TEXTILES ─ What A Significant Role It Has Played
SPINNING A YARN The book, “The Fabric of Civilization,” weaves a fascinating tale. By Cary Sherburne
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extiles are such a part of the fabric of our lives (pun intended) that we take them for granted. But when you understand how fabric is woven throughout the development of civilization, it’s pretty amazing what a significant role it has played. I recently read a fascinating book, “The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World,” by Virginia Postrel. It’s a literal encyclopedia of the impact of fibers and fabrics on human development going back thousands of years. And while it’s probably more information than you really need at any given time, it’s an excellent reference book to have around – and very, very well-written. The language of fabric is also interwoven into our language. Here’s a brief excerpt from the book that demonstrates this: “We no more imagine a world without cloth than one without sunlight or rain. We drag out heirloom metaphors –’on tenterhooks,’ ‘towheaded,’ ‘frazzled’ – with no idea that we are talking about fabric and fibers. We repeat threadbare clichés: ‘whole cloth,’ ‘hanging by a thread,’ ‘dyed in the wool.’ We catch airline shuttles, weave through traffic, follow comment threads. We speak of life spans and spinoffs and never wonder why drawing out fibers and twirling them into thread looms so large in our language. Surrounded by textiles, we’re largely oblivious to their existence and to the knowledge and efforts embodied in every scrap of fabric. Yet the story of textiles is the story of human ingenuity.” For those of you who are professionals in the
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textiles and apparel industry, you may already know much of the history that’s included in the book. While I write about the industry, I am not a professional practitioner. But I am a lifelong fiber artist – everything from spinning and weaving to knitting and needlework. So for me, the book was fascinating. Take cotton, for example -- the story about how cotton developed from two different wild versions found in Africa and Mexico, and how humans cultivated them in each of these regions to encourage the growth of cotton with longer fibers. Then, somehow, an African seed crossed the ocean to Mexico and cross-bred with the Mexican version, which gave rise to the beginnings of cotton as we know it. This is not just a seed with a few wispy strands, but a cotton boll with long staple suitable for spinning. No one really knows how that happened. They do know it was thousands of years ago before humans were making that trek. Theories abound, though we may never know the truth. And silk is another interesting story documented in the book. Chinese learned to breed silkworms, fed them just the right amount of fresh mulberry leaves, watched them spin their little cocoons and then destroyed the worm before it could destroy the cocoon. The story of how silk production traveled around the world, how silk was once a form of currency, and how the production of silk has progressed over the years is also fascinating. And it’s a story that continues today with a company in Silicon Valley, Bolt Threads, creating silk from fermented yeast that delivers a white
WhatTheyThink - Wide-Format&Signage | January/February 2021
1/19/21 11:48 AM
