EXARC Journal (May 2020)
Flax Fibre Extraction Techniques in the Late Middle Ages
Abstract
On its surface, linen production research is simple as there is a large corpus of books available; however, the majority of these date to the last three centuries. Older texts, while available, tend to concentrate on the textiles themselves and their trade. As a result, I had to collect the information on medieval tools and manufacturing process myself. I have grown and processed flax in a small open-air museum since 2014, and have been able to produce high quality fibre in 2016 and 2017. Although my parents in law came from a family which had processed flax, this knowledge had not been passed down and as a result I had to learn by reading and through practical experience. For my experiments I have grown fibre flax. Today we distinguish two types of flax, for the extraction of linseed and for the extraction of fibre. In the Middle Ages, probably only one plant was cultivated that provided both (Knöchel and Vogeler, 2001 p.115). It is now possible to trace all the work steps and associated tools used in the Middle Ages. The most notable fact is that the devices used in non-industrial fibre extraction remained essentially unchanged over many centuries, which indicates that these early techniques had proven themselves to be optimal.
