"day by day she would weave at the great web"

March 11, 2016 8:03 PM

"Older than bronze and as new as nanowires, textiles are technology — and they have remade our world time and again"

for more check out the American Textile History Museum or The Textile Musuem

posted by the man of twists and turns (8 comments total)

textiles are technology

I'm not buying that Venus de Milo theory, so I'm initiating my own research on the subject.
posted by fairmettle at 3:02 AM on March 12, 2016

The story of polar fleece is interesting. Developed in the late 70s from recycled plastic bottles by Malden Mills in Lawrence MA. In December 1995, the factory burned down in a horrendous fire. The CEO at the time, Aaron Feuerstein, famously continued to pay his 3000 workers for 6 months while the factory was being rebuilt, a move that eventually cost him his job. The company rebranded itself Polartec and recovered financially although it's had its ups and downs since then.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 5:15 AM on March 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

This was a great read, thanks! I remember it kind of blew my mind when I took my first anthropology class and the teacher pointed out that textiles probably existed at the same time as stone tools, but they were made of organic materials and didn't survive. It's not mentioned in the article, but the very first textiles were probably cords for snares and bowstrings.
posted by Nibbly Fang at 9:26 AM on March 12, 2016

*love*

We drag out heirloom metaphors – ‘on tenterhooks’, ‘tow-headed’, ‘frazzled’ – with no idea that we’re talking about fabric and fibres. 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 talk of lifespans and spin‑offs and never wonder why drawing out fibres and twirling them into thread looms so large in our language.

This makes me sad for a related reason:

By the time Joseph Marie Jacquard’s card-driven machine came around in 1801, human weavers had been imagining and recording complex either-or patterns for thousands of years.

Jacquard was from Lyon, France. Some of his first looms are still around, in museums there. The largest textile museum, with priceless examples going back hundreds of years, and illustrations of what even older examples would have looked like – Lyon was a textile center of the world for millenia – is at risk of being closed. (link to French petition to save it – as someone who grew up with a great-grandmother, both grandmothers, and my mother who taught me how to sew, crochet, and knit, and who visited this museum countless times when in Lyon because of its incredible richness, I'm speechless that its closure is even possible).

These are wonderful links, thanks so much for sharing!
posted by fraula at 11:29 AM on March 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

This is great, thanks! Really anything that uses Elizabeth Wayland Barber as a source is pretty much guaranteed to pique my interest.
posted by janell at 12:55 PM on March 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Wayland Barber is the greatest, yes.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 5:22 PM on March 12, 2016

I read an ethno-mathematics article years ago that argued that the Mayan women weavers used calculus in their patterns. I wish I could find it...
posted by mareli at 5:55 PM on March 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

If you do find it, please post it back here. I'd love to read more about it.
posted by benito.strauss at 6:23 PM on March 12, 2016 [1 favorite]