On the contrary; it's very helpful! I hadn't even thought about cotton vs. linen vs. wool vs. ?
Hopefully, I can learn a little more about cheap clothing dyes commonly used in Ancient China. According to Wikipedia, indigo has been used in China "for centuries"... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_dye At some point, though, I have to stop the interesting research and just come up with something! With thanks, Dede O'Hair (sorry, I thought my real name was coming up automatically) That is indeed interesting--I knew about the Greek statues, but not the warriors. But yes, the statues were colored with pigments--clothing would have to have been, in general, colored differently. So still raises the question whether the statues were an actual reflection of reality. As to peasants' clothing--again, depends on the dyes available, as well as the labor to use them. The ubiquitous blue indigo is native to India (they used woad, which contains the same dye, in early Western Europe). Did the Chinese have indigo or woad? All kinds of plants give various yellows--did they use them? I don't even know if the peasants wore wool, cotton, flax, or some other bast fiber (ramie, also called "China grass," does grow in parts of China.) This is relevant because the bast fibers, and, to a lesser extent cotton, are in general more difficult to dye than wool. But China is such a massive territory that I'm sure what was worn varied greatly with both place and time. Sorry, again, none of this helps WorkroomButtons, does it? Ann Wass _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
