dyeing linen

[Tim Edwards]

Like Graham, I don't think this is a question of whether the Romans could or would dye linen, but did they?

There are thousands upon thousands of Roman textile fragments from Israel and Egypt, which should give a starting impression of what might have been normal at least for that region.

I am going to Exeter University library next week to look at some of the Mons Claudianus reports. I will see if there is any record of dyed linen amongst the hundreds of textile fragments excavated.

I must admit, it has long puzzled me that there seems to be an absence of evidence for dyed linen from the Roman world, from my own limited experience, it is not difficult to achieve.
I spent an afternoon examining coptic textiles from the V & A Museum, and found it odd that where coloured clavi and orbiculi were added to linen tunics, they always seemed to be executed in dyed wool.

If I was you I'd keep your focale undyed. I made my focale from a beautiful piece of hand spun, hand woven diamond twill wool, which I dyed red with alum mordanted madder. This was well and good until I wore it under mail and a quilted subarmalis whilst on a route march. I now have a ghastly pink blob on my linen subarmalis where I was heavily sweating.

I have some nice hand woven linen for my next focale, which I will be using more as a sweat rag than padding for the neck (the subarmalis does this more than adequately). I will not be dyeing it!

[Nathan Beal]

Couple of things worth considering with period dye techniques.

Wool takes dye better than Linen (generally speaking), if you throw prepared cloth in the same dye-bath, Wool tends to produce more vibrant colours. The colour then tends to be more colourfast on the woolen sample.

Linen is often (and i'm talking in general again, but thinking of northern European practices) worn nearer to the skin than wool (more commonly [than wool] as an under layer) for the practicality of washing. Linen responds quite positively to agitation and/or warm water, unlike wool. All dyes fade with repeated washing, so why dye under-layers that get washed a lot (unless you have money to burn).

If you can wear white in the classical world you are clearly demonstrating you don't dig for a living (and if it's very white you probably don't do anything manual at all) and also have spare time (or somebody in your household / or people paid) to keep your clothing clean (and own more than one set of clothes so that one can be being washed whilst you wear the other).

Somebody mentioned pastels being a common shade. I have produced yellows not far off that produced by a highlighter pen using weld (in the right quantities, with the right mordanting up front). Bright & deep reds & blues are achievable as well, as are either bright or deep greens. The one thing i have not managed with weld/woad/madder is a bright deep green (weld + woad makes a rich green, weld in a copper-rich dyebath makes bright pale greens), but of course whether the amount of dyestuff expended to achieve these colours would have been considered cost effective in period is another matter.

2d
N.
(by no means an expert but knows the theory and has tinkered a bit & hung around with those that have a lot)

[John M McDermott]

Tim Edwards wrote:

I must admit, it has long puzzled me that there seems to be an absence of evidence for dyed linen from the Roman world, from my own limited experience, it is not difficult to achieve.
I spent an afternoon examining coptic textiles from the V & A Museum, and found it odd that where coloured clavi and orbiculi were added to linen tunics, they always seemed to be executed in dyed wool.

This is interesting. I have not heard of linen tunics with clavii. Actually, I had expected linen tunics to be rare. How were the clavii attached?

[John M McDermott]

Graham Sumner wrote:

I am not sure I understand this statement as there is plenty of evidence for clothing colour in the Roman world it is just that in this respect the evidence suggests they tended to dye wool rather than linen. While most of the dye from textiles found in Northern Europe may have been lost the same can not be said for those found in Egypt were the dye survives very well. A gleaming White was obviously something that was regarded as important and a status symbol. The candidates for elections wore whitened clothes hence the name, Christ was described as having shining white clothes and soldiers on parade wore whitened clothes.

The Egyptian funeral portraits show ladies wearing very brightly coloured clothes in reds purples blues and greens. The soldiers in these paintings wear red, blue and olive green cloaks with their whitened tunics so obviously in their very best outfits for their portrait.

If you are having problems with a course wool scarf you can always invest in a very fine weave and some Roman garments in wool are almost silk like. Another accident of discovery is that we do not know how widespread the use of cotton was. There is more evidence coming to light for its use all the time. As an officer there is probably no reason why you could not have a cotton scarf.

Where does this logic lead us though? If white was the color then it would not matter whether the focale was wool or linen; the conclusion we are driven to is that they must have been white. You could have your focale any color you wanted, so long as it was white.

But is this necessarily so? A tunic is not a focale. Neither is a cloak a tunic. Cloaks did not follow the white rule, so why would the focale?

There is a carving of an auxiliary on Trajan's column with a head dangling by the hair from his teeth. He wears a graceful focale. One can only wonder if there are traces of paint on it.

[Cheyenne]

This is interesting. I have not heard of linen tunics with clavii. Actually, I had expected linen tunics to be rare. How were the clavii attached?

Most of the tunic fragments bar maybe 3-4 (one I have myself from a Turkish collection) have been made from linen. It is usually due to the preservation conditions being somewhat more desirable in hotter countries (such as egypt, syria & Byzantine) and as such, the everyday wear in such countries tend to be linen derived. Most of the more complete tunics I have seen at the Bolton Museum, the V & A & the Bode Museum in Berlin have been linen with woolen clavii/orbiculii embellishment. We should also remember however, that what we are seeing in these collections are also textiles that have seen some recycling from other garments in most instances. Regardless of how we porytray our rather more complete tunics which we strive to provide the 'woven in' image - it was probably more common for the 'man in the street' to have been portraying a tunic which was patched up - maybe also with fine woolen decoration reused from an earlier example and re-attached to a coarser linen example.

Its a thought, and the more I study coptic textiles, the more convinced I am that re-use was far more wide spread that we usually talk about

Claire

[Graham Sumner]

Hi John

John wrote:

If white was the color then it would not matter whether the focale was wool or linen; the conclusion we are driven to is that they must have been white. You could have your focale any color you wanted, so long as it was white.

Just a reminder of one of your original comments:

My purpose is the focale. I shy away from burlap and find linen really nice to my skin.

So just trying to help you John with your particular circumstances. As I have said I have come across a couple of examples of military looking types who wear white focale. Maybe these two particular characters felt the same as you and liked something softer around the neck. Otherwise there is little evidence for scarves at all never mind colour!

The most common material for clothing would have been wool and there was an established dye industry in Roman times. Nevertheless it is still also possible that many textiles were not dyed at all. This does not mean they were all white as un-dyed wool can come in a variety of shades which Roman writers suggest also includes red and red brown. The yellow brown cloaks so common in Roman art were almost certainly made from un-dyed wool, in one case we can see the rough texture. When I have suggested that Romans soldiers wore a red colour this would not mean they all wore the same shade, far from it. More expensive dyes of red of different prices were available. Many Roman paintings show clothes in a pink colour which I have pointed out on another thread was considered a very masculine colour up until modern times.

The Roman period paintings from Egypt show men mainly in white clothing tunics and cloaks and women in coloured clothing. The exceptions are those men who appear to be military types as they have studded belts and swords but apart from one or two exceptions they have white tunics too but their cloaks are brightly coloured. A fact pointed out several times is that a white colour also indicates a person who can afford to keep their clothes clean. In the article by Fuentes he mentions a group of soldiers perhaps some type of immunes who may even have been named after their white clothing. So as a rule men in general liked to wear white clothing as a status symbol as men like to wear western style suites today. They are mostly black or dark blue and you would get as much comments in modern times turning up to work at the office in shorts and T shirt as any Roman would turning up in the Senate in a Greek tunic and Cloak. Perfectly acceptable at home but not for serious business for which the toga had to be worn.

As Claire has highlighted in her post there were also second hand clothes and an industry provided such clothes for the poorer classes. For example at Mons Claudianus a tunic was found which had been made up from a cloak. Some of the clothes found in Egypt in particular cloaks had been used as burial shrouds. Other clothing ended up as toilet paper. It not glamorous but that is often the best there is. In Europe it is not generally possible to even guess what the textiles came from as they are so fragmentary. While a lot of textiles from Egypt are linen with wool decorations it is probable that in Europe they would be wool with wool decorations.

As far as evidence goes we are still scratching the surface. With clothing colour the best evidence will always be Egypt until more research is carried out on traces of dye in European contexts but as regards military clothing colour a pattern is beginning to emerge even from European finds but one which will still need interpretation and lots more evidence before anything is regarded as conclusive. Apparently it is very hard to detect green dye from ancient textiles which might account for it's rarity but this colour does not show up very much in Roman art either.

When Fuentes wrote his article in 1987 he discussed less than 20 sources for military clothing colour, while in my book last year I published almost 150 sources and yet this is still a contentious issue. So it makes you think about many other topics and hard 'facts' about the Roman military which are based on far far less!

Sorry John it is late and I am rambling but if there is anything I can help you with it is always a pleasure.

Graham.

[John M McDermott]

This is interesting. I have not heard of linen tunics with clavii. Actually, I had expected linen tunics to be rare. How were the clavii attached?

Most of the tunic fragments bar maybe 3-4 (one I have myself from a Turkish collection) have been made from linen. It is usually due to the preservation conditions being somewhat more desirable in hotter countries (such as egypt, syria & Byzantine) and as such, the everyday wear in such countries tend to be linen derived. Most of the more complete tunics I have seen at the Bolton Museum, the V & A & the Bode Museum in Berlin have been linen with woolen clavii/orbiculii embellishment. We should also remember however, that what we are seeing in these collections are also textiles that have seen some recycling from other garments in most instances. Regardless of how we porytray our rather more complete tunics which we strive to provide the 'woven in' image - it was probably more common for the 'man in the street' to have been portraying a tunic which was patched up - maybe also with fine woolen decoration reused from an earlier example and re-attached to a coarser linen example.

Its a thought, and the more I study coptic textiles, the more convinced I am that re-use was far more wide spread that we usually talk about

Claire

What period are these tunics?

[John M McDermott]

I would say your comments are always helpful.

Just in case I missed it, what is the emerging pattern?

John

[Lepidina]

Ironically, this subject came up today in a military history timeline event. I took a fellow Celt over to see a friend of mine in the Appin camp who had a nice display of natural dyes. Our basic thesis on colors of clothing is this:

A) Fabric dyeing was a skilled trade practiced for thousands of years. While we might think it's "hard" or "time consuming", people did this for a living and thus had the process down to a science. If people took the time to hand spin thread with a drop spindle and weave it with a warp-weighted loom, having to let a dye bath ferment for a week, doing a 2 or more step process to get a color, or having to mordant something 3-4 times really isn't that much work in the grand scheme of things.
B) You can get any color you want with natural dyes. Seriously. I was razzed for tying my hair up with a bright pink piece of wool. I grabbed one of my friend's natural dye bundles and showed the razzer the exact same color.
C) While all dyes will fade with washing and exposure to sunlight, it doesn't fade THAT fast. Plus clothing was redyed so the whole "natural dyes fade quickly" and thus all their clothing was faded is a myth. Again, said natural dye friend has a ball of bright yellow yarn that she'd had on display for 10 years and it's maybe a shade lighter than it was 10 years ago when she first dyed it.
D) Existent fabrics are generally flukes and not representative of common fabrics and colors. To get a real picture of what colors were popular and what was being dyed, you need to look at dyers inventories and records from other textile merchants. If we know that Legio I ordered 500 tunics that those tunics came from Joe the textile merchant who used Bob the dyer who tended to use a lot of madder, that is evidence that those tunics were probably red. It's not conclusive but it helps paint a larger picture of what was being used and where it was being worn. If tunic orders suddenly jump around the time of a big parade or a battle, that's further evidence that red might have been worn for parades or battles.
E) Undergarments were typically not dyed in any time period because they didn't show. Plus white garments are easier to clean because you can just bleach them. White is also used for garments that MUST be kept clean or to show off cleanliness.

Thus, I usually say that unless a specific color or dye has a religious significance, is really expensive, or has other social or economical restrictions such as sumptuary laws, people would pretty much wear whatever color they wanted to. It should also be noted that sumptuary laws were frequently broken so they aren't necessarily a hard and fast rule.

For example, senators and other political types wore specific colors of togas and clavi depending on their office or their political activity. Thus making your clavi green is probably wrong because that wasn't a color that was used for clavi (This is off the top of my head and I'm not an expert on who wore what clavi when so if someone knows differently, please correct me). Linen probably wasn't dyed black because true black is hard to get even with modern dyes. BUT black wool was readily available so if you need black, use wool. Women are depicted as ONLY wearing white tapes in their hair thus any other color would be most likely be wrong. There are sumptuary laws about Tyrian purple, the shade of purple that comes from sea snails. The Jews also used this color for religious garments so again, be careful about these colors, though purple can be achieved through other dyes as well and only that specific shade of purple was regulated.

As for the focale, unless there is documentation that it is a specific color or there is a special color that had a specific meaning (i.e. thought to ward off evil or offer protection), I'd say it was probably a scrap piece of cloth and could probably be any color. Think about it, it's around your neck to keep your armor from rubbing and to absorb sweat. It's not going to show and it's going to be perpetually grubby so why waste a good piece of cloth on that? You're going to want a nice, soft, worn piece of cloth that isn't going to irritate your neck and will absorb the sweat. Old tunics are perfect for that.

As for fabrics, since someone mentioned that wool was scratchy and thus he used linen, it's very expensive to get nice wool these days. Most of the tunics I see made out of wool today would be considered "coarse" for the time. There just isn't the demand for fine grade wool fabrics today unless you are doing high-end fashion. The Romans would have had a wide range of wool fabrics from stuff that felt like burlap for "cheap clothes" to stuff that felt like cashmere to gauzy sheer wools. In fact, my theory is that women's clothing was primarily sheer or very thin wool to get the right draping. You can't use the amount of fabric they did for their dresses and get the right draping with most of the common linen and wool that is readily available today. It's too bulky and you end up looking blobby instead of elegant like the statues. So the upshot of this is don't let you judgement be skewed by "wool was too scratchy" or too hot. Back then it wasn't all as scratchy and they were used to it to boot. Plus Summer weight wool is as cool as linen in a hot, dry climate. Heck even today I knit with wool that people can't believe is 100% wool because it is so soft. It's depends on the breed of sheep and the processing.

[John M McDermott]

Well, well, what do we have here?

[Doc]

I have a normal red wool tunic and wool focale (blue and red). However, as was pointed out, in Egypt there is evidence for linen. Thus I made for myself three linen tunics/focales (white: vesta candida, red and green since on the tombstone reconstruction of one centurion, it is believed to be a green tunic of course there is no evidence for the material). However, I am also in the market for a nice white wool tunic.

I have to agree with Lepidina, that categorizing with clothing is not exactly the way to go. I think of Roman society since they were human like us, to make choices as we do. We wear appropiate clothing for certain events but when casusal people just throw on what they have and what is clean-maybe.

I also agree that summer weight wool is quite light. However, I also tend to believe that linen would have been used when hot as well. I do not think that we can categorically put linen on the back burner of rarity.
I also think that linen was used to make undetunics? (I think I read this somewhere but do not recall)

I also agree that the wools would have been of different softness. Some people think that the comercially available wool tunics that do not show the herringbone or diamond pattern are wrong since they appear to have a fluffy surface without texture. However, if we consider that they treated the wool with quills or wood teeth (I forgot the term), you would get that texture apparent on the modern reconstructions void of the pattern.

[Matthew Amt]

Well, well, what do we have here?

Cool! Where is this mosaic from? The tunic looks green, with black or dark blue clavi. I've actually got one like that, ha! Red sagum. Also interesting that the tunic is worn short, soldier-style. And he appears to be trying to commit suicide by following that boar... Possibly he just ran across it accidentally, but he's still toast.

Thanks for sharing that!

Matthew

[Lepidina]

I have a normal red wool tunic and wool focale (blue and red). However, as was pointed out, in Egypt there is evidence for linen.

I think linen was the ONLY fabric in Egypt for centuries. I can't recall any native sheep in the area so wool would have come with the Greeks and Romans. They also had cotton, hence the term "Egyptian cotton". I think the original Egyptian cotton no longer exists. What we have today is grown in South America and isn't quite the same. Cotton would have also come from India but I don't know how much it was used outside the warmer areas of the empire.[/quote]

I also agree that the wools would have been of different softness. Some people think that the comercially available wool tunics that do not show the herringbone or diamond pattern are wrong since they appear to have a fluffy surface without texture. However, if we consider that they treated the wool with quills or wood teeth (I forgot the term), you would get that texture apparent on the modern reconstructions void of the pattern.

That's part of the fulling process after the cloth is woven. It's called "raising the nap". Wool is fuzzy after it is fulled and the surface needs to be trimmed in order to make it smooth. This is done by combing the surface with metal combs or using a prickly plant like a teasel pod and then shaving the fibers down. The pattern in the weaving would still show through. Most reenactors use something like boiled wool for their tunics because good woven wool is hard to find and is expensive. I found some lovely light-weight Pendleton wool last weekend for $12/yd and I am now kicking myself for not getting it. oh well. Next time.

[John M McDermott]

Cool! Where is this mosaic from?

You would have to ask Cacaius. He posted it on his topic in the Marketplace. He is proposing to make some of the fabric.

[John M McDermott]

Well, well, what do we have here?

Cool! Where is this mosaic from? The tunic looks green, with black or dark blue clavi. I've actually got one like that, ha! Red sagum. Also interesting that the tunic is worn short, soldier-style. And he appears to be trying to commit suicide by following that boar... Possibly he just ran across it accidentally, but he's still toast.

Thanks for sharing that!

Matthew

Well, yeah, there is lots of interesting stuff. He has a beard, curly hair, is carrying a switch and two baskets across his shoulders.

Also, his tunic is definitely at high port, with no room for modesty. Hot pants?

Also, note the vacuous expression.