Textiles and Fiber Arts as Catalysts for Ideas

Since about the third millennium, messages similar to those given by clothing have been transmitted by the textiles we use to dress our surroundings. We mentioned using cloth to set apart and adorn religious or sacred space, but textiles also adorned the home, as bedcovers, curtains, cushions, and so forth. Evidence from Çatal Höyük, Turkey, whence some of our earliest textile fragments (6000 B.C.E.), indicates that people slept and sat on low clay platforms covered with padding (dried grass? rushes?) topped with mats or textiles. The ancient Egyptians manufactured only plain white linen for normal household use—sheets, bedspreads, towels, and clothing—but from at least 2000 B.C.E., they were importing fancily patterned woolen cloth from the Aegean to make into Figure 11. Construction of early clothing types: (a) Egyptian dress made of tube with shoulder strap; (b) Egyptian shirt, in which shoulder-straps were elongated into sleeves; (c) Syrian shirt with neck-hole in cloth hung from shoulders; (d) Eurasian nomad shirt, hung from shoulders but with front opening. COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR ostentatiously colorful canopies, apparently to advertise their social status. Around 1370 B.C.E. we also glimpse colorful rugs and cushions, again probably of imported fabric.

We read in classical Greek literature that cloth tents were set up temporarily on temple grounds for celebrations. These pavilions were constructed from textiles decorated with elaborately woven scenes—rare and expensive textiles dedicated to the deities as votive gifts and stored in temple storehouses. Temples served as the treasuries, and indeed, museums, of the ancient world, just as cathedrals did in medieval times, and the rarer the gift, the higher the giver in people's estimation.

Among nomadic peoples of Eurasia, cloth furnishings were even more important than among their sedentary neighbors, since cloth was highly utilitarian yet portable. They made their houses out of collapsible wicker frames covered with felt (densely matted wool) and fastened with colorful woven straps that signaled to visitors whose yurt (felt tent) it was (Fig. 14). Their possessions were stored in chests covered with brightly patterned felt padding, and their precious china teacups were carried in padded felt pouches. Pile carpets formed the (movable) floors, and colorful interior hangings further insulated and adorned the walls. Even the plates for dry foods were often made of felt. Because textiles were so central, they were an Figure 12. Earliest preserved body-garment: linen shirt with sleeves finely pleated for trim fit. Tarkhan, Egypt, First Dynasty, c. 3000 B.C.E. COPYRIGHT: PETRIE MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON Figure 13. Construction of a pair of woolen trousers found with the mummies at Cherchen, 1000 B.C.E. COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR Figure 14. Nomadic Kazakh family setting up yurt (portable felt house), Nan Shan, Uyghur Autonomous Region, 1995. E. J. W. BARBER important form of gift exchange: in frozen burial sites of the fourth century B.C.E., in the Altai Mountains, excavators found saddle cloths of Chinese embroidered silk from far to the east, and of Persian woolen tapestry from far to the west, as well as of local polychrome felt cutwork.

As the world became more interconnected, trade in textiles became increasingly important. We hear of such trade already between Mesopotamia and Syria before 2000 B.C.E. and between Assyria and Anatolia (roughly modern Turkey) in 1800 B.C.E. between China and India in the second century B.C.E., and between China and Rome in the early centuries C.E. (along the newly opened, so-called Silk Road). Long voyages of discovery were undertaken by Europeans in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to open up more trade with the Orient in textiles, as well as in spices and other commodities, leading to the accidental opening of routes to the New World. As such trade became serious international business, textile wars also broke out—the struggles among the Spanish, British, and Dutch over the wool trade among them—for, as the middle class rose after the breakdown of feudalism, more and more people wanted to display their status by means of elegant textiles for the furnishings of their parlors as well as their clothing. Imported fabrics spelled luxury, and their display announced those ever-crucial social messages.