Linen

Mummified baboon wrapped up in linen bandages. Egypt, late first millennium BC Mummified baboon wrapped up in linen bandages. Egypt, late first millennium BC © Trustees of the British Museum, London, UK, acc. no. EA35857.

Linen is a term used to describe both the thread and any cloth made from flax. Flax is a bast fibre obtained from the stem of a plant of the Linaceae family (Linum, especially Linum usitatissimum). Examples of linen cloth have been found at various archaeological sites that date back to at least the fifth millennium BC (from the Middle Eastern sites of Nahal and Çatal Hüyük) and the use of linen may have started even earlier.

By the third millennium BC, linen textiles could be found in many places in Europe and the Middle East. Linen is often confused with ramie when looking at Central Asian and Asian textiles and garments.

See also: hemp, nettle

Sources:

  • BURNHAM, Dorothy (1980). Warp and Weft. A Textile Terminology, Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, p. 58.
  • FITZGERALD, Maria (2012). 'Linen', in: Gale Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth and Maria Hayward (eds.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles, c. 450-1450, Brill: Leiden, pp. 325-329.
  • TORTORA, Phyllis G. and Ingrid JOHNSON (2014), The Fairchild Books: Dictionary of Textiles, London: Bloomsbury, 8th edition, p. 350.

British Museum online catalogue (retrieved 26 June 2016).

GVE

Last modified on Wednesday, 05 October 2016 10:06
Published in Woven and interlocking materials
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