The author has done a fabulous job of making her subject interesting (I had to keep reminding myself that I really don't need a new hobby). The title was a little misleading: it's more about the creation of cloth, and the basics of clothing people with women, their other work, and how they interact with society secondary. I'm more interested in the latter than the former; the author did a good job of making me forget that when I was reading.

This was less about sewing, embroidery, etc, and more about spinning and weaving, with regular side trips in the materials used and how to prepare them to create thread and rope.

A book to keep in mind when discussing, or looking into, how women fit into society. I highly recommend it. ( )

In contemporary western society, fiber arts are practiced mostly by women. And, it turns out, that’s the way it’s been for thousands of years. But crafts like spinning and weaving were more than just hobbies. Textiles were integral to the economy as far back as paleolithic times. In this book, Elizabeth Wayland Barber describes why women came to be responsible for making cloth. Then she describes the various types of cloth, production methods, and end uses from the invention of string and sewing over 20,000 years ago, up to Classical Greece around 500 BCE.

Because textiles naturally degrade over time, researchers cannot rely solely on archaeological evidence. Barber found several other avenues of inquiry which she used to develop a picture of these early societies. For example, she obtained a great deal of insight from studying early language. If language included a word for cloth or a garment, then that item must have existed even if no physical remains have been found. The geographic scope is limited to what is now Europe and the Middle East, not because these were the only societies producing cloth, but for practical reasons: a broader scope would have made for a larger and possibly less accessible book.

I appreciated the way this book not only outlined the evolution of fiber arts, but validated the role of women and their contributions to society. ( )

12/2/22

Extremely interesting book. Tells the history of textiles and women's place in their production. Interesting things such as the fact that women have always been the main spinners of thread because it is a job that can be dropped quickly to take care of a burning pot or crying child, unlike say blacksmithing. ( )

What an interesting read!

Barber introduces her book with a very relevant story that also proves why she is the perfect choice to tell it. She weaves as a hobby, a profession that women have undertaken for many, many thousands of years. It’s a relatively simple craft, but there tricks of the trade that can only be deduced by somebody who has actually woven. But as Barber shows, women have been weaving for thousands of years, and academia has traditionally been male (for reference, the publish date of this book is 1994). Her postscript also calls out a tradition in academia to not attempt the craft to understand the difficulties ancient peoples would have experienced, and therefore likely draw incorrect conclusions.

There’s a few other things that have relegated the history of women to the wayside. Cloth rots, so unless it’s sunk in a bog or buried in an extremely arid tomb, it likely won’t survive to modern days. Sites that were dug up in the 1800s weren’t always kept separate by strata, so the timelines of technology can get very messy. Women are doing a lot of the monotonous duties at home, which are less worthy of great stories because they’re so unremarkable (e.g. a modern book would not explain every detail of how to drive a car, with how to put the car in reverse, how to use a turn signal, how to moderately apply the gas pedal, etc. It would just say that somebody drove somewhere).

Barber’s fascination with weaving is both a strength and a weakness for arguing her thesis. Her interest is obviously more towards the mechanics of weaving, such as the making of yarn, technological advancements to ease the craft and how they spread across the world. She’s much less focused on the intricacies of the life of the women. This isn’t immediately apparent - Barber definitely tries to share what cultural tidbits she’s been able to glean (one imagines that those remote European villages are losing more and more of their traditions as internet/globalization becomes more ubiquitous) - but her interest is pretty obviously more towards the actual making of fiber and fabric, than with what women were doing. There are a few offhand comments that they're also making food, but not in any kind of detail.

So while I appreciated the stories we got, I think I would have liked some more on all of the professions available to women. Obviously cloth-making was tremendously important (consider the fact that even noblewomen wove or embroidered. There was no escaping the necessity of clothing, even if a noblewoman’s products would likely be used as noble gifts or something like a storytelling tapestry that a serf woman wouldn’t have the luxury of time to detail), but if women are also in charge of daily food preparation, I would have liked to hear more about that. Barber postulates that women end up in the home because they need duties that are easy to put down to go deal with childcare. I can accept that hypothesis, but there absolutely has to be more to that life than just spinning or weaving.


In summary: good talk on the mechanics of weaving, I would have preferred more on actual treatment of women. ( )