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Illustration of social classes, italy, c. 1400. It would be characteristic that the king (right of centre) and bishop (left of centre) were dressed in scarlet.
Scarlet was a type of fine and expensive woollencloth common in MedievalEurope. In the assessment of John Munro, 'the medieval scarlet was therefore a very high-priced, luxury, woollen broadcloth, invariably woven from the finest English wools, and always dyed with kermes, even if mixed with woad, and other dyestuffs. There is no evidence for the use of the term scarlet for any other textile, even though other textiles, especially silks, were also dyed with kermes.'[1]
The Coronation Mantle of Roger II of Sicily, silk dyed with kermes and embroidered with gold thread and pearls. This kind of cloth seems to have been denoted by the Arabic siklāt. Royal Workshop, Palermo, Sicily, 1133–34. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
The origins of the word "scarlet" have been debated quite extensively and are crucial to understanding what scarlet actually was in the Middle Ages. The word certainly came to English from Old French escarlate, which is one of a wide range of similar words in the Romance languages such as Provençal escarlat, Spanish escarlata, Portuguese escarlate, Italian scarlatto, and medieval Latin scarlat(t)um. The origin of this romance word, however, has been more widely debated. For a long time the origin was thought to be a Persian word which takes forms like saqalāt, siqalāt, or suqlāt.[2][3][4] However, the romance word is now thought to come from Arabic siklāt (plural siklātūn), denoting very expensive, luxury silks dyed scarlet-red using the exceptionally expensive dye kermes. Arabic siklāt is first attested around the ninth century, and now thought also to be the origin of the Persian word, which is first attested around the 1290s. The origin of the word siklāt is itself uncertain and may come from the Late Roman term sigillatus (Latin)/σιγιλλατον (Greek), denoting a kind of cloth decorated with seal-like patterns (from Latin sigillum 'seal'). The word then came to be used of woollen cloth dyed with the same dye. The most obvious route for the Arabic word siklāt to have entered the Romance languages would be via the Arabic-speaking Iberian region of Al-Andalus, particularly Almería, where kermes was produced extensively.[1]
Recent work has discredited an alternative suggestion that the word scarlet originated in the Germanic languages. Henri Pirenne, in an argument elaborated by Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin,[5] argued that the term scarlet originated in the Germanic words related to Dutch schar ('shear') and laken ('cloth'), in which case scarlet was originally highly sheared cloth. They argued that the word spread from Germanic to other European languages due to the dominance of the Low Countries in the medieval wool trade. They guessed that scarlet became associated with the colour red because this was among the most prestigious colours, and therefore most fitting for exceptionally fine cloth. However, their ideas have not proved a good fit with the full range of European evidence: most importantly, historical evidence for the production of scarlet does not indicate more extensive shearing than other cloth. It is now thought that terms like Old High Germanschar-lachen, Middle Low German scharlaken, and the Scandinavian derivatives (Danish skarlagen, Swedish skarlakan, Icelandic skarlak, skarlakan) originally referred to highly sheared cloth produced on the horizontal treadle loom that came into use in northern Europe around the eleventh century. Meanwhile, Germanic words like Old Norse skarlat, Middle High German scharlât, and early modern Flemish schaerlat are all now thought to have been borrowed from the Romance words which themselves derived from Arabic siklāt.[1]
It has long been claimed that scarlet cloth was produced in red, white, blue, green, and brown colors, among others, with carmine red being merely the most common colour. However, recent work has argued that this is a misunderstanding of the use of colour-terms in medieval cloth production, and that references to other colours in scarlet production refers to their colour before dyeing with kermes.[1]
Scarlet cloth was particularly fashionable in Europe during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but fell out of fashion during the sixteenth to seventeenth.[1]
Appearances in popular culture
It is probable that the name of the character Will Scarlett in the Robin Hood legends referred to this type of cloth, similarly to the common occupational surnames (e.g. Weaver, Cooper, Fletcher, etc.).
Notes
1 2 3 4 5 John Munro, “Scarlet”, in Encyclopaedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles c. 450-1450, ed. by Gale Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth and Maria Hayward (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
↑ Davidson, Thomas, ed. (1901) Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language. London: W. & R. Chambers; p. 849.
↑ "scarlet, n. and adj." OED Online, www.oed.com/view/Entry/172079. Accessed 9 November 2017.
↑ 'Scarlet', in The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing Project database.
↑ J.-B. Weckerlin, Le Drap 'escarlate' au moyen âge: essai sur l'étymologie et la signification du mot écarlate et notes techniques sur la fabrication de ce drap de laine au moyen âge (Lyons: 1905).
Calico is a heavy plain-woven textile made from unbleached, and often not fully processed, cotton. It may also contain unseparated husk parts. The fabric is far coarser than muslin, but less coarse and thick than canvas or denim. However, it is still very cheap owing to its unfinished and undyed appearance.
The Norsemen were a North Germanic ethnolinguistic group of the Early Middle Ages, during which they spoke the Old Norse language. The language belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages and is the predecessor of the modern Germanic languages of Scandinavia. During the late eighth century, Scandinavians embarked on a large-scale expansion in all directions, giving rise to the Viking Age. In English-language scholarship since the 19th century, Norse seafaring traders, settlers and warriors have commonly been referred to as Vikings. Historians of Anglo-Saxon England distinguish between Norse Vikings (Norsemen) from Norway who mainly invaded and occupied the islands north and north-west of Britain, Ireland and western Britain, and Danish Vikings, who principally invaded and occupied eastern Britain.
Crimson is a rich, deep red color, inclining to purple. It originally meant the color of the kermes dye produced from a scale insect, Kermes vermilio, but the name is now sometimes also used as a generic term for slightly bluish-red colors that are between red and rose. It is the national color of Nepal.
Ikat is a dyeing technique originating from Indonesia used to pattern textiles that employs resist dyeing on the yarns prior to dyeing and weaving the fabric.
Flannel is a soft woven fabric, of various fineness. Flannel was originally made from carded wool or worsted yarn, but is now often made from either wool, cotton, or synthetic fiber. Flannel is commonly used to make tartan clothing, blankets, bed sheets, and sleepwear.
Corduroy is a textile with a distinctively raised "cord" or wale texture. Modern corduroy is most commonly composed of tufted cords, sometimes exhibiting a channel between them. Both velvet and corduroy derive from fustian fabric. Corduroy looks as if it is made from multiple cords laid parallel to each other.
Scarlet is a bright red color, sometimes with a slightly orange tinge. In the spectrum of visible light, and on the traditional color wheel, it is one-quarter of the way between red and orange, slightly less orange than vermilion.
Textile printing is the process of applying color to fabric in definite patterns or designs. In properly printed fabrics the colour is bonded with the fibre, so as to resist washing and friction. Textile printing is related to dyeing but in dyeing properly the whole fabric is uniformly covered with one colour, whereas in printing one or more colours are applied to it in certain parts only, and in sharply defined patterns.
Kermes is a red dye derived from the dried bodies of the females of a scale insect in the genus Kermes, primarily Kermes vermilio. The Kermes insects are native in the Mediterranean region and are parasites living on the sap of the host plant, the Kermes oak and the Palestine oak. These insects were used as a red dye since antiquity by the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Indians, Greeks, Romans, and Iranians. The kermes dye is a rich red, a crimson. It has good colour fastness in silk and wool. It was much esteemed in the medieval era for dyeing silk and wool, particularly scarlet cloth. Post-medievally it was replaced by other red dyes, starting with cochineal.
Scarlett or Scarlet is a feminine given name. The color scarlet symbolizes courage, passion, force, joy and heat. The cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church wear scarlet as a color of the blood of Christ and the Christian martyrs. It gained popularity due to the character Scarlett O'Hara in Margaret Mitchell's best-selling novel Gone with the Wind and the film adaptation. The name has been well used in recent years for girls in England and Wales and in the United States.
Lincoln green is the colour of dyed woollen cloth formerly originating in Lincoln, England, a major cloth town during the high Middle Ages. The dyers of Lincoln, known for colouring wool with woad to give it a strong blue shade, created the eponymous Lincoln green by overdyeing this blue wool with yellow weld or dyers' broom, Genista tinctoria. Other colours like "Coventry blue" and "Kendal green" were linked to the dyers of different English towns.
Natural dyes are dyes or colorants derived from plants, invertebrates, or minerals. The majority of natural dyes are vegetable dyes from plant sources—roots, berries, bark, leaves, and wood—and other biological sources such as fungi.
Dyeing is the craft of imparting colors to textiles in loose fiber, yarn, cloth or garment form by treatment with a dye. Archaeologists have found evidence of textile dyeing with natural dyes dating back to the Neolithic period. In China, dyeing with plants, barks and insects has been traced back more than 5,000 years. Natural insect dyes such as Tyrian purple and kermes and plant-based dyes such as woad, indigo and madder were important elements of the economies of Asia and Europe until the discovery of man-made synthetic dyes in the mid-19th century. Synthetic dyes quickly superseded natural dyes for the large-scale commercial textile production enabled by the industrial revolution, but natural dyes remained in use by traditional cultures around the world.
The Armenian cochineal, also known as the Ararat cochineal or Ararat scale, is a scale insect indigenous to the Ararat plain and Aras (Araks) River valley in the Armenian Highlands. It was formerly used to produce an eponymous crimson carmine dyestuff known in Armenia as vordan karmir and historically in Persia as kirmiz. The species is critically endangered within Armenia.
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