Medieval Clothing and Textiles

This latest volume examining aspects of clothing and textiles in the middle ages ranges widely throughout both Europe and England. It includes two groundbreaking articles in novel areas of textile and dress scholarship: an introduction to a previously unexamined class of embroidery (decorative manuscript repair), and an English-language overview of scholarly research on historical dress in Latvia. Among the other topics considered in the volume are are two very different listings of clothing items from medieval Germany: an invented lexicon by a cloistered mystic, Hildegard of Bingen, and an accounting of specific real garments worn by ordinary people and donated to finance the building of Strasbourg Cathedral. The mercantile world of clothing in medieval London (dealers of secondhand clothing from the evidence of historical documents the representation of the socially-rising mercers in literature is the focus of another two pieces); other articles consider luxurious dress accessories with both worldly and spiritual significance, and analyse a French manual for English housewives, illuminating the often-overlooked topic of home linen production. Contributors: Hilary Davidson, Ieva Pigozne, Valerie L. Garver, Christine Sciacca, Sarah L. Higley, William Sayers, Roger A. Ladd, Kate Kelsey Staples, Charlotte A. Stanford.