Subject: Pre-columbian ...

From: [email-masked] (David Adams)
Date: 25 Jun 93 11:40:39 CDT

With all the discussion about what things were like on the two hemispheres 
before Columbus, I begin to wonder what things were like without cotton
in places like Italy or Spain.  No calicoes.  No cotton pirate shirts.
What did they make those pretty flamenco dresses with in those days?
No cotton muslin for sails.  What were the sails of the Santa Maria made of
anyway?  Hemp?  Nettles?

Ok, to make this a food question, what did people use for cheese cloth?

---
David, N0WWN

--David C. Adams  Statistician  Cray Research Inc.  [email-masked]
     -Sourdough and Ham-              - Minnesotans for Global Warming! -
	(&gardner)

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From: [email-masked] ()
Date: 25 Jun 1993 18:51:15 GMT

>before Columbus, I begin to wonder what things were like without cotton
....

Oh, not to worry.  Cotton is Old World.  They wove it in Egypt from 
_really_ ancient times.  The word "gauze" comes from Gaza (as in Strip...)

>No cotton muslin for sails.  What were the sails of the Santa Maria made of

Probably hemp.  And what we'd use cotton for today, they used linen for
in the Middle Ages.  Cotton _was_ available, but being imported from the
Mediterranean it was awfully expensive.  

Somewhere in Thomas Tusser's _Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry_
(Elizabethan), there's a reference to going out into your hemp patch
and separating the male from the female plants.  Not in order to smoke
them--that doesn't seem to have occurred to anybody in England--but
because one lot had finer fibers than the other.  Fine hemp made coarse
homespun cloth (for rough work clothes and so forth), coarse hemp
made rope and sacking and stuff.  I have really got to get Mr. Tusser
out of the library again and re-read him.
>Ok, to make this a food question, what did people use for cheese cloth?

Linen, I bet.

Dorothy J. Heydt
UC Berkeley
[email-masked]

Disclaimer:  UCB and the Cozzarelli lab are not responsible for my
opinions, and in fact I don't think they know I have any.

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From: [email-masked] (David Adams)
Date: 25 Jun 93 14:42:47 CDT

In article [email-masked], [email-masked] () writes:
|In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] writes:
|>With all the discussion about what things were like on the two hemispheres 
|>before Columbus, I begin to wonder what things were like without cotton
|.....
|
|Oh, not to worry.  Cotton is Old World.  They wove it in Egypt from 
|_really_ ancient times.  The word "gauze" comes from Gaza (as in Strip...)
|

Oh, my mistake.  I thought it was new world.  I had read somewhere that
the ancient Incas had cotton that grew in colors, not just white.  I 
can't remember where, so who knows, maybe it was just my imagination.

---
David, N0WWN

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From: [email-masked] (Bayla Singer)
Date: 26 Jun 93 00:59:30 GMT

I know this isn't food-related... but would someone please tell me
more about ramie?  (post privately, if you prefer)  -- I'm over 50 
years old, and hadn't heard of this fiber until about three years
ago.

--bayla singer  [email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (Mary Shafer)
Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1993 02:25:15 GMT

On 26 Jun 93 00:59:30 GMT, [email-masked] (Bayla Singer) said:

Bayla> I know this isn't food-related... but would someone please tell
Bayla> me more about ramie?  (post privately, if you prefer) -- I'm
Bayla> over 50 years old, and hadn't heard of this fiber until about
Bayla> three years ago.

Ramie is a rather coarse plant fiber, much like linen.  Like linen,
the fiber comes from the stalks.

It became popular recently as a way of evading the textile quotas
placed on foreign textiles imported into the US.  Since ramie wasn't
used in textiles imported into the US, there was no quota on it and
the ramie textiles could be imported without limit, unlike cotton,
linen, and silk textiles.

I read about this in a New Yorker article about 5 years ago.  The
whole issue of foreign textiles and quotas therefor is quite a
political subject.

I think ramie is scratchy and ugly, but that's just my opinion.

--
Mary Shafer  DoD #362 KotFR NASA Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, CA
[email-masked]                 Of course I don't speak for NASA
 "A MiG at your six is better than no MiG at all."  Unknown US fighter pilot

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From: [email-masked] ()
Date: 27 Jun 1993 04:56:52 GMT

>years old, and hadn't heard of this fiber until about three years

Well, let's see.  As a plant, it's called Chinese sea-grass but I've
never seen it growing and can't tell how much like "sea-grass" it
looks like.

As a spinner, I have spun it; not impressed; it's sort of like wimpy,
flabby flax.  It bleaches to a dead white, though.

My local fabric store (a very good one) sometimes has a bolt or two
of ramie fabric in with the linens.  I don't buy it; I go with real
linen; the ramie fabric is also kind of wimpy compared to real linen.
Still, if that was all you had, I suppose it would be useful.

Dorothy J. Heydt
UC Berkeley

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From: [email-masked] (Bayla Singer)
Date: 27 Jun 93 09:30:16 GMT

Thanks to all who educated me about ramie, both privately and publicly.

--bayla singer

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From: [email-masked]
Date: 27 Jun 93 17:33:28 -0600

> never seen it growing and can't tell how much like "sea-grass" it
Also called nettle linen.  It's a phloem (bast) fiber, like flax (linen),
from a nettle-looking plant in the nettle family.  Boehmeria nivea
of the Urticaceae.
> flabby flax.  It bleaches to a dead white, though.
Hm.  Guess you haven't gotten the Good Stuff.  The good stuff has some of
the longest fibers in the plant world (>20 cm if I recall right), and
is also quite strong and lustrous.  I suspect that growing conditions
and mechanical or natural retting may have something to do with
fiber length and strength.

> Still, if that was all you had, I suppose it would be useful.

The only piece of 100% ramie I have is an old napkin that came with 
my great-great grandmother from Bohemia.  It's softer than linen or
cotton damask of similar age, but much more lustrous.   I must have 
a dozen or more ramie-cotton sweaters, and they seem to be wearing better
than the all-cotton.

Kay Klier  Biology Dept  UNI

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From: [email-masked] (Henry Troup)
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1993 02:20:43 GMT

"Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry", Thomas Tusser, 1580,
reprinted 1931, 1984 Oxford University Press, ISBM 0-19-286040-2
(paperback)

"Wife, pluck fro thy seed the fiemble hemp clene,
  this looketh more yellow, the other more greene:
Use ton for thy spinning, leave Mihel the tother,
  for shoo thred and halter, for rope and such other.

Now pulck up thy flax, for the maidens to spin,
  first see it dried and timelie got in.
And mowe up thy branke, and away with it drie,
  and howse it up close, out of danger to lie."

For July.

"Now pluck up thy hempe, and go beat out the seed,
   and afterward water it as ye see need:
But not in the river where cattle should drinke,
  for poisoning them and the people with stinke."

In September.
-- 
Henry Troup - [email-masked] (Canada) - BNR owns but does not share my opinions
		       Big Brother is double plus ungood