Books and other Sources of Natural Fibres Information

Books
Wool
Fibre size
Sheep History
Sheep Breeds
Alpaca
Silk
Cotton
Linen and flax
Nettle and Hemp
Bamboo
Spinning & Spinning Wheels
Timeline
Glossary

Other sources of natural fibres information

Wool
Eileen Power (1941) “The Wool Trade in English Medieval History” re-published in the McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought,
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/power/WoolTrade.pdf

Munro, John H.A., "Industrial Change in the Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Low Countries: the Arrival of Spanish Merino Wools and the Expansion of the ‘Nouvelles Draperies’
http://repec.economics.utoronto.ca/files/UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-02-03.pdf

Fibre size
Melanie Barkley of Penn State University on “Wool Production Basics”
http://bedford.extension.psu.edu/agriculture/lessons/Wool%20Prod%20Basics.html

John Carlson of Western Illinois Uni on sheep breeds - “112 Breed Identification – Sheep”
http://www.wiu.edu/users/mfjpc/sheep.htm

Rosemary Brock of Textilelinks on “Wool Breeds”
http://www.textilelinks.com/author/rb/971111.html

SGS Wool Testing Services – Animal fibres other than wool – Possum
http://www.wooltesting.sgs.com/wool_testing_home_nz_v2/services_wooltesting_nz/possum_v2.htm

UN FAO – The yak. Second edition – Fibre production and hides
http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/006/AD347E/ad347e0f.htm

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History of Sheep
M L Ryder (1981). “Medieval sheep and their wool types”, in D W Crossley (ed), Medieval Industry – this is published on the Archaeology Data Service site as 3 separate but consecutive sections;
http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/cbaresrep/pdf/040/04002001.pdf

http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/cbaresrep/pdf/040/04002002.pdf

http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/cbaresrep/pdf/040/04002003.pdf

and ML Ryder (1984). “Medieval Sheep and Wool Types”, The Agricultural History Review pp. 15-28, is published on the British Agricultural History Society’s site at
http://www.bahs.org.uk/32n1a2.pdf

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Breeds of sheep
Oklahoma State University (OSU) Breeds of Livestock Project:
The Breeds of Livestock Project lists the livestock breeds worldwide and illustrates many of them in this alphabetic section on sheep breeds -
http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/sheep/index.htm

see the Sheep and Wool links page for more info.

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Other fibre animals - Alpacas, Rabbits, Goats etc
Mary-Russell Roberson of the Smithsonian Institute’s extensive article on the origin of South American camelids – “Discovering South America's Camels” in the January-February 2008 issue of the Smithsonian Institute (SI) magazine Zoogoer,
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Publications/ZooGoer/2008/1/Camelids.cfm

Mike Bruford “Alpaca DNA: From Wool to Genes (And Back Again!)”
http://www.alpacaworldmagazine.com/PDFs/summer04_07.pdf

Heather Pringle “Secrets of the Alpaca Mummies - did the ancient Inca make the finest woolen cloth the world has ever known?”
http://www.suri.com.au/library/secrets%20of%20the%20alpaca%20mummies.html

http://www.bartonalpacas.co.uk/fibre.php - record fibre sizes ranging from 21-41 microns with their individual alpacas of different ages

Wikipedia on Angora rabbit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angora_rabbit

European Fine Fibre Network (EFFN) Project covers fibres from Angora goats (mohair), Angora rabbits, Cashmere goats and fine wool sheep
http://www.macaulay.ac.uk/europeanfibre/

Understanding cashmere from Fashion Technology Magazine, Sept 2007
http://www.sgsgroup.com.hk/~/media/Global/Documents/Brochures/Cashmere_Leaflet_German_English _HR.pdf

IUCN Red List - Vicugna vicugna
http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/22956/0

UN FAO – The Yak. Second edition
http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/AD347E/ad347e00.HTM

see the Sheep and Wool links page for more info.

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Silk
James Rennie, John Obadiah Westwood (1835) “The Natural History of Insects” J. & J. Harper, Printers. http://books.google.com/books?id=Rtc4AAAAMAAJ&pg

Wormspit’s site on silkworms, silk moths and silk - types of silkworms and how to breed them
http://www.wormspit.com/index.htm

Llyn Payne “Mawata: Handspinning Silk Caps & Hankies” – preparing Mawata silk caps and hankies for hand spinning
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art53354.asp

Hadley Leggett (2009) “1 Million Spiders Make Golden Silk for Rare Cloth” Wired Science.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/spider-silk/

Jason Palmer (2012) “Spider silk spun into violin strings.” BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17232058

Cotton
Herodotus (c 440 BC), The Histories – Book 3. CVI – is available on the Perseus Digital Library,
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Hdt.+1.1.0

Sir John Mandeville (1371) “The Travels of Sir John Mandeville” is available on Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/tosjm10h.htm

UNCTAD Infocomm article on Cotton
http://r0.unctad.org/infocomm/anglais/cotton/characteristics.htm

Angela Box – “Cotton: The fabric of our lives”. Southern Illinois University Ethnobotanical leaflets,
http://www.siu.edu/~ebl/leaflets/cotton.htm

Answers.com Veterinary Dictionary: Gossypium
http://www.answers.com/topic/gossypium-3

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Linen and flax
The Swiss Lake dwellers inhabited Switzerland from 4300 to 800 BCE
http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/front/Rediscovering_the_legend_of_the_lake_dwellers.html

Ancient Egypt: Dynasties - the Old Kingdom was c.2686-2181 BCE & the Early Dynastic Period c.3100-2686 BCE
http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/dynasties.htm

Ancient Egypt: Flax - harvest, linen production
http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timelines/topics/flax.htm

Egyptology online: fashion and style: dress and costume
http://www.egyptologyonline.com/dress.htm

“Life in Flanders in the 18th and 19th Centuries” is a Rootsweb site presenting a detailed social and economic background to rural life in Flanders in the 1700s and 1800s, with 4-5 pages closely related to flax and linen production:-

Life in Flanders in the 18th and 19th Centuries - Flax and Linen
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~belghist/Flanders/Pages/flaxLinen.htm

Life in Flanders in the 18th and 19th Centuries - A family working with flax into the 20th century
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~belghist/Flanders/Pages/flaxLinen3.htm

American Frontier: YouTube video: Flax Processing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzTMH5NdwWY

American Frontier: YouTube video: Flax Spinning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qw6pVgw9UU

Read more about flax in Christian and Johannes Zinzendorf’s The Big Book of Flax

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Nettle and Hemp
Wikipedia on hemp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp

Wikipedia on cannabis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis

Georgina N Riall on Anglo-Saxon Textiles at
http://www.vikingsonline.org.uk/resources/articles/as_textiles.htm

Making Mosi (fine ramie cloth) in the Hansam Region, Republic of Korea
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUpXye1YjsY.

Weaving ramie cloth in the Niigata Prefecture, Japan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KXbotKCG_M&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Bamboo
Article on the organic credentials of bamboo fibre – “Bamboo: Facts behind the Fiber”
http://organicclothing.blogs.com/my_weblog/2007/09/bamboo-facts-be.html

Spinning and Spinning Wheels
Cesare Marchetti (1979) A postmortem technology assessment of the spinning wheel: the last thousand years. Technological Forecasting and Social Change vol. 13, pp 91-93.

Joseph Needham (1965) Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. 4 (2). Cambridge, England.

Lynn White (1974) Technology Assessment from the stance of a medieval historian. American Historical Review. Vol. 79 (1), pp 1-13.

Read more about the viking longship Sebbe Als -
http://www.sebbeals.dk/

Historical Timeline
BBC History Timeline http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/launch_tl_british.shtml

Glossary
Ingeo™ Fibers
http://www.natureworksllc.com/product-and-applications/ingeo-fibers.aspx

Qiviut from the downy soft under-wool of the Arctic Musk Ox
http://www.qiviut.com/store/index.cfm?target=Farms%20/%20Animals

Ramie: Old Fiber - New Image
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUpXye1YjsY&t=272s

For an explanation of Fibres words & phrases, see the Wild Fibres Glossary.

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