Swatches: A Guide to Choosing 21st Century Fabrics for 18th Century Clothing

by Hallie Larkin

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This book includes over 90 swatches organized by fiber content and includes excerpts from 18th century sources to help explain how the fabrics were used. Compiled to help reenactors purchase the most appropriate fabrics based on budget, appropriateness, and the persona you have chosen.

Softcover, 35 pp., 11" × 8 1/2"
$40

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Chintz: Indian Textiles for the West

by Rosemary Crill

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One difficulty of historical reenacting is understanding printed fabrics. This book discusses the beginning and growth of one type of printed and painted fabric, its trade to the west, how it was made, and what it was used for. The exquisiteness of this book, are the full color plates and details of those plates to illustrate the intricacies of the prints. About 90 full color glossy images of chintz fabrics are pictured all of which are from 1780 and earlier. The text describes the changing tastes from the early 17th century up to the 1780s and points out the plates which best illustrate those changes. A list of further reading is provided for those whose interest is stirred. You may look at some reproduction chintz fabrics on our cotton print page.

Hardcover, 144 pp., 12" × 10"
$55

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Textiles in America 1650-1870

by Florence Montgomery

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A dictionary on original documents, prints and paintings, commercial records, American merchants' papers, shopkeepers' advertisements and pattern books with original swatches of cloth.

This is the reprint everyone in reenacting has been waiting for. First published in 1984, it remains the definitive study of Textiles as they were used in early American homes. The book offers an overview of textiles in America, based on years of research that is unmatched in scope.

The late Florence Montgomery was the assistant curator of textiles at the Winterthur Museum.

Hardcover. pp 496; 8" × 10"
117 color and 225 black & white illustrations
$50

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Tartan:
The Highland Habit

by Hugh Cheape

Hugh Cheape, the Head of the Scottish Material Culture Research Center at the National Museums of Scotland, explores the story of tartan from the medieval to the Victorian invention of exclusive clan identity. With the spotlight on Bonnie Prince Charlie's kilt and 'ancient' tartans, the history of the Highlands and its society is brought to life. This new revised edition of the 1995 edition was a best seller for years. This edition has a larger format, more pages, information on women's Highland habit, and new information on the results of dye analysis from an extant kilt.

$17.95 pp 112, 159 color, 21 B/W illustrations, 7 1/2" × 6"

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Flax and Linen
(A Shire Book)

Patricia Baines

Flax has been cultivated for thousands of years to produce the fibre to make linen. This book gives an account of the processes and tools involved in the production of linen from flax. The traditional methods, when the work was done by hand, are described, as well as some of the improvements and machines that have been developed.

Patricia Baines studied textile crafts at the Gloucestershire College of Art and Design.

0 85263 727 6
(Album 133) 32 pp, 47 ills.
$11.95

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