavic nations were more likely to have warp or weft

dominant stripes in color.

Hems and cuffs from clothing are areas most likely to

have a color and weave pattern, even if the rest of the

garment is solid in color.

Figure 5: Textiles

& Clothing cloth

sample #7. 36

threads per inch in

both warp and

weft, woven of

worsted singles.

Colors are those of

natural dark and

light wool.

Figure 2:

Textiles &

Clothing, cloth

sample #275.

Pink and

Black, madder

is the only dye

detected. Late

14 c.

Figure 3: From Textiles &

Clothing, cloth sample #38, #329

& #159. Worsted, fine (merino

range) to medium wool. This

cloth was used to line buttoned

garments the outer fabric of each

was coarser. Range of thread

count is 8 to 28 threads/cm. In the

case of textile #329 this wool was

used as the outer cloth as well as

the lining.

Figure #6: Textiles &

Clothing cloth sample #9.

Natural and madder dyed

wool.

Earlier clothing was constructed of squares of cloth as

woven, with seams along selveges, and gores added

for ease of movement (for example, the woman’s

costume from Huldremose, 2nd Century AD in the

Danish National Museum). And who can forget

Boadicea who is described by the Roman historian

Cassius Dio thusly:

“In person she was very tall, with the most sturdy figure

and a piercing glance; her voice was harsh; a great mass

of yellow hair fell below her waist and a large golden

necklace clasped her throat; wound about her was a tunic

of every conceivable color [possibly plaid] and over it a

thick chlamys...” (Payne, Blanche: History of Costume,

1965)

Figure 4: Textiles & Clothing cloth sample #64. Colors

are natural, madder dyed red, and a darker color, dye

material unknown. This pattern is found as early as the

6th and 7th C but in twills. Originally a firmly woven

cloth that did not ravel when cut, this sample was part of

a buttoned sleeve.

Later clothing was often constructed on the bias.

Thought to be a symptom of conspicuous consump-

tion by the upper classes, this construction method is

shown more in images than found in samples, al-

though the small size of samples found in the archeo-

logical record may make judgement calls as to which

direction the cloth was oriented in a garment difficult.

Color & Weave cont’d on page 6

Issue 28 June 2001

‘THE HANGINGS ABOUT THE HALL’ :

An Overview of Textile Wall Hangings in Late

Medieval York, 1394-1505

By Dr. Charles Kightly

His ‘York hall’ displayed a complete ‘halling’ set in

matching blue ‘say’ cloth (for textile definitions see

below). This comprised a ‘dorser’ (hung ‘at the back’ -

ad dorsum - of the high table) thirteen yards long by

four yards deep, with two ‘costers’ (for the side walls)

each nine yards long by two and a half yards deep. One

bench was draped with a matching blue ‘banker’ (lined

with canvas, perhaps to stop it slipping) eight yards long

and twenty-seven inches deep, and equipped with ten

matching feather-filled cushions: even the hall cupboard

had a matching blue say ‘cupboard cloth’. All this blue

was set off by a contrasting red say banker, more

valuable than the rest and thus perhaps used to drape

the high table benching. The complete halling was valued

at £2 12/10d, and in addition Duffield owned a set of

matching ‘worsted’ hangings in blue (clearly his

favourite colour) for his ‘principal bedchamber’, valued

at 9/10d, and a third set of red worsted hangings, valued

at nearly £1, for his second chamber’.

Introduction

This brief survey attempts to answer some of the

questions I have been asked about wall hangings in late

medieval York houses: who owned them; which rooms

were they used in; how were they hung; what were they

made of, what did they look like, and how much did

they cost? It deals essentially with the fifteenth century,

and draws mainly on three collections of York manuscript

archives: the Dean and Chapter Wills in York Minster

Library [A in text references], and the Dean and Chapter

Inventories [B] and the Diocesan Will Registers [C] in

the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research. Its

concern is domestic wall-hangings and -where these

formed part of a ‘room-set’ - related textile accessories

like ‘bankers’ (seat covers) and cushions: domestic bed-

hangings and hangings in churches are excluded. Even

within its remit, moreover, the survey does not claim to

be comprehensive.

The three sets of hangings bequeathed by Agnes Selby

(d. 1464 A.) - to take another example from the upper

end of the scale - were probably rather more costly,

though their value is not recorded. The ‘best’ set included

hangings, banker and six cushions all of ‘ Arraswerke ’

(imported Flemish tapestry), while the second and third

sets ‘in red and green’ (cloth?) were accompanied,

intriguingly, by sets of cushions decorated ‘ cum

Werwolfes ’ - an unusual and perhaps rather disturbing

device, but doubtless useful conversation pieces.

Wall hangings are very frequently recorded in late

medieval York wills and inventories. This survey alone

covers more than fifty such documents (1394-1505)

which describe the colour, material, subject or size of

hangings, leaving aside many others where merely their

existence is noted. Their ownership spans the whole

range of the York ‘will-making classes’, from leading

citizens and wealthy clerics with multiple sets of

matching ‘hallings’ and ‘chamberings’ in tapestry or

fine wool, valued in pounds, down the single cheap

‘painted cloths’, worth a few pence, owned by modest

craftsmen or poor widows.

Agnes Selby belonged to a wealthy Lord Mayoral

dynasty, intermarried with the minor aristocracy: but

far less prosperous York citizens also owned complete

room-sets of hangings, even if these were in distinctly

inferior materials like ‘painted cloths’. The estate of

John Colan (d. 1490 B), a German-born goldsmith living

in rented property off Stonegate (near the restored

‘Barley Hall’), was for instance valued at less than £10

after payment of debts. Yet his small hall displayed a

set of four hangings ‘of green colour with flowers’ -

doubtless ‘painted cloths’, since their total value was

only 2/8d - together with three red (cloth?) bankers (value

10d) and a dozen ‘old red cushions’, at 1/6d. His

‘parlour’, meanwhile, had two individual hangings

(again doubtless painted cloths) depicting the Trinity

and ‘the images of St. George and the Virgin Mary’,

valued at only 3d each.

From the household inventories which furnish a room-

by-room breakdown of goods, it is clear that wall-

hangings were most frequently displayed only in the

‘hall’ or its equivalent, although in a few late cases they

are recorded only in the principal bedchamber. The

slightly better-off might afford hangings both in the hall

and a single bedchamber or ‘parlour’ - the most valuable

items being in the hall - while the wealthy possessed

complete sets of hangings for several bedchambers.

Among the most minutely described of these multiple

sets belonged to William Duffield (d. 1452), a wealthy

pluralist cleric who held canonries at Beverley and

Southwell as well as York Minister, his principal base.

The fact that the ‘appraisers’ conscientiously recorded

the exact dimensions of Colan’s hall hangings - an

admirable York practice - allows us at least to guess at

Complex Weavers’ Medieval Textile Study Group

how such modest pieces were arranged. Two of them

were each four yards and two three yards long, but they

were only four and a half feet deep, suggesting that they

were hung in strips above the raised backs of a fixed

bench running round three or four sides of a small room.

Canon Duffield’s seven and a half foot deep ‘costers’ -

given a higher room - may have been hung in the same

way, though his twelve foot deep ‘dorser’ perhaps

extended from ceiling to floor (fig. 1).

description and price suggest that these may have been

embroidered hangings, as may also have been Canon

Thomas Morton’s (d. 1448 B) green and red paled say

cloth hallings ‘with the arms of Archbishop Bowet’, or

his red say set ‘with the arms of St. Peter’. If so, the

embroidered heraldry may have been embroidered using

the ‘couching’ technique, and certainly the alderman’s

widow Matilda Danby (d. 1459 C) owned a ‘ couched

hallyng ’.

Such hangings - and even costly tapestries, as evidenced

by the perforations in surviving examples would

generally have been suspended from iron ‘tenterhooks’

driven into the wall, either by direct ‘snagging’ or via

rings sewn onto the fabric. York indeed possesses the

only contemporary illustration I know of this practice,

in panels A/2/2 and A/3/2 of the fifteenth century St.

William Window in the Minster north-east transept

(fig.2). There Roger of Ripon, mounted on a very

precarious ‘self-propping ladder’ is shown fixing up a

wall hanging as a stone block accidentally drops on his

head. He was however saved from death by the

miraculous intervention of St William, as the inscribed

block itself - now in the Minster undercroft - still survives

to prove.

Hangings of plain woollen cloth, however, were far more

common than either tapestry or embroidered hangings:

apart from painted cloths, indeed, they are the type most

often recorded in York documents. Occasionally (as in

William Duffield’s chamber) the fabric is called

‘worsted’, but generally it is called ‘say’, a light but

closely-woven woollen serge which (given some changes

in specification) remained universally popular for wall

and bed-hangings from the fifteenth until the mid

seventeenth century.

Say hangings might be of a single colour: Duffield’s

were mainly blue (an expensive colour to dye) but the

cheaper red and green are also often recorded. Very

popular, too, were hangings of ‘ paled say ’, woven in

‘pales’ or vertical stripes of equal width in two

contrasting colours, generally red and green. Such

hangings could be expensive. Archbishop Bowet’s (d.

1423) sumptuous new red and green paled halling set

was valued at over £8 - perhaps because it included

embroidered heraldry - but Thomas Baker’s (d. 1436

B) red and green halling was probably more typically

valued at only 5/-. Both Hugh Grantham (d. 1410 B)

and Hawise Aske (d. 1451 B) had paled hangings in

black and red, while those of John Crackenthorp esquire

(d. 1467 C) were more unusually ‘paled’ in three colours,

red, white and blue. This last, however, may perhaps

have been a painted cloth rather than a say hanging.

Tapestries, Embroidered Hangings and Woollen Says

The hanging shown in the St William window appears

to represent striped and damask-patterned silk brocade,

an expensive imported textile often depicted by

contemporary artists, but for which I have found no

evidence in York wills. There the most valuable hanging-

fabric mentioned was probably woven ‘ Arras ’ (like

Agnes Selby’s) or ‘ tapestry werk ’, and even this is

uncommon, probably because of its cost. A

contemporary inventory from outside York (that of the

very wealthy Sir Thomas Burgh of Gainsborough,

Lincolnshire, d. 1496, P. R. O. Probate 2/124) shows

that even low-grade tapestry had a second-hand value

of around 8d the yard, while a yard of figured ‘ imagery

werk ’ tapestry containing gold thread was valued at 2/-

or more. The complete set of hangings, bankers and

cushions ‘ de opere tapestre ’ belonging to the York

innkeeper Robert Talkan (d. 1415 B) must have been of

the cheaper sort, since it totalled only 33/4d. Even so, it

was valued at over twice the price of the red and blue

cloth set with which it shared his hall.

Painted cloths

In York, as throughout England, painted cloths were

much the most popular cheap wall hangings from the

late medieval period until the mid seventeenth century.

The earliest York reference I have found is to a painted

dorser belonging to John de Birne, rector of St.

Sampson’s, who died in 1394 (C). Their great attraction

was that they offered brightly coloured and often

figurative wall decoration - much cheaper to paint than

either to embroider or to work in tapestry - at a very low

cost. The shop stock of the York tailor John Carter (d.

1485 B), for example, included twelve yards of ‘ panetyd

The red hangings and bankers ‘with the arms of Lord

Hastings’ in Talkan’s chamber, conversely, was valued

at 66/8d, twice the price of his tapestries. Their

Issue 28 June 2001

clothes ’ at 2/8d, or only 2_d a yard, while that of the

chapman Thomas Gryssop (d. 1446 B) included six

whole painted cloths (admittedly ‘old’) at 5/- the lot.

Their cheapness, however, was counterbalanced by their

lack of durability: experiments with authentically

produced modem replicas have shown that they degrade

quite rapidly, especially when the painted surface is

cracked or damaged by rolling or folding for storage.

For this reason their second-hand value could be very

low indeed. The most expensive York example was

Richard Dalton’s (1505 B) complete painted hallings at

7/-, but their average second-hand value seems to have

been only one or two pence a yard, and two whole cloths

belonging to Henry Thorlthorp, vicar choral (d. 1427

B) were appraised at only a penny each.

Lyndesay (d. 1397 B), parish clerk of All Saints North

Street, which depicted ‘the image of Christ sitting in the

clouds’. John Underwode, clerk of the vestry at York

Minster (d. 1408 A), had a cloth ‘of the Last

Resurrection’, Henry Thorlthorp (d. 1427 B) and John

Danby (d. 1485 A), vicars choral, both had cloths ‘with

the Crucifix’; and cloths ‘with the Trinity’ are recorded

for the goldsmith John Colan (d. 1490 B); the widow of

Thomas Person (d. 1496 A), and John Clerk, chaplain

of St Mary Magdalen chapel (d. 1451 B), whose hanging

also depicted St. John the Baptist and St. John the

Evangelist. These two saints also appeared on a cloth

belonging to John Tidman, chaplain at All Saints, North

Street (d. 1458 C), who likewise owned painted hangings

with ‘a great image of the Virgin’ and with ‘the history

of the Five Joys of the Virgin’. Agnes del Wod (d. 1429

A) favoured images of St. Peter and St. Paul; William

de Burton, vicar of St. Mary Bishophill (d. 1414 A) had

a cloth with ‘the history of St. Thomas of Canterbury’;

and John Colan (d. 1490 B) one with ‘the Virgin Mary

and St. George’; while both John Kexby, Chancellor of

York Minster (d. 1452 B) and Janet Candell (d. 1479

C) owned cloths depicting ‘the Seven Works of Mercy’.

Secular subjects were seemingly much rarer, though the

vicar of Acomb, Henry Lythe (d. 1480 A) had a ‘halling

painted of Robyn Hude’.

The low value and ephemeral nature of painted cloths

has ensured a very low survival rate, and no indisputably

medieval English examples are known to exist. Analysis

of Elizabethan and later cloths carried out for ‘Barley

Hall’ - has however shown that they were generally made

of coarse linen canvas, thoroughly sized with animal-

skin size and then painted with inexpensive pigments

including red and yellow ochres, red lead, verdigris, lead

white, lamp black and ‘vegetable’ (weld) yellow. Stencils

may have been used for repeating patterns.

As elsewhere in England, York painted cloths seemingly

imitated more expensive types of hangings. Some were

painted in vertical stripes to resemble ‘paled says’, and

others imitated ‘boscage’ and ‘millefleurs’ tapestries.

Thus Alice Langwath (d. 1466 C) had a painted cloth

‘with roses’; John Colan (d. 1490 B) green cloths ‘with

flowers’; Thomas Baker (d. 143 6 B) two cloths ‘with

batylments’; Thomas Northus, vicar choral (d. 1449 A)

one ‘with an eagle in the middle’; William Coltman (d.

1481 B) two cloths ‘with certain birds’, and Richard

Dalton (d. 1505 B) one ‘with trees’.

Conclusion

A brief survey of the very rich archival resources surely

demonstrates that wall hangings and related textile

accessories were an important element of even quite

modest house interiors in York. Nor is there much reason

to doubt that a similar situation obtained in other

communities less blessed with surviving documentation.

It follows that such interiors were considerably more

comfortable and much more colourful than is even now

generally recognized or admitted. Thus the bare stone

walls or ‘wealth of exposed timbering’ which are still

the norm for modern representations of the later Middle

Ages - and for the great majority of medieval houses

displayed to the public - give a seriously false and

misleading impression of medieval domestic life.

More intriguing are the painted cloths which imitated

‘tapestry of imagery work’ by depicting figurative

religious subjects. Though particularly favoured by

poorer clerics, many of these were also owned by York

lay people, and the descriptions in the documents throw

welcome light on the domestic iconography of York

houses. We can only guess at their appearance, but it is

at least possible that some may have resembled in style

the illustrations in the Book of Hours locally produced

in c. 1430 for the Bolton family, and now in York Minster

Library (Add.MS.2).

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