Medieval Clothing and Textiles

The essays in this collection focus on Italy, with contributions on dress in multicultural Ravenna, footwear in Lucca and aristocratic furnishings, using evidence from documents of the sixth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries respectively (with the first translations into English of two of them); and a discussion of Boccaccio's treatment of disguise involving Christian/Islamic identity shifts in his Decameron. Two essays examine dress in visual sources: the Bayeux Tapestry is discussed as a narrative artwork that adopts various costumes for semiotic purposes; and a study of French and English portraits, especially uncoloured drawings which show detail of dress construction, is used for a new interpretation of the female headdress known as the "French hood". Another chapter considers surviving artefacts: a detailed study of a piece of quilted fabric armour, one of two such items surviving in Lübeck, Germany, reveals how it was made and suggests reasons for some of the unusual features. Finally, there is an investigation of the commercial vocabulary related to the medieval textile and fur industries: the terms used in Britain for measuring textile and fur are listed and discussed, especially the unique use of Anglo-French launces in a document of 1300. Contributors: Jane Bridgeman, Mark C. Chambers, Jessica Finley, Ana Grinberg, Karen Margrethe Hoskuldsson, Olga Magoula, Christine Meek, Gale R. Owen-Crocker,