This is a brain rambling I've been tossing around my head for a while.
There seems to be a misguided assumption that a mediaeval household had to be a self-sufficient jack of all trades. I know I thought so for a long while myself. Loosely based on the idea of self-sufficient American pioneer homestead, ner to do households with a bevy of servants or slaves, or post industrial revolution homemakers when fabric, patterns, sewing machines and other modernised machines became more readily available to the common people, modern day Amish, and a healthy dose of puritanical bootstrapism that is at large in modern mainstream American society that has been fed to us by generic history and the media.
Take clothing, the assumption is that this was the work of the mediaeval housewife.
And I've come to the conclusion that assumption is largely wrong.
While in some earlier periods mediaeval households, or very isolated areas, might have been expected to be more self-sufficient that’s definitely not the case by the 13th-15th centuries that I study.
A few things happened during the 13th and 14th centuries. We see a breakdown of the feudal system, leading to the rise of cities, industry, education, trade, a trend towards more nuclear families, and an emergence of a middle class, people who had wages, and hence buying power leading to a more monetary system. The merchant guilds became a powerful force that would protect the specialisation of highly skilled workers. Tailors were in high demand and well regulated. The average household would spend 15-20% of their annual income on clothing, and with the rising wages clothing became more tailored and specialised.
Clothing in this time period was layered, each with a very specific purpose and use.
Body linens were essential for absorbing sweat and body oils, which would be frequently changed and washed.
A fitted or supportive layer, often of wool, often lined, and containing facings, buttons, or tailoring techniques that would provide shaping and structure and would be appropriate for home or casual work, and often aired out and infrequently or spot washed.
Then an outer layer used for fashion or warmth, of your best fabrics often lined in fur and again needing some advanced tailoring skills, embroidery, or padded too and often not washable.
You wouldn’t be considered appropriately dressed if out in public without all 3 layers present. In addition there were other specialty garments used for proprietary, work, warmth or formal situations- hose, hoods, hats, hairnets, purses, aprons, veils, mantels, pellise (furred inner layer), scholar robes.
The household inventories show us what people had of worth when they passed away. From my study of the Dijion inventories in the 1390-1410, and the Dalme inventories, it is clear that most middle class folks would have at LEAST 4-5 supportive garments and about the same number of outer garments often lined or furred, along with several of the specialised garments. Bourgeois, nobles or government officials had about double that amount of clothing, expense of fabric, embroidery and fur highly correlated to the status. These inventories don’t show us the body linens, hose, aprons or the work clothing that would have no resale value. But they do show us that the average household had large amounts of unused linens and threads. But not much in the way of other unused fabrics. A person would probably have at least the same amount of body linens on hand as supportive garments since these get the most use and laundering. Leading me to surmise that an average wardrobe would consist of around 25 garments.
It is estimated that a skilled tailor could create a body linen in 2-3 days, a supportive layer in a week and a fashion garment would take 2-3 weeks to create, and about the same to fur. Not including any decorative elements. Keep in mind working hours were often 10-12 hours a day. Using these estimates a skilled person would probably need to invest close to 1500 hrs, Or 150 10 hour days, to complete a single personal wardrobe. Granted these items would not be done all at once, but records indicate that an everyday robe (cotte, surcotte and mantle) would be issued twice per year for people in the royal household and staff. Each robe set would take approximately 300 hrs, or a month working full time, to produce.
Now imagine if you in your late adolescence or early 20’s had to expertly pattern, hand sew and upkeep a wardrobe for each member of your family. Then add bedding, kitchen and bath linens, curtains, and diapers to the grunt work of sewing. In addition to cooking, cleaning, laundry, managing children, in a time before washing machines, refrigeration, lighting, or vacuum cleaners.
Now imagine if you had a specific job or roll in addition to household tasks. Most women “worked” in one form or another.
You simply couldn’t do it all. Most modern stay at home folks with all the modern technology couldn't do it without outsourcing some things. If in doubt, watch some of Ruth Goodman’s series on mediaeval, Tudor or Victorian life, and the Victorian Housewife benefitted from a lot of the post industrial revolution items to make life much easier- cast iron stoves, gas lights, carpet sweepers, and wringer washers, caning supplies how modern!!!
Even mediaeval farmsteads didn’t live in isolation, they lived in hamlets and small villages where there would have been a community, including seamstress/tailors, weavers, bakers, smiths, clergy, leather workers, woodworkers, and inns with food within walking distance. People travelled, had markets and fairs to buy things. Even serfs or servants would receive gifts of clothing, Guild statues and contracts often including clothing twice a year. People barter and trade services, and there was a thriving second hand clothing industry.
A noble household would have had skilled servants, a village community to support the house, merchant contacts and older members of the household to help run everything. Many hands make work light.
When we read through the Goodman of Paris’s instructions to his young wife there is a lot of discussion of where to buy stuff, and how to handle specific merchants. Those would be common elements of town life.
My point being that at no time in mainstream mediaeval society would households have been isolated from a community of goods and services. There was a thriving second hand market, clothing was often handed down or bequeathed, it was a part of contracts, and people traded services. While a mediaeval woman would have to know how to stitch, and would have probably been responsible for sewing household linens, undergarments, repair and adjustments of garments, and possibly adding decoration, it would be near impossible to clothe one's household without help. The time alone needed to construct a basic appropriate wardrobe would be impossible unless you had no other duty but to sew. Clothing patterning and construction skills in addition to having the tools, or even space to do so are not something most households would have the privilege or specialised knowledge to have.
People bought clothing, probably the majority of it. And if they didn't then they bought a lot of other things to make up for the time.
Further reading-
Figured Riches: The Value of Gold Brocades in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Painting
6 Panni tartarici: Fortune, Use, and the Cultural Reception of Oriental Silks in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth-century European Mindset Maria Ludovica RosatiWool in 14th Century Florence: The Affirmation of an Important Luxury Production, in Textiles and Wealth in 14th Century Florence. Wool, Silk, Painting, Exhibition catalogue (Florence, 5 December 2017-18 March 2018), ed. by C. Hollberg, Florence, Giunti, 2017, pp. 42-51
The development of the Florentine silk industry: a positive response to the crisis of the fourteenth century, Sergio Tognetti 2005, Journal of Medieval History
Dressing the King and the Beggar: The Various Levels of the Textile Market and their Prices in Medieval Valencia (13th - 15th centuries), Juan Vicente García Marsilla
5. London Merchants’ Cloth Exports, 1350–1500 / Eleanor Quinton and John Oldland 1116. Laboreria Sete: Design and Production of Lucchese Silks in the Late Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries / Christine Meek 141
3. Wefts and Worms: The Spread of Sericulture and Silk Weaving in the West before 1300 / Rebecca Woodward Wendelken 59
Farmer, Sharon A. The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris: Artisanal migration, technological innovation, and gendered experience. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.
Burns, E. Jane. Sea of silk: A textile geography of women’s work in medieval French literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
Newton, Stella Mary. Fashion in the age of the black prince a study of the years ; 1340 - 1365. Woodbridge: Boydell Pr, 1980.- Cloth merchants' inventories in Dijion in the fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, Françoise Piponnier
Life and work in Medieval Europe P. Boissonnade
Medieval money (England)
Gitte Hansen Everyday Products in the Middle Ages: Crafts, Consumption and the Individual in Northern Europe c. AD 800-1600
Angela Ling Huang, Carsten Jahnke Textiles and the Medieval Economy: Production, Trade, and Consumption of Textiles, 8th–16th Centuries (Ancient Textiles)
The Rise, Expansion, and Decline of the Italian Wool-Based Cloth Industries, 1100–1730: A Study in International Competition, Transaction Costs, and Comparative Advantage, John H. Munro, University of Toronto, c 2012
List of price of medieval itemsInventories-
DALME online inventories
Inventaire du mobilier du chateau Chailloue de l’annee 1416
Buss, Chiara Giannelli The gift of 880 wool and silk garments on the occasion of four Gonzaga marriages. The Magna Curia of 1340
The household inventory as urban ‘theatre’ in late medieval Burgundy
Dressing the King and the Beggar: The Various Levels of the Textile Market and their Prices in Medieval Valencia (13th - 15th centuries), Juan Vicente García Marsilla
Household Inventories of Medieval Europe
Snyder., Désirée G. Koslin, Janet E. Encountering medieval textiles and dress. Palgrave Macmillan US, 2002.
Ertl, Thomas, and Barbara Karl. Inventories of textiles - textiles in inventories: Studies on Late medieval and early modern material culture. V & R unipress, Vienna University Press, 2017.
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