All posts filed under: Textiles & Costume

A fabric tour around the world – India

Last week we toured the Middle East and North Africa and saw all the textiles named after locales of that area. India became a major source of textiles in the 17th century, and was an important source for fabric for the next 200 years. Not surprisingly, many fabrics are named after places in India. I’m sure that in many cases the naming process went like this: European trader (pantomimes “What do you call that fabric?”) Local “It is made in Kozhikode” European “Ah, we will call it Calico” Local “Whatever, you are dumb” Notable examples are: Kashmir, which (of course) gave us cashmere from the wonderful goats that live in the mountains around the Vale of Kashmir. Machilipatnam in Eastern India was known as Maisolos and Masalia to the Romans, and (according to one theory at least, see the fabric tour of the middle east for the other) from these names comes the word muslin. Kozhikode, Kerala, India was known as Calicut, and gives us calico. (note, Calicut is not the same city as Calcutta, …

A fabric tour around the World – the Middle East and North Africa

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week we visited Europe, and all the cities and countries and valleys there that gave their names to the fabrics that we wrap ourselves in. This week let’s head to the Middle East and North Africa, which have been a major trading and production area of cloth for millennia. There I would visit: Gaza in Palestine, the fabric centre famous for gauze, which began to be imported into Europe in the 13th century. Mosul in Iraq, may be the origin of the word muslin. Marco Polo describes the fabric being sold by salesmen known as musolini. Damascus, in Syria, was among the first places to create damask in the early Middle Ages, and carried the name with the fabric up into Europe. The El-Fustat district of Cairo, Egypt produced a strong fabric of linen and cotton which came to be known as fustian. I could also tour the rest of Egypt to commemorate Egyptian cotton, which is not cotton that is grown in Egypt, but a particularly long-staple cotton, and (rather loosely) the fabric …

Great-Nana’s hats: The white turban

Published by The Dreamstress

This hat cracks me up. It’s hilarious, and at the same time, it is very elegant. It feel like the confused love child of a wazir and a nurse with head trauma. It can dispense the wisdom of the east along with your prescriptions. Just don’t expect it to provide sound advice or the right medicine. In case you hadn’t noticed, I learned how to make the camera take self-timed pictures, and went a little wild with the technique.