Grey Herringbone Manchester Cotton - $12.00 yd.

Grey Herringbone Manchester Cotton

The 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 research, we have been fortunate to study a wide variety of these goods.

The Grey Herringbone Manchester Cotton you see here contains hemp rather than flax, and is a product called Hemptex by Robert Kaufmann.  Hemp was interchangeable with flax in some 18th century linen goods.  It was not always specified 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, such as this Grey Herringbone Manchester Cotton, 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 Grey Herringbone Manchester Cotton is lightweight.
• Suitable for women’s gowns, petticoats, lightweight jackets, bedgowns and aprons, men's waistcoats, lightweight jackets, linings, accessories, and children's clothing
  
• Our Grey Herringbone Manchester Cotton is 55% Hemp 45% Cotton, 54 inches wide
• Okeo-Tex Certified