A vital sourcebook for information on clothing and textiles in the middle ages, containing many previously unprinted documents.

This volume is a unique work that brings together the latest research from across the range of disciplines which contribute to our knowledge of medieval dress and textiles.

The best new research on medieval clothing and textiles, drawing from a range of disciplines. The usual wide range of approaches to garments and fabrics appears in this tenth volume. Three chapters focus on practical matters: a description of the medieval vestments surviving at Castel Sant'Elia in Italy; a survey of the spread of silk cultivation to Europe before 1300; and a documentation of medieval colour terminology for desirable cloth. Two address social significance: the practice of seizing clothing from debtors in fourteenth-century Lucca, and the transformation of the wardrobe of Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII, upon her marriage to the king of Scotland. Two delve into artistic symbolism: a consideration of female headdresses carved at St Frideswide's Priory in Oxford, and a discussion of how Anglo-Saxon artists used soft furnishings to echo emotional aspects of narratives. Meanwhile, in an exercise in historiography, there is an examination of the life of Mrs. A.G.I. Christie, author of the landmark Medieval English Embroidery. ROBIN NETHERTON is a professional editor and a researcher/lecturer on the interpretation of medieval European dress; GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester. Contributors: Michelle L. Beer, Elizabeth Coatsworth, Valija Evalds, Christine Meek, Maureen C. Miller, Christopher J. Monk, Lisa Monnas, Rebecca Woodward Wendelken

The best new research on medieval clothing and textiles, drawing from a range of disciplines. Topics in this volume range widely throughout the European middle ages. Three contributions concern terminology for dress. Two deal with multicultural medieval Apulia: an examination of clothing terms in surviving marriage contracts from the tenth to the fourteenth century, and a close focus on an illuminated document made for a prestigious wedding. Turning to Scandinavia, there is an analysis of clothing materials from Norway and Sweden according to gender and social distribution. Further papers consider the economic uses of cloth and clothing: wool production and the dress of the Cistercian community at Beaulieu Abbey based on its 1269-1270 account book, and the use of clothing as pledge or payment in medieval Ireland. In addition, there is a consideration of the history of dagged clothing and its negative significance to moralists, and of the painted hangings that were common in homes of all classes in the sixteenth century. ROBIN NETHERTON is a professional editor and a researcher/lecturer on the interpretation of medieval European dress; GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER is Emerita Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester. Contributors: Antonietta Amati, Eva I. Andersson, John Block Friedman, Susan James, John Oldland, Lucia Sinisi, Mark Zumbuhl

Kate Dimitrova et Margaret Goehring: Introduction. --Textiles in context (David Ganz: Pictorial textiles and their performance : the star mantle of Henry II. --Warren T. Woodfin: Orthodox liturgical textiles and clerical self-referentiality. --Henry Schilb: The epitaphioi of Stephen the Great. --Christiane Elster: Liturgical textiles as papal donations in late medieval Italy. --Stefanie Seeberg: Monument in linen : a thirteenth-century embroidered catafalque cover for the members of the beata stirps of saint Elizabeth of Hungary. --Kristin Böse: Cultures re-shaped : textiles from the castilian royal tombs in Santa María de Las Huelgas in Burgos). --The represented textile as sign (Catherine Walden: "So lyvely in cullers and gilting" : vestments on episcopal tomb effigies in England. --Evelin Wetter: Material evidence, theological requirements and medial transformation : "textile strategies" in the court art of Charles IV. --Jennifer E. Courts: Weaving legitimacy : the Jouvenel des Ursins family and the construction of nobility in fifteenth-century France. --Yuko Kadoi: Textiles in the great mongol Shahnama : a new approach to ilkhanid dress).

A vivid and detailed reconstruction of the costume worn in England before the arrival of the Norman conquerers.

Scraps of clothing and other textiles are among the most evocative items to be discovered by archaeologists, signalling as they do their owner's status and concerns.