• ARCHAEOLOGY
• WALKING IN MALAGNE
  • Handicraft
    • The manufacturing of iron
    • Exploiting soil
    • The fabrication of textiles
    • Creating baskets and ropery
  • The art of construction
  • The farm
  • The kitchen
• TEACHERS
• CHILDREN

The fabrication of textiles

Gaulish were particularly fond of coloured garments and their preference for those colours remained unchanged during the Gallic Roman era.

It's a pity that we have only little information about the origin of the colouring methods. According some Latin authors the Gaulish were talented in the use of plants for the dying of fabrics. The cultivated or collected a lot of natural plants such as the pastel, the black prum, the yellow reseda herb, broom, madder, oak-apples and nutwood.

On Malagne you will find information panels describing the plants with colouring characteristics and their usage. Experiments have proofed that next to these well known and often cultivated plants also a considerable amount of more common plants provided colourings that were used for domestic purposes. From archaeological science we got the impression that at the time two dying methods existed: with a warm or with a cold dying bath.

The producing of textiles was a much specialised industry at the Roman era, whereas it was only a domestic occupation at the time of the Gaulish. The dying of fabrics is close connected to other sectors, from the production of the raw materials (agriculture and stock farming) to the manufacturing, the transport and the trade of the final product, the fabric.

The fibres used are of vegetable origin (flax, hemp, stinging nettle,...) or of bestial origin (wool, cow house, products of horses and deers). Before the material can be spun and woven it has to be cleaned and combed in order to have all the fibres in the same direction.

The very simple and primitive weaving loom had weights. A replica of such a machine can be found on Malagne. It concerns a vertical loom that is often used for experiments and demonstrations. The weft yarn is tightened to a horizontal beam that is supported by two vertical pillows established in the ground. The yarns are kept in the middle of the steelyard of the weights. Some horizontal beams make that the yarns can be moved and the yarn horizontally woven in order to create a motif. The fabric is woven top-down.

Malagne have collected quite some garments after Gallic Roman design. The employees wearing these clothes gives even a better impression of the daily life of the Gallic Romans.