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Educational fibre packs

Fibre discovery packs for schools, colleges & fibre enthusiasts

We also sell natural dyes, extracts & mordants

Wild Colours natural dyes, extracts & mordants

& handmade paper for printing, artists & gift wrap

Wild Paper handmade paper for printing, artists & gift wrap

 

 

Books and other Sources of Natural Fibres Information

  1. Books
     
  2. Wool
     
  3. Fibre size
     
  4. Sheep History
     
  5. Sheep Breeds
     
  6. Alpaca
     
  7. Silk
     
  8. Cotton
     
  9. Linen and flax
     
  10. Nettle and Hemp
     
  11. Bamboo
     
  12. Spinning & Spinning Wheels
     
  13. Timeline
     
  14. Glossary

Books
Hisao Aruga (1994) “Principles of Sericulture”. CRC Press

E. J. W. Barber (1991). Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean. Princeton University Press

Elizabeth Wayland Barber (1994). “Women's Work: The First 20, 000 Years - Women, Cloth and Society in Early Times”. WW Norton & Company, New York

Rachel Brown (1979) “Weaving, Spinning and Dyeing Book”. Routledge

Rita Buchanan (2003). “A Weaver's Garden: Growing Plants for Natural Dyes and Fibers”. Dover Publications

Andre Charrier (2001). “Tropical Plant Breeding”. Science Publishers

Grahame Clark (1977). World Prehistory in new perspective. Cambridge University Press
 

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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Teresinha at Wild Fibres
Studio I-319, Scott House, The Custard Factory
Gibb Street, Birmingham B9 4DT, UK

Contact Teresinha for enquiries on
Tel:  +44 (0)7979 770865
email: info@wildfibres.co.uk

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Last updated on 25 July 2019
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