What is the oldest surviving example of textile cloth?
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The earliest known surviving textiles are samples of fiberwork found in Guitarrero Cave, Peru dating back to 8000 BCE. Early fiberwork by the Norte Chico civilization consisted of plant fibers that were intertwined and knotted to form baskets and other containers. Surviving examples of finely spun thread and simple cloths indicate that knowledge of spinning and weaving had already been well-established and developed in the area.
Andean textiles
88238#8
Flax is believed to be the oldest fiber that was used to create textiles, as it was found in the tombs of mummies from as early as 6500 B.C. The fibers from the flax are taken from the filaments in the stem of the plant, spun together to create long strands, and then woven into long pieces of linen that were used from anything from bandages to clothing and tapestries. Each fiber's length depends on the height of the leaf that it is serving, with 10 filaments in a bundle serving each leaf on the plant. Each filament is the same thickness, giving it a consistency that is ideal for spinning yarn. The yarn was best used on warping boards or warping reels to create large pieces of cloth that could be dyed and woven into different patterns to create elaborate tapestries and embroideries. One example of how linen was used is in the picture of a bandage that a mummy was wrapped in, dated between 305 and 30 B.C. Some of the bandages were painted with hieroglyphs if the person being buried was of importance to the community.
Textile arts
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The earliest dyed flax fibres have been found in a prehistoric cave in the Georgia and date back to 36,000.
History of clothing and textiles
21533167#0
Textile manufacturing is one of the oldest human activities. The oldest known textiles date back to about 5000 B.C. In order to make textiles, the first requirement is a source of fibre from which a yarn can be made, primarily by spinning. The yarn is processed by knitting or weaving to create cloth. The machine used for weaving is the loom. Cloth is finished by what are described as wet processes to become fabric. The fabric may be dyed, printed or decorated by embroidering with coloured yarns.
Textile manufacturing by pre-industrial methods
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No examples of pre Conquest feather fabric survive, and only a few survive from the colonial period. Important cloths of this type include two mantles from San Miguel Zinacantepec, the Huipil of La Malinche at the Museum of Anthropology, the Tlamachayatl at the Ethnographic and Historical Museum in Rome and the Paño Novohispano at the Museo Textil de Oaxaca. All have feathers or feather pieces either embroidered onto or twisted into cotton. The Paño is a remnant of a huipil with feathers woven into the cloth, and is of a very similar design to the Malinche huipil.
Mexican featherwork
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A wide variety of portable objects from various decorative arts were imported from the Islamic world into Europe during the Middle Ages, mostly through Italy, and above all Venice. In many areas European-made goods could not match the quality of Islamic or Byzantine work until near the end of the Middle Ages. Luxury textiles were widely used for clothing and hangings and also, fortunately for art history, also often as shrouds for the burials of important figures, which is how most surviving examples were preserved. In this area Byzantine silk was influenced by Sassanian textiles, and Islamic silk by both, so that is hard to say which culture's textiles had the greatest influence on the Cloth of St Gereon, a large tapestry which is the earliest and most important European imitation of Eastern work. European, especially Italian, cloth gradually caught up with the quality of Eastern imports, and adopted many elements of their designs.
Islamic influences on Western art
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Sewing needles have been dated to at least 50,000 years ago (Denisova Cave, Siberia) – and uniquely associated with a human species other than modern humans, i.e. H. Denisova/H. Altai. The oldest possible example is 60,000 years ago, a needlepoint (missing stem and eye) found in Sibudu Cave, South Africa. Other early examples of needles dating from 41,000-15,000 years ago are found in multiple locations, e.g. Slovenia, Russia, China, Spain, and France.
History of clothing and textiles
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The first actual textile, as opposed to skins sewn together, was probably felt. Surviving examples of Nålebinding, another early textile method, date from 6500 BC. Our knowledge of ancient textiles and clothing has expanded in the recent past thanks to modern technological developments. Our knowledge of cultures varies greatly with the climatic conditions to which archeological deposits are exposed; the Middle East and the arid fringes of China have provided many very early samples in good condition, but the early development of textiles in the Indian subcontinent, sub-Saharan Africa and other moist parts of the world remains unclear. In northern Eurasia, peat bogs can also preserve textiles very well.
The first known textile of South America was discovered in Guitarrero Cave in Peru, it was woven out of vegetable fibers and dates back to 8,000 B.C.E.
History of clothing and textiles
39208851#3
Early 20th Century ethnographer Emil Torday acquired the oldest group of extant textiles from the Kuba tradition from the reigning king, Kot aPe. He called these textiles "Bambala" after the ruling clan. According to Joseph Cornet, these cloths were embroidered by Bushong women who were pregnant with the King's heirs for use in rituals surrounding the birth of the children. They were also used as funerary regalia for noble women. The slight sculptural relief, elaborate geometric designs and technical cohesiveness of the textiles indicate that they were created by highly skilled elders. According to art historian Vanessa Drake Moraga, "That Kuba embroiderers represented textile structures in their compositions underscores both the value of weaving to the culture and the prestige attached to women art."
Kuba textiles
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Textiles are often dyed, with fabrics available in almost every colour. The dyeing process often requires several dozen gallons of water for each pound of clothing. Coloured designs in textiles can be created by weaving together fibres of different colours (tartan or Uzbek Ikat), adding coloured stitches to finished fabric (embroidery), creating patterns by resist dyeing methods, tying off areas of cloth and dyeing the rest (tie-dyeing), or drawing wax designs on cloth and dyeing in between them (batik), or using various printing processes on finished fabric. Woodblock printing, still used in India and elsewhere today, is the oldest of these dating back to at least 220 CE in China. Textiles are also sometimes bleached, making the textile pale or white.
Textiles are sometimes finished by chemical processes to change their characteristics. In the 19th century and early 20th century starching was commonly used to make clothing more resistant to stains and wrinkles.
Textile
11012076#6
Woodblock printing ("diaoban yinshua" 雕版印刷), known as xylography today, was the first method of printing applied to a paper medium. It became widely used throughout East Asia both as a method for printing on textiles and later, under the influence of Buddhism, on paper. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to about 220. "Ukiyo-e" is the best known type of Japanese woodblock art print. Most European uses of the technique on paper are covered by the term woodcut (see below), except for the block-books produced mainly in the fifteenth century.
History of printing