Traditional manufacture of hemp and hop textiles: Why botany and agronomy matter

Abstract

Documentation of household textile plant cultivation is sparse and has been largely overlooked in textile research. This is especially true with hemp (Cannabis) and hop (Humulus). Existing references were rarely written by the growers themselves, and this has contributed to misunderstandings regarding the terminology of plant gender and fibre identity. By contrast, sources concerning those plants as highly valued economic plants of commerce are much more extensive but cannot be reliably applied to household production. Cultivation in small fields such as kitchen gardens combined with manual methods made it possible to extract extremely fine fibres, although yields were lower because only hemp and hop male plants were used to produce fine textiles. Topics covered include botanical factors, manual fibre extraction strategies, and the differences between household and commercial production.

Differentiating between Natural and Modified Cellulosic Fibres Using ATR-FTIR Spectroscopy

“…Modern samples of drawing paper (Fabriano, weight 180 g/m 2 ), pinewood, cotton, jute, flax, and viscose were purchased from specialised shops. Historical sources report that any chemical was used in the processing of hemp [66]. For this reason, we chose to test non-woven fibre (hemp thread, made in Egypt, distributed by GoPlast s.r.l, Varese, Italy), which is probably philologically nearer to the material used in the past.…”

“…In addition, the presence of contaminants [15,47,48] and the processing of the fibre [55] could have some influence on the spectra. It is known that FTIR signal is influenced by the treatment of natural fibres with different reagents [87,89], even if historical methods are not reported to use chemicals [5,66]. For example, alkalisation with sodium hydroxide removes materials, such as hemicellulose, lignin, wax, and pectin, from the surface of fibre bundles [88].…”