Natural Herringbone Manchester Cotton - $12.00 yd. 30% Off (Discount Will Show In The Shopping Cart)

The greater Manchester region of England was highly successful in its desire to compete with the growing popularity of the India cottons of the 18thc. Using various combinations of linen and cotton yarns, they produced a wide array of textiles including checks, stripes, figures and solids to be left plain, dyed or printed to the latest fashion. The quality of these goods ranged from the coarsest to the finest, which could today, fool the naked eye if not viewed through a microscope. In our personal research we have been fortunate enough to study a wide variety of these goods.

The goods you see here contain hemp rather than flax. They are a product called Hemptex by Robert Kaufmann.  Hemp was interchangeable with flax in some linen goods in the 18th century.  It was not always called out in the name therefore without microscopic id it is often not known in collections if a fiber is flax or hemp and is typically only referred to as Linen.  You can read more about the durability and sustainability of Hemp here.

Tickings or “ticken” encompassed a group of twill woven linens and could be woven as a plain twill or, in most of the examples we have studied, a herringbone weave. Herringbone was any textile woven in a zigzag pattern resembling the bones of a herring and could be woven in pattern widths ranging from very narrow to quite wide. Linen ticking appears in a surviving tax records from 1783 for German linens showing up as plain, striped, and printed. Stays surviving in the collection of Dunvegan Castle, Scotland are covered in ticking and purported to have been owned by Flora McDonald with a date of 1770-80.

• Our Natural Herringbone Manchester Cotton is lightweight.
• Suitable for women’s gowns, petticoats, lightweight jackets, bedgowns and aprons, men's waistcoats, lightweight jackets, linings, accessories as well as children's clothing
  

• 55% Hemp 45% Cotton, 54 inches wide