This essay traces networks created by the movement and use of luxury (often imported) and ceremonial textiles in thirteenth-century England. These networks incorporate humans and objects: a particular cloth interacts with human donors, recipients, and royal officials; with scissors and thread; and w...

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Bibliographische Detailangaben

1. Verfasser:	Luyster, Amanda (VerfasserIn)
Format:	Artikel
Sprache:	English
Veröffentlicht:	2021
Schlagworte:	Geschichte 1200-1300 Tuch Handel Textilien Zeremonie England
Zusammenfassung:	This essay traces networks created by the movement and use of luxury (often imported) and ceremonial textiles in thirteenth-century England. These networks incorporate humans and objects: a particular cloth interacts with human donors, recipients, and royal officials; with scissors and thread; and with inventories, slips of parchment, and labeled chests. My narrative follows textile networks through largely public and dynamic events of gifting between elite individuals and display in royal ceremonial, in which the materiality of textiles enables them to play diverse roles: worn, walked upon, argued over, cut and divided. At the same time, less obvious but crucial events of documentation and storage are also revealed; these actively worked to sustain textiles’ associations with donors and events. I posit that these various public and private networks of people and things functioned to make the value of the gifted and ceremonial textiles "stick" in the memory of individuals—these networks worked to combat the tendency of all historical connections to be forgotten, the tendency of all things to fall apart. Methods informed by actor-network theory (ANT) are recommended as a way to more clearly delineate the processes by which collected objects function within acts of remembering. Parallels regarding the movement and use of luxury and ceremonial textiles in Islamic and Byzantine contexts are introduced when relevant.
Beschreibung:	Illustrationen
ISSN:	0038-7134