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piątek, 5 października 2012

FEW WORDS ABOUT COLOURS OF MEDIEVAL TEXTILES.

NOTICETo enable understanding of my posts to all of you, I am going to add English versions starting from the following inscription. I hope you will enjoy it.
I've found quite interesting book which contents a list of jewish properties in Wrocław in 1453. The book is mentionig about hundreds and thousands of guldens, groshes (pennies), duverts and gowns but, also, something more absorbing to me: hues of textiles.
The title of this post says about 'few words', so I want to give you simple statistics without any dwelling:
blue: 35%
black: 31,5%
red: 10,5%
grey: 9%
green: 6%
brown: 5%
white/colourless: 3%
What is really worth our attention, all those clothes I could define as, theoreticly, the most expensive are mostly dyed in black. Except that hue, blue and red are the next used most often.
There are similar descriptions from Cracov, relating to local townsmen and gentry. Thanks to them, we can compare popularity of used colours in both cities and find out that black was on the first place.
It is pretty easy to make a conclusion. Silesian bourgeoisie of middle and higher class prefered high quality black and red colours. The domination of blue dye is, probably, caused by its low price. Easiness of gaining a woad (Isatis tinctoria) could reduce colouring costs. To proof this claiming I need to mention about some notes telling about selling a blue and undyed cloth in the same price. What is more, Beguines from Lübeck were required to wear blue-coloured clothes.
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4 komentarze:

  1. basia10 października 2012 14:42

    Jewish properties, you say? That would explain the black :)
    Woad was available on the market - it produces a greyish-blue colour, than the Indian indigo.
    What's more, you could also get blue dye from madder leaves (but he procedure was a bit more complicated than woad), and madder was relatively cheap.

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  2. Borg10 października 2012 17:19

    Precisely, I was writting about lien given to Jews. Those clothes were stored in chests and not wore by them.

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  3. basia13 października 2012 11:28

    But logically, people would bring their most valuable clothes, the ones they wear only rarely.
    But it does not argue with the fact, that most of the clothes were black/blue.
    I also read about misinterpeatation of the two words: "blaveus" - blue and "flaveus" - yellow.
    I can only say that those inventories I've tried to read were written in such an unreadable handwriting....

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  4. Borg13 października 2012 12:20

    Every source has its own weak point. Thanks for mentioning them :)

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