From: djheydt@kithrup.com   
      
   In article <8rl63adsk3i50jjj98rs8ng5agv99rh2e8@4ax.com>,   
   Jymesion   wrote:   
   >Over the years, I've collected considerable info about cloth in   
   >Medieval England (types, costs, tpi, etc.).   
   >   
   >Unfortunately, there's one thing I've never found explicitly stated:   
   >how does it compare to readily available cloth today?   
   >   
   >Specifically, if I fill my time machine with $5 end-bolt bargains   
      
   If you bring cruddy fabric, in will be recognized as cruddy   
   fabric.  Get good-quality stuff.   
      
   > from   
   >Wal-Mart and take them to a fair in York in 1350, will I become rich   
   >or have to peddle them as rags?   
      
   I think the customers would be impressed by the evenness of the   
   thread and the weave.  (They do not have the "it's TOO regular,   
   it was done on a machine, feh" reaction."  But if you're taking   
   standard early-21st-century woollens to the Middle Ages, they'll   
   have to be fulled first.  If you can do this before you leave the   
   twenty-first century, all to the good: take them to the nearest   
   laundromat and wash them on HOT and let them shrink.  Personally,   
   I'd let them get *almost* dry and then iron them.  Woollens were   
   supposed to keep you warm in the cold Little Ice Age winters.   
      
   Fine, lightweight cottons would be prized; lie like a fish and   
   tell 'em your Uncle Olaf brought them from Egypt (about the only   
   place they were making cotton in those days).  Get the finest   
   linens you can, but be aware the the temporals will not pay top   
   prices for them because they're not *translucent*.  If my memory   
   serves me correctly, it was in the fifteenth century or   
   thereabouts that the linen plant mutated and would no longer   
   produce very fine thread suitable for weaving into veils that you   
   could see right through (vide lots of Renaissance portraits of   
   rich ladies in transparent veils).   
      
   On the other hand, if you're planning to return to present-day at   
   some point, for the love of mud buy some of the fine flaxseed   
   from whose plants those veils were made.  You could bring   
   translucent linen back and make some more money.   
      
   NO POLYESTER.  The medieval world was lit by open fires and   
   candles with open flames.  You don't want somebody's polyester   
   houppelande to catch fire and stick to her skin while it burns   
   her to death.   
      
   Anything else you need to know?  If you want to get really   
   technical, I can ask my daughter the costumer, and if necessary   
   we can get hold of a lady who has spent a lot of her free time   
   researching old textiles.  (Her daytimes were involved in getting   
   a Ph.D. in Linguistics for her studies in medieval Welsh   
   pronouns.)   
      
   --   
   Dorothy J. Heydt   
   Vallejo, California   
   djheydt at gmail dot com   
   Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the gmail edress.   
   Kithrup's all spammy and hotmail's been hacked.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)