Medieval Clothing and Textiles 6 - Tapa dura

A number of most interesting articles that shed important light on the cultural significance of clothing and textiles for the medieval world. MEDIAEVISTIK 24, 2011

As we have come to expect from this series, the latest volume [...] affords new insights into the material culture of the medieval world. TEXT

A volume that transcends subject boundaries and is well worth scrutiny. MEDIEVAL ARCHAEOLOGY

This sixth volume of Medieval Clothing and Textiles ranges widely, as ever, across England and Europe. It presents two groundbreaking articles in novel areas of textile and dress scholarship: an introduction to a previously unexamined class of embroidery (decorative manuscript repair), and an English-language overview of scholarly research on historical dress in Latvia. Among the other topics considered in the volume are two very different listings of clothing items from medieval Germany: an invented lexicon by the mystic Hildegard of Bingen, and an accounting of specific real garments worn by ordinary people and donated to finance the building of Strasbourg Cathedral. Papers also consider the mercantile world of clothing in medieval London: one gathers insight on dealers of secondhand clothing from the evidence of historical documents, while the other examines the social rise of the mercers in the light of their representation in literature, and their connections to the literary world. Further articles consider luxurious dress accessories with both worldly and spiritual significance, and analyse a French manual for English housewives, illuminating the often-overlooked topic of home linen production.

Contributors: Hilary Davidson, Ieva Pigozne, Valerie L. Garver, Christine Sciacca, Sarah L. Higley, William Sayers, Roger A. Ladd, Kate Kelsey Staples, Charlotte A. Stanford