Textile traditions in fantasy, a how-to guide: part 1 of 3
Shut up, it’s still Thursday. I really like historical textiles, and I like fantasy worlds, and I like world building. So let’s talk fantasy textile traditions, for your default fantasy d&d-ish world. I have a bunch of ideas, and so I’m going to present a guide to developing a complete textile tradition for a fantasy culture, using examples, and also a list of things I’ve done that anyone can steal and drop into a game, because I have a lot of those. That’ll be the end of this three part series. This first bit is mostly about researching and coming up with general ideas, next week will be about making specific traditions, and the last week will be a list of ideas that you can use to build on.
I want to note that this is going into a lot of detail, and most people aren’t going to use this level of detail. I actually often start with specific traditions rather than a general thing, but I have a lot of preexisting knowledge that I can use to develop the general ideas more quickly, and I know enough world history to guess at a civilization I can base things on. The easy way of doing this can be described in fewer words as “know the geography and what they have available, then make up things that fit what cultural norms you already have, then account for drift over time”, but this is going to be the guide to doing it with a lot of details.
1. Know something about your culture
Anyways. There’s a lot of things that go into cohesive, reasonable textile traditions (or any traditions for that matter), but the most important part is understanding the culture and society you’re doing this for; a society of herders (like orcs) who are seminomadic and in the steppes will have a different understanding of textiles than a society of farmers (like elves?) who are mostly settled across a mountain range and don’t have contact with the outside world, since they’ll have a different set of materials available and different methods of productions.
So know your cultural history. Specifically, since textiles are usually one of the first things I think about with regards to culture, the bare minimum I find it necessary to know is the general geography of the region they live in (mountains? Rivers? Plains?), the main occupation of society (that’s not the right word, but basically industrial? Agricultural? Herders? Hunter-gatherers?), and the technology level (goes along with the majority occupation — industrial society will be different from preindustrial, and once you get to an era where fast fashion is possible things really change). I usually think about the animals or plants available as well, just to get an idea going, but that’s usually research. Anything else you know is a bonus.
For an example, I’m going to use the nation of Tyrus (adjectival: Tyric, people from there are called Tyrusians), from the setting I mentioned here, Neverron. Tyrus is a society of seminomadic herders, mostly orcs and goblinoids (who share more common ancestors with each other than with any other group of humanoids). The things I know about Tyric culture: their lifestyle is based around herding and moving every few months to new grazing land (this implies their region is primarily grasslands, plains, or steppes, although I could maybe see them in mountainous or hilly regions as well), they are known for their textiles (why I’m doing this with them), they live in an industrial world but mostly produce meat and textiles for export (no factories, so probably no technology that isn’t portable), they import industrial goods even if they don’t produce them, and they have a form of government based around family groups and alliances between families (so traditions probably differ between extended families, and families will probably consider keeping traditions important).
2. Research and Organization
The next thing is to do a bit of basic research on real-world historical textiles: pick a real world culture in a similar geographic situation to your culture, figure out about when they had the tech level your culture has, and look up that era’s textiles in that region. Unfortunately, I don’t have a specific list of places to look up this stuff, although for (mostly) Victorian and post-Victorian Britain, and America from about the revolutionary war onwards, you might check out Piecework magazine. I tend to do research on an ad hoc basis or use books, actually. Let me know if a list of textile history books would be something you want to see!
I like to organize my information from my research by looking into what I like about each society I’m looking at and their textile traditions, and what I don’t like. That gives me an idea of what I want to have and what I want to avoid when I develop my culture. I also note any really interesting things, like the fact that llamas, alpacas, vicuñas, and guanacos are all camelids, specifically lamoids, and can all interbreed. If there’s anything I already came up with specific to my culture, like the Tyrusians being known for textiles, I add that to my notes.
Okay, specifics. Tyric territory is in a region that is somewhat mountainous and known for its grassy buttes and mesas. This is because the herder thing was similar to Mongol steppe herding, and I like the idea of them having llama-like creatures, which come from the Andes mountains in our world and are bred for high altitudes. That means I’m looking at textiles from pre-colonial Peru, maybe even pre-Inca, and Mongol-controlled Central Asia; timewise, this is probably 13th century Asia and pre-1500 South America. I can start there and then develop those further according to what I know about Tyrus.
Pre-colonial Peruvian textiles fascinate me, so I’m mostly going to base it off of that because I’m only basing the primary occupation of society off of the Mongols (Incan society being a lot more about terrace farming; lamoids were mostly beasts of burden or fiber animals).
However, I like two Mongolian textile things: first, weavers (especially weavers of silks) were very valuable members of society under the Mongol Empire, and secondly, I like the geometric patterns in their art (which is a staple of multiple types of Islamic art from a number of different cultures, but by no means all types or all cultures), especially in carpets and rugs. One thing I found in my research (sources at the end!) was that many Mongolian textiles were made of felt; that’s not something I want the Tyrusians to export because I want the focus to be on their woven textiles. While they may use felt domestically, I like the aesthetic of woven textiles for them better.
Now, Peruvian influences. During the Inca empire, textiles were really important. The fineness of a textile was proportional to how rich or noble you had to be to wear it; the finest cloth was reserved only for the Sapa Inca. The usual materials were alpaca or llama wool, or native cotton in the warmer parts, and it was usually spun on drop spindles and woven on backstrap looms. It was considered women’s work, but it was honored. Colors and patterns were important. I like all these elements, except the gender thing. Because I identify as genderqueer, I don’t like putting systems in my world that limit people’s ability to do something based on either sex or gender. One other thing I really love is that there are multiple species that can all interbreed and produce wool, and I want to make sure that goes into Tyric textiles.
3. Getting a general idea
The next step is to take your research and what you already know about your culture, and come up with a few sentences describing the general role of textiles in that culture. I like to make sure this includes the source of fiber, how it is turned into thread/yarn, how it is made into fabric, what kind of clothes do people wear in general, what group of people produces textiles, if any type of textile is specific to subgroups of people, and maybe if there’s something that makes these textiles different from everyone else in the world. You probably don’t need all of that at the start, it’s just a laundry list I use.
The bare minimum is probably the source of fiber, who makes it, how it’s made into fabric, and what that fabric is used for besides clothes. I presume most humanoid cultures will figure out clothing, and if I’m talking about traditions, I’m usually talking more about things like blankets or rugs or clothes for special occasions rather than what a random peasant would wear every day, although I do think about that.
For fiber sources, you want to be able to say if the fiber came from an animal or a plant, at the minimum, and probably what animal/plant if you have an idea. If it came from animals, what type? How do they get it off the animal? Is it naturally finer or coarser, longer or shorter, straighter or curlier? If it came from a plant, is it bast fiber (like linen, made from the long fibers inside the stem, takes longer to process) or something like cotton (which is unique among plant fibers)? How are bast fibers gathered, retted, processed, and spun? Is the plant domesticated or gathered? How long are the fibers?
Who makes it means what group of people does what work. In preindustrial societies, the reason spinning/weaving/etc were women’s work was because it took pretty much constant labor to keep a family clothed. That means if people are wearing anything more complicated than squares/rectangles with maybe holes in the middle, there’s people whose entire jobs and lives are based around that. Let alone what they sell, just talking about the work to clothe a single family already means constant spinning and pretty much constant weaving and sewing. How it’s made fits into that, but is a lot more about the tech level— are there spinning wheels or just spindles? Floor looms or just backstrap looms and other small scale looms? Are things sewn or pinned or what?
What it’s used for besides clothes — this is pretty obvious, but basically, are there rugs? Are there blankets? Are there specific cloth items for religious or cultural reasons?
Get creative! And maybe come up with a few points on which people disagree too, since no culture is ever going to be monolithic unless you’re making up Borg textiles.
In the case of Tyrus, there’s going to be 4-5 related species of herd animals that all produce meat, milk, and fiber, but some are bred more for one than the others. Most family herds will have a few of each species, and cross-breeds are definitely going to be a thing; some people will like the possibilities of crossbreeding for better *blank* but other people will feel it’s polluting the breeds. Everyone will need to pitch in when it comes to spinning, and I think that’ll mean everyone learns how to use a drop spindle early and societal expectation is that you’re always spinning. Drop spindles are going to be the only really widespread way of production spinning, and backstrap looms, which just require a belt and a post or tree or something to tie the back to, are going to be the main thing to weave on. Backstrap looms can only produce narrow fabrics (16-18 inches, I think?) so there’s going to be seams in everything.
I think weaving anything more than household textiles and clothing is going to be a job for a special group of family members who pass down closely guarded patterns to only those trusted by the family. Since Tyric culture has a big emphasis on family ties, maybe who gets chosen differs from extended family to extended family; some families will choose the oldest child in each household, some the children who want to learn the patterns, some the best weaver, but all the families will probably choose children because mastering the family patterns takes years if not decades and the patterns constantly evolve too. Fabric is used for everything from decorations to religious ceremonies to currency, and plays a big role in the economy as well as society.
That’s part one — tune in next week for more specific stuff! And let me know if you have any comments or questions!
Edit April 1: these are the sources I used, just the direct links as I’m a bit busy and realized too late I had forgotten them. Not all of them were really useful, but they were important background reading. There’s a book source that I’ll put in later too, something about Andean textiles in the pre-Inca era.
https://www.christies.com/features/Mongol-Textile-5861-1.aspx
https://pieceworkmagazine.com/a-teaser-trailer-for-folk-knitting/
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-andean-textiles-provide-clues-complex-ancient-culture
https://scielo.conicyt.cl/pdf/eatacam/2018nahead/0718-1043-eatacam-01301.pdf
https://www.gcsu.edu/sites/files/page-assets/node-808/attachments/daly.pdf
https://cdmc.wisc.edu/2020/06/01/intersections-indigenous-textiles-of-the-americas/
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/791/inca-textiles/
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1344&context=tsaconf
https://www.britannica.com/story/whats-the-difference-between-llamas-and-alpacas
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