Category Archives: weavers

Silk

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One of the common threads (pun intended) in both my mystery series is the importance of weaving. It is not hyperbole to say that without the weavers – most of them women – there would be no cloth and no clothes. Until the Industrial Revolution, when weaving was mechanized, all of the cloth was woven by hand weavers on looms.

Wool is a forgiving thread to weave. It has a little stretch. Linen is harder since the threads have no stretch at all. Silk, with his hair fine threads, is truly difficult.

The myth around the invention of silk goes like this. In about 2700 B. C. E., an emperor’s wife was sipping hot tea when the cocoon of a silkworm fell into her cup. The hot liquid dissolved the sticky coating and the threads unwound. Genetic traces and archaeological finds put the domestication of the silkworm to between 4000 and 5000 years ago, though wild silk may have been woven by then. Chinese archaeologists say they found traces of silk in the soil in a tomb from around 8500 years ago. Wow!

Millennia of selective breeding created the B. Mori moths that are blind and white. They lay eggs on mulberry leaves. The larvae feed on the leaves and then spin the cocoons. The silk is made up of two proteins – fibroin and sericin. The process of stretching and spinning these proteins through an opening near the worm’s jaw creates the solid fiber. Although finer than a human hair, silk has tremendous tensile strength.

One thing I didn’t know: silk is used in medicine. Because it decays slowly in the human body, leaving nothing behind, and is strong, silk is used for surgical sutures. It has been used for centuries as bandages. And the Chinese used it in armor. Silk help shield any wounds.

Weavers and weaving

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In prehistoric sites, remnants of string skirts have been found. Plant fibers, twisted into cords, and knotted together. Think macrame. From this simple beginning arose weaving. Every culture has some form of weaving from the simplest form of loom to the more complicated ones used by hand weavers today.

The Egyptians used a ground loom that, to my modern body, looks uncomfortable to use.

How do we know the Egyptians were weaving so long ago? Well, there are pictures inscribed next to the hieroglyphics.. And also, remnants of clothing has been found in excavations. In 1913, Sir Flinders Petrie found a pile of linen cloth about thirty miles outside of Cairo. Years later, researchers from the Victoria and Albert Museum were sorting though the pile when they came upon a remarkably well preserved dress. It was nicknamed the Tarkhan dress and the age was estimated at 5000 years. Almost fifty years later, the dress was carbon dated and discovered to be from about 3000 B.C.E. Easily from Egypt’s first dynasty, maybe even before.

In Peru, the women employed a back strap loom.

The early Scandanavians used a loom with weights tied to the bottom threads.

The Navaho, who still weave blankets and so for sale, use a simple four piece frame.

In every culture, weavers enjoyed fairly high status. Although not aristocrats, they were among the skilled craftsmen – what passed for the middle class of that time. Without weavers, there would have been no cloth.

Textiles were time-consuming to make, and thus expensive, and learning to weave takes time. In the Middle Ages, an apprenticeship took between seven to nine years. Weave

I wanted to pay homage to this valuable craft. In my Bronze Age Crete mysteries, Martis comes from a family of weavers. (Yes, even in Bronze Age Crete, the women were weavers. Loom weights were found in Akrotiri. And the Minoans, who were the sailors of this age, traded the textiles all over the Aegean.) She does not want to be a weaver, hoping for something more exciting and adventurous – like jumping over a charging bull.

In the Will Rees mysteries, he is a weaver, a traveling weaver. Since women were not supposed to work or leave home, men like Will Rees traversed the early USA with a loom in their wagon bed, weaving for the farmwives.

What saw the end of several millennia of weaving as a profession?

Well, Rees is already seeing the end of his career with the importing of calicoes and other fabrics from India. But the real end to this profession came with the Industrial Revolution and the mechanization of weaving.

Dyes in Bronze Age Crete

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Since handweaving is one of my hobbies, or was until my books took off and I no longer had time, I am fascinated by ancient textiles. Until modern times, and the Industrial Revolution when looms and weaving became mechanized, weaving was one of the most important professions. In Egypt, some of the hieroglyphics inscribed on walls show weavers. And loom weights have been found in Akrotiri, buried in ash when the volcano that blew the center out of Santorini and severely weakened the Minoan civilization erupted.

Working in tandem with the weavers were the dyers. Of course, until the 1880s when the synthetic dyes were invented, all the dyes were natural dyes. The women of Bronze Age Crete used dyes to create their elaborate and colorful patterned textiles.

The Cup Bearer

Notice the colorful stripes on the figures loincloth in the restored fresco from Knossos.

The camp stool fresco

What were the dyes they used? Yellow from saffron. (A famous fresco depicts a group of young girls collecting saffron from crocuses. Yellow was the color of the young girl.) Blue from indigo. Red from the cochineal beetle. And, perhaps most interested and valuable, purple from the shell of the murex sea snail. Thousands and thousands of shells have been found, speaking to a large operation. Because so many shells were needed to make the dye, purple was very expensive. Hence the name, royal purple. It was too expensive for the common folk, right up through the Middle Ages.

Where is green? Although green is all around us in nature, it is a very hard color to find as a dye. Using green plants does not usually give a green color and if it does, the color is not permanent.

Green usually has been made by dyeing blue and overdyeing yellow. When it was discovered by the painters, green contained arsenic. Napoleon is supposed to have died from arsenic poisoning from the fumes coming off his wallpaper.

What did people do all day in Bronze Age Crete?

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Women, as expected, took care of children. And they were famous as spinners, weavers and dyers, as the previous posts demonstrate.

But what did the men do?

Well, farming was certainly a profession. Even many of the people who lived in Knossos owned farms. Besides goats and sheep and cattle, the farms grew grains and vegetables as well as the very important olives and grapes.

There were other professions, such as gold smith, jewelry maker, mosaic maker, but the primary job for men involved the sea. Minoan Crete had the best navy in the ancient world at this time. It was so superior that an Egyptian Pharaoh (one of the Ramses) sent a request to Crete for help pushing back the Sea Peoples. These people were sailing from Anatolia and attacking the rich cities of Egypt.

Besides the Navy, the men roamed far and wide, exploring the Mediterranean Sea and trading. (This was certainly a factor in the importance of women. The wives provided the woven goods for trade. As well, the women left behind ran the businesses while their husbands and other male family members were gone.)

Minoan fishing boat

Finally, fishing was an important part of this culture. The people who lived on the island ate from the sea. The mosaics show octopi, dolphins, and a variety of sea creatures. Fish bones, sheep bones and beef bones have been found during archaeological excavations.

Women’s work in Ancient Crete

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Women have always worked. And up until the modern era, their jobs they’ve done remained fairly consistent.

First and foremost, the care of children. The work that women have done has been tasks that can be scheduled around childcare.

Across cultures, women have been responsible for food production – babies can be brought to the garden – and clothing their families. Although men did some farming, they owned oxen, most of the crops they relied upon were not cereals but orchard crops such as olives and grapes.

Weaving, up until modern times, has always been one of a woman’s primary jobs. Without the textiles the women made, there would be no cloth. Flax – and linen – known since Neolithic times, was joined by wool. Wool is easy to work with since it has a little more stretch than linen. Wool comes in a variety of shades, black gray, cream and more. It takes dyes easily as well How can we be sure they were weavers? Spindles and looms weights have been discovered in the excavations. I saw them myself in Akrotiri, a town buried by ash and now being revealed.

The Minoan men traded these textiles all over the Mediterranean.

The designs were very complicated, so complicated we can only assume a long learning curve, especially if the patterns had to memorized. One of the popular patterns consisted of heart spirals set point to point with red diamonds in the center. Colored spirals were another favorite. How do we know this? Statuary and wall painting depict gorgeously clad women in elaborate clothing dancing, picking saffron, and more. And not just in Crete either. The patterns have been recorded by Egyptian artists.

No wonder Nephele, Martis’s mother is horrified when Martis refuses to become a weaver.

It was not until the Industrial Revolution and mechanization of weaving that hand weaving ceased to be an in-house task and a profession.

Next time: Priestesses.

Death in the Great Dismal – Giveaway

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I am so excited to announce a giveaway for my new book: Death in the Great Dismal. Will and Lydia travel south, to the Great Dismal swamp, They have been asked to rescue Ruth, a woman taken from Maine and sold down south. She has escaped to a village in the heart of the swamp and is living there with other fugitives.

Of course, Will and Lydia are in the village no more than a few days when the first murder occurs.

The Giveaway ends the first week of January.

Gender in Will Rees’s America

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Several readers have expressed the opinion that Lydia should be the detective, not her husband. I can see their point. I think she is more intelligent than he is as well. But I chose Will Rees for some practical reasons.

Although women were not so circumscribed as they became later, in the Victorian times, they had little freedom. Everything they had, and I mean everything right up to their children and the clothes on their back, belonged to their husbands. The farm on which Rees and Lydia are living went to Lydia on the death of her first husband. She promised it to the Shaker community nearby. But when she married Rees, that farm became his property, leading to no end of issues with the Shaker community that expected to take possession.

And while we are on the subject of inheritance, it is important to realize that widows did not inherit from their husbands unless SPECIFICALLY MENTIONED BY NAME IN THE WILL. If they were not included, they became the responsibility of the eldest son and could be tossed in the street if he so desired.

Even their clothing was owned by their husband. I read one contemporary account of a woman who sought and obtained a divorce. She had to marry again in her petticoats.

Although there are accounts of women printers, silversmiths and more, most of them were the widows or daughters of the craftsmen who had taught them the skills. Only then could they actually work in these fields. No one would accept them as apprentices. (This has changed very slowly. I wanted to be a carpenter as a girl. The local trade school would not accept me because of my gender and told me to become a secretary.)

The other issue is travel. Rees is a traveling weaver; he goes from house to house and farm to farm to weave the yard spun during the previous winter. Even if Lydia owned a loom, she would be expected to weave at home. She would not have the freedom to leave that home, to investigate or for any other purpose, that her husband had.

Unfortunately, these were the challenges women faced. ( In many ways, they have not changed so greatly.) So Lydia has become a detective, but part of a team.

Goodreads Giveaway

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A Circle of Dead Girls was just formally released on March 3rd. (I say formally because Amazon had it in mid-February.)

Death in the Great Dismal will come out October 7.

These titles are eight and nine, respectively.

Since it has been many years since the publication of the first three in the Will Rees saga, (and also because with people kept at home because of the corona virus – COVID-19, they have more time to read) I am offering a Goodreads giveaway of A Simple Murder:

Yes, I will be giving away three books to three lucky winners. Go to Goodreads to sign on.

The Luddites

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Calling someone a Luddite now is an accusation of being anti-technology and anti-progress.  The name comes from a group of protesters, weavers and other textile workers, in the 19thcentury who blackened their faces and broke into factories to destroy the new weaving and spinning machinery. They named themselves Luddites,  after King Ludd, the fictional leader.

Their struggles resonate with me, first because Will Rees, my primary protagonist and detective, is a weaver in the late 18thcentury. He will lose his profession as the textile factories take over. (The first textile mill was built in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1814.) And second, because the fears of the textile workers – that the machinery would replace them – is being replicated today in a score of professions. The men who called themselves Luddites were not anti-machinery. They were fighting to maintain their livelihoods. 

These textile workers had reason to worry. Prior to the invention of the weaving machines, weaving was a skilled occupation. Weavers underwent an apprenticeship of seven years before they could call themselves weavers and set up shop. With the transition to the machines, the time and energy invested in learning the skills for this profession was wasted. And unnecessary. The weaving machines were more efficient and they allowed for less skilled, and thus lower paid, workers. 

Although the Luddites are remembered for the destruction of the machinery, they were not protesting the new equipment. Instead, they opposed the use of the machinery to sidestep labor practices that were standard at that time. As the men lost their jobs, the factory owners, to maximize their profits, employed women and children who were paid much less. Children as young as six worked 14 hours a day in the factories.

The situation was slightly different in the United States. The population was smaller, for one thing, so there was not the same labor pool. To solve the problem Lowell hired young women, who became known as mill girls, between the ages of 15 and 35. He of course paid them less than men. (To his credit, he chose not to employ children.)

In Great Britain the Government sided with the factory owners.  Machine breaking was made a capital crime. The Luddites clashed several times with British soldiers and groups of men, some part of the protest, some not, were swept up. The harsh sentences – execution and penal transportation – that were levied on those men found guilty of being Luddites quickly destroyed the movement. We are seeing similar dislocation today.

Lumbering in Maine

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Simply Dead is set against the mountains and the lumbering industry in Maine.

In the spring, logging camps were set up in the woods and the massive trees were cut down with nothing more than human sweat and axes. Lumber was important for building, yes, but this was also the era of sailing ships and tall masts were a requirement.

The loggers would ‘drive’ the logs down one of the many rivers to Falmouth. The men would ‘roll’ the logs down the rivers by standing on them. I describe this more fully in my book. The lumber drive would end in Falmouth with a celebration. (I’ll bet. Talk about dangerous work!)

Paul Bunyan and his blue ox are part of the American myth and he is based on the real lumber men. In Bangor there is a statue of Paul Bunyan.

Paul Bunyan statue in Bangor, Maine.JPG

Demonstrations of log rolling are a feature of some of the Maine shows.