Medieval Clothing and Textiles ed. by Monica L. Wright, Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker (review)

For fifteen years Medieval Clothing and Textiles has provided a forum for interdisciplinary research into ‘the fabric of the medieval world’ (p. xi). The seven articles in this issue exhibit the excellent scholarship for which the series is known. The contributors are concerned with various aspects of the manufacture, materiality, use, and cultural meanings of cloth and clothing. They examine evidence from the early to the late Middle Ages, extending from Scandinavia to southern Europe. This volume marks a transition for the series, with Monica Wright assuming the role as lead editor of this issue while founding editors Robin Netherton and Gale Owen-Crocker step back from steering this influential series.

Gale Owen-Crocker, who has been a driving force in textile studies for nearly five decades, opens the volume with a succinct and characteristically perceptive survey of the state of the field. Presenting an overview of textile studies for researchers new to the field, she considers methodological and interpretive challenges in the analysis of material textile artefacts, textual evidence, and discusses recent theoretically informed approaches such as object biographies. The footnotes are replete with references to databases, repositories, sources, and other research guides, all of which are introduced with informed commentary to orient readers to the key resources for medieval textile studies. Researchers new to the field will find much of value here, and the article is ideally suited to teaching.

Two articles engage with questions about the materiality of textiles and how it influences the cultural meanings of cloth and clothing. Working from the critical insight that material resonances matter for metaphor, Maren Clegg Hyer examines the interplay between interlace designs in Anglo-Saxon textiles and literature as expressed in the metaphor of ‘wordweaving’. Her analysis of Latin and vernacular poetry demonstrates how authors drew on the familiar, recognizable patterns of textile and manuscript interlace design to create ‘experientially resonant’ poetic metaphors particular to their historical place and context.

In the other article to examine textile artefacts, Tina Anderlini undertakes a comprehensive analysis of medallion silks. Drawing on surviving fragments, textual, visual, and material evidence, she demonstrates the importance of these luxury fabrics for display in religious settings. She also shows how these textiles influenced other aspects of material culture, examining wall painting, sculpture, and mosaics to demonstrate how the roundel design of these silks served as a ‘source of inspiration for other arts and a strong sign of sanctity, honour, power, and wealth’ (p. 136).

An unusual depiction of weaving cloth is the focus of Joanne W. Anderson’s study of a painted Annunciation scene in a church in South Tyrol. Focusing on the depictions of the Virgin weaving and an unfinished heraldic textile on her loom, Anderson deftly contextualizes the imagery to show how it expresses the devotional and social identities of the patrons. She concludes that material processes of cloth production also serve as a metaphor for creation, ‘of both things and life in the making’ (p. 159).

A theme taken up by several contributors is how clothing signifies identity, denotes personal change, and mediates social relations. Through an intertextual analysis of the depiction of attire and changes of dress in The Niebelungenlied and the Völsunga Saga, Elizabeth M. Swedo argues that clothing was a ‘versatile and powerful signifier’ (p. 54). She distinguishes aesthetic preferences for types of clothing in the two traditions, arguing that ‘fictive clothing’, especially that which served as the vehicle for narrative action, needed to resonate with the cultural expectations and social experience of the audience.

The material and cultural importance of cloth and clothing in elite households is the subject of Hugh Thomas’s finely grained study of the use of textiles at the court of John I of England. Drawing on household accounts such as close rolls, this study models approaches to...