Brythonic men wore tunics and trousers (Bracs), and women wore the same but also wore long, wrap-style dresses and mantles, both fixed with a pin brooch. Furs including mink would have been available to the wealthy, and although only fragments of textiles have survived the intervening centuries, they were likely to have been as creative in their tailoring as they were with their arts. Brythonic women wore belts around their dresses made of cloth, leather or bronze rings. They were known to appreciate the way they looked and used fabulously decorated bronze mirrors, often brought from Hallstatt in Gaul, a tiny lakeside village in modern Austria and which began as a salt processing community, hence its name; (Halen is Salt in Welsh). Hallstatt is where the fabulous La Tène Culture flourished in a period stretching from C: 500 BC to 100 AD and where they reached the zenith of Celtic artistic beauty in their arts and crafts, which were exported around the globe and even influenced Brythonic art. Leather and animal hides were used for almost everything in daily life in this period and although very little of these more specialised textiles have survived, it would seem strange if they didn’t use leather for clothing, such as riding/hunting jackets and trews etc. They were known to have developed bronze armour plates for warfare, these mounted or riveted onto thick sheets of hard-boiled leather, and in my opinion, the skills of these ancient armourers and tailors has been much underestimated, and, as they were such creative people, I think the clothing of the aristocracy would have surprised us with its variation and quality. The graphic shows the traditional ‘Gwisgoedd y Werrin’; the clothes of ordinary people, but I believe this image does our ancient tailors a disservice.
I believe we made great use of leather and furs, and perhaps the following images may have been more accurate for our re-historic, pre-Roman period.
www.battle-ready.com
https://museumofleathercraft.org/story/medieval-monasteries-the-role-of-a-monastic-tannery/
www.fairyatnorweiganwood.tumblr.com
The ancient process of tanning leather.
The first operation in preparing leather in our pre-historic times would have been to place and secure the raw animal skins into running water, a lively stream preferably where they are kept for one week, being taken out daily and thoroughly beaten with a wooden brake; a simple club. This is used with great skill and patience, and which pounding breaks up the tough fibres in the hide and softens them to a pulpy condition. Then they spend around a month in a clay pit filled with a lye made of lime or ashes, of which the exact strength and length of time must be left to the judgment and experience of the individual. The hair is then removed from the skin with a razor edge and whilst stretched across a timber frame, and steam was often used to soften the wiry hair of some beasts such as boar, and steam made this process much easier. Hot stones from a fire dropped into containers of hot water surrounded by these frames would do the trick in a cave or a purpose-built workshop. Smoke from the fire itself also released tanning agents in the form of phenols, and so a similar process whereby a main fire would have been surrounded by several skins on their frames. The alkaline properties of the lye are dispelled then by soaking the pelts in an infusion of white gentian roots and leaves in fresh water for twenty-four hours. The swelling of the skins is a matter of particular care, for which they are then soaked four or five days in a mixture of oatmeal and water.
https://bestleather.org/leather-tanning/
They are now ready for the tannin, which is extracted from the bark of the willow, but birch bark, chestnut bark, elm bark, hemlock root, animal brains, fat, liver, salt and of course urine have all been used in the tanning and softening of leather. In the first tanning solution, the denuded and now pliable skins remain but three days in this clay lined pit and are again beaten down with the brake. In the second solution (commonly in a second pit for this purpose) which is stronger than the first, they remain for eight to ten days, again depending on judgement. After being removed from the second solution they are rinsed in the stream and dried with the flesh side upward on simple wooden horses, and when dry are beaten down again with the club. Now they are greased, dried once more, and finished, using oak gall and alum for the dark colouring. Alum can be gained from evaporite deposits in ancient volcanic soil, often from cave stalactites and stalagmites in or around volcanic regions however old. In this finishing process, which is also used for dyeing the leather, several skins are sewed up into a large sack with the flesh side on the outside, closed all around except for a small opening at one corner to admit the dyeing liquid. When the dye has reached all parts, these large bags of skins are hung up to drain, then to dry. Leather was often dyed with Asparge in this period, a kind of Lilly (Asparagus), with the whole process being repeated two or three times to get the desired depth of colour, although they never would have achieved anything close to the vibrancy of modern textile dyes. Again, once the leatherworker decides they are ready, they are unstitched and rinsed once again in the stream. Once dry, these soft leather pelts are now greased on the flesh side and grained with a notched stick on the finished side. This was achieved by passing the length and breadth of the skins with this specialised tool until small furrows were gradually produced. After graining, another greasing is necessary, this time with birch or linseed oil to waterproof them, and the leather skins are then put back on their wooden horses to be smoothed with a smooth round stone, or a purposely made, cup like tool in bronze. Birch oil gives the leather a peculiar smell which distinguishes it from that prepared by any other process. The leather is now ready to be cut and sewn into the required garment, hat, shoe, boot or piece of tack.
For a bloody romp through the palisade hillforts of Britain in this era of pre-discovery, please check out my historical fiction trilogy and its associated novella; Iron Blood & Sacrifice, available now on Kindle/Amazon;
Comments