Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Old Rags, New Responses: Medieval Dress and Textiles
- 2 Text/Textile: “Wordweaving” in the Literatures of Anglo-Saxon England
- 3 Unfolding Identities: The Intertextual Roles of Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga
- 4 Clothing and Textiles at the Court of King John of England, 1199–1216
- 5 Dressing the Sacred: Medallion Silks and Their Use in Western Medieval Europe
- 6 Habit Envy: Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and the Search for Legitimation Outside the Institutionalised Religious Orders
- 7 The Loom, the Lady, and Her Family Chapels: Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art
- Recent Books of Interest
- Contents of Previous Volumes
5 - Dressing the Sacred: Medallion Silks and Their Use in Western Medieval Europe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 March 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Old Rags, New Responses: Medieval Dress and Textiles
- 2 Text/Textile: “Wordweaving” in the Literatures of Anglo-Saxon England
- 3 Unfolding Identities: The Intertextual Roles of Clothing in the Nibelungenlied and Völsunga Saga
- 4 Clothing and Textiles at the Court of King John of England, 1199–1216
- 5 Dressing the Sacred: Medallion Silks and Their Use in Western Medieval Europe
- 6 Habit Envy: Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and the Search for Legitimation Outside the Institutionalised Religious Orders
- 7 The Loom, the Lady, and Her Family Chapels: Weaving Identity in Late Medieval Art
- Recent Books of Interest
- Contents of Previous Volumes
Summary
A major scholarly concern in the field of medieval costume history is the origin of the textiles: not only the source of the fiber and where the textile was woven, but also where it was found. For our present study, the final fate of textiles is at issue. Fabrics are very fragile and often survive only as fragments. Indeed, most material remains of medieval furnishings and dress come from two main categories of sources. The first one is the funerary context; the second is composed of objects kept in religious institutions. Of course, such remains provide a great deal of valuable information, but they must be contextualized properly and cannot be considered usual garments. It is clear that albs and dalmatics were far from ordinary people's clothing. In light of their extraordinary nature, how can we interpret the fabrics—sometimes found in tiny pieces—from tombs and religious treasuries? Are they representative of fashionable fabrics, or could they have had some very specific uses and meanings, even for the wealthy?
ORIGINS OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES
The silks we will consider appear to be of two main kinds of silk fabrics: samite and lampas. Samite, from the glossary of Medieval Dress and Textiles in Britain, is defined as
a plain silk cloth in weft-faced compound twill. Its appearance has the diagonal lines of a twill weave and a lustrous quality produced by the long weft floats. It was made in various weights, but was usually quite heavy and suitable as background for embroidery in gold thread. Monnas notes that though samites were sometimes woven competely in silk, they could also be half-silks, with linen main warps.
Lisa Monnas discusses variations in samites as well as their popularity and provides a useful definition of lampas:
Samite could be figured as well as plain. In the figured version, additional pattern wefts in silk or metal thread, or metal brocading wefts, created the design, but the ground wefts were concealed behind the main warps, and the surface of the textile remained uniform. Weft-faced compound twill silks were enormously successful: versions were woven in China, India, the Sassanian Empire and Byzantium, as well as in Italy and Spain, and were in production for over 500 years. …
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- Information
- Medieval Clothing and Textiles 15 , pp. 101 - 136Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2019