oilcloth-msg - 3/6/10

Period oiled or waxed, waterproof cloth.

NOTE: See also the files: raingear-msg, p-medicine-msg, Workng-Beswax-art, p-petroleum-msg, beeswax-msg, linen-msg, silk-msg, cloaks-msg.

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This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday.

This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org

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    Mark S. Harris                  AKA:  THLord Stefan li Rous
                                          Stefan at florilegium.org
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From: scj427 at aol.com (SCJ427)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: oilskin
Date: 22 Jul 1995 03:38:32 -0400

If you are looking for "oilcloth" for use in waterproof enclosures it is
still commercially available.  It is a cotton duck treated with thick
resinous oil.  The stuff is waterproof and seems to attract charged
particles like crazy.  The archaic stuff is great to place in entranceways
to controlled work areas to keep down dust and nasty things like
microparticles of radionuclides.

I don't know a retail supplier but it comes with a 3-M label on the rolls.
 48" and 60" rolls.  I keep threatening to sneak out with the roll ends to
make a pavilion.

Stefan MacMorrow ap Rhovannon


Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:30:16 +1300 (NZDT)
From: "Zane R. V. Bruce" <zane at paradise.gen.nz>
Subject: [Lochac] Documenting oilskin, was Re:  experimental
	archeology
To: "The Shambles: the SCA Lochac mailing list"
	<lochac at lochac.sca.org>

Zebee Johnstone wrote:

<<< Now I could use oilskin bags tied together and slung over the bike,
and when I got to an event they'd be a set of bags that didn't look
out of place and so would solve my problem.  But they wouldn't be what
I wanted which is the period solution.  And if I did want oilskin, was
it something they used?  There are various 18th and 19thC recipes for
oilskin, are there period ones?  I did a quick look around and
couldn't find any.  Was it in use?  Was it in use for containers
rather than for floor coverings or clothes?  Information was horribly
lacking. >>>

I have this problem too, so here, Re-edited from various blog posts,
oilskin/cerecloth info, compiled after buying a lot of cheap but good
oilskin from the Mad Cat Lady Of Canberra!!11!, sometime 2006/7 ish:

So, I have a lot of oilskin and canvas. Probably several millibruces
worth, maybe as much as a centibruce (Black Company weights and measures
people worked this out a while ago, one bruce is about 25 tonne, so a
millibruce is about 25kgs. For comparison, I have previously taken around
1/25th of a bruce worth of gear to festival).

What to do with it, if you're a viking? We've managed to document oiled
linen to the eighth century and oiled silk to the ninth century:

http://www.tufts.edu/~mcavines/glassdesign2.html (As transparent material
for designing stained glass windows...)

Googling on "oiled silk" gets you an article on "Costumes of al-Andalus:
the Umayyad Caliphate", (Moorish Spain 900 - 1000 AD), "Mushamma was an
oiled silk used for rainproof cloaks", citing as reference for this:
RB Serjeant Islamic Textiles: Material for a history up to the Mongol
Conquest. Beirut, Libairie du Liban 1972 (I haven't been able to get this
text.)
Earlier period than that, and you just start getting lots of presumably
spurious references to oiled silk paper condoms in China.

Whereas modern oilskin is mostly oiled or waxed cotton canvas. Oilcloths
and tarpaulins were so common in the 18th-19th century as standard
waterproof material that I'm tempted to think that the reason you don't
find common references to it in period is that it was such an everyday,
workaday thing that it was so commonplace as to be not worth mentioning.
Of course, that's perilously close to the 'if they had it they would have
used it' argument that's so utterly circular and spurious.  Somewhere I
have a collection of 18th/19th century recipes, which I can dump on the
curious.  They mostly resemble this modern redaction:

http://codesmiths.com/shed/workshop/techniques/oilcloth/

At the moment, our main use has been waterproof cloaks, hoods, and we've
sold a moderate amount to people for tents, cloaks, groundsheets and
yurts. What I want is documentation on it, but I'm probably not going to
get such. Documentation on linen, hemp or nettlecloth waterproofed with
linseed oil, grease, wax or pitch would be nice. I've myriads of
references and recipes for oilcloths, oilskins and tarpaulins from around
the mid eighteenth century onwards, I just can't find anything much
between the 9th and 17th centuries, and the two early period references I
have are secondary on a good day and in the one case, not a reference to
oiled linen for _waterproofing_ (it was being used as a light transmitting
canvas to sketch stainglass window patterns on) and the moorish oiled
silks are not really going to resemble oilskin that much, I think (it was
unclear whether it was for garment or parasol use).

Later period partial references, though, do exist:

Plague doctor cloaks:
http://www.discover.com/issues/nov-01/features/featblack/

St Bees man shrouds:
http://www.stbees.org.uk/history/hist_sbman1.htm

Reference to waxed cloth in The Goodman of Paris:
http://www.gardenhistoryinfo.com/medieval/goodman.html

Cerecloth seems to be the main term, anglicised from the french (cir?).
Main problem is that it has become exclusively linked to waxed embalming
cloths in the literature, and hence is mostly used as a harbinger of death
indicator, and there is very little use of the word in any other setting
that may indicate other uses to which it was put. Usually linen.  However,
a waxed waterproof cloth is so useful, and fairly expensive, so that it
must have been used for more than wrapping bodies in.

So yes, very, very difficult to track down any sort of info on
waterproofed cloth previous to the 18th C.  Mind you, I'm not trying
_really_ hard.

Iarnulfr.


Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:52:02 +1300 (NZDT)
From: "Zane R. V. Bruce" <zane at paradise.gen.nz>
Subject: Re: [Lochac] Documenting oilskin, was Re:  experimental
	archeology
To: "The Shambles: the SCA Lochac mailing list"
	<lochac at lochac.sca.org>

Zane R. V. Bruce wrote:
<<< Plague doctor cloaks:
http://www.discover.com/issues/nov-01/features/featblack/

St Bees man shrouds:
http://www.stbees.org.uk/history/hist_sbman1.htm >>>

Bugger, those links no longer work, that teaches me to cut and paste from
old blog posts.  I'll have to find alternate examples of those.

Grr, internets, why do you forsake me.

Iarnulfr.


Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:00:06 +1300 (NZDT)
From: "Zane R. V. Bruce" <zane at paradise.gen.nz>
Subject: Re: [Lochac] Documenting oilskin, was Re:  experimental
	archeology
To: "The Shambles: the SCA Lochac mailing list"
	<lochac at lochac.sca.org>

Zane R. V. Bruce wrote:
Plague doctor cloaks:
http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2008/01/bird_hats_and_wax_pants_antipl.php

St Bees man shrouds:
http://www.stbees.org.uk/history/stbeesman2.htm

(about 2/3 way down the page, ten thickness of waxcloth used to wrap the
body)

Iarnulfr


Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 10:09:22 +1100
From: Zebee Johnstone <zebeej at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Lochac] Documenting oilskin, was Re: experimental
	archeology
To: "The Shambles: the SCA Lochac mailing list"
	<lochac at lochac.sca.org>

On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 10:00 AM, Zane R. V. Bruce <zane at paradise.gen.nz> wrote:
Zane R. V. Bruce wrote:
<<< Plague doctor cloaks:
http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2008/01/bird_hats_and_wax_pants_antipl.php

St Bees man shrouds:
http://www.stbees.org.uk/history/stbeesman2.htm

(about 2/3 way down the page, ten thickness of waxcloth used to wrap the
body) >>>

Hmm... so in both cases it seems to be to protect from bad air?  It's
my understanding that plague was thought to be carried by bad air, and
presumably anyone near a few days old corpse is going to think the
air's not that good.

That it also stops liquids would be obvious from the corpse I suppose.

That waxed cloth is expensive may or may not mean it was used
elsewhere.  I've just finished Keith Thomas's "The End of Life: Roads
to Fulfillment in Early Modern England" and the late 14s appear to be
when people started seriously looking at how to prolong their fame
after death - so more monuments and brasses and inscriptions as well
as endowing chantries.  These ain't cheap... and neither are lead
coffins.

So perhaps spending lots of money on a corpse was a form of that?

(Or perhaps the person died of something nasty and so they really had
to protect against bad air?)

I wonder how robust wax cloth is.  I've never made any so don't know
how well it stands up to being wrinkled and moved.

Silfren


Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:14:30 +1100
From: Karen Hovenga <khovenga at tpg.com.au>
Subject: Re: [Lochac] Documenting oilskin, was Re: experimental
	archeology
To: "The Shambles: the SCA Lochac mailing list"
	<lochac at lochac.sca.org>

Abbotsford uses linen dipped in beeswax as a period form of Gladwrap for
jars etc.

You can see a picture of it here -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vonmonstah/461169123/

I'll check the documentation with the instigator of the technology, but I
trust her.

Sara


Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:26:32 +1300 (NZDT)
From: "Zane R. V. Bruce" <zane at paradise.gen.nz>
Subject: Re: [Lochac] Documenting oilskin, was Re: experimental
	archeology
To: "The Shambles: the SCA Lochac mailing list"
	<lochac at lochac.sca.org>

Zebee Johnstone wrote:
<<< Hmm... so in both cases it seems to be to protect from bad air?  It's
my understanding that plague was thought to be carried by bad air, and
presumably anyone near a few days old corpse is going to think the
air's not that good. >>>

Yep - in actual fact it has been surmised by modern researchers that the
actual effect of the plague doctor outfits was that it was mildly
impervious to the yersina pestis carrying fleas and tended stop any
infectious sputum or other liquid from the infected contacting said
doctor.  But the fact it was used indicates that waxed cloth was a known
and used material.

<<< That it also stops liquids would be obvious from the corpse I suppose. >>>

Yep.  The problem is that I cannot find other references to it in the high
middle ages _other_ than the death-linked poetic use of the term Cerecloth
- people having visions or premonitions of people 'in their cerecloth' as
harbingers of death.  The fact that it was a waterproof cloth of use in
dealing with leaky/manky corpses in a relatively clean manner has lead to
the written mention of cerecloth being almost exclusively about death.

It seems obvious that there are plenty of other uses for waterproof cloth
based on a wax or oil method, and the Goodman of Paris mention does
underline that, but it's the only non-death associated mention that I can
find.

<<< I wonder how robust wax cloth is.  I've never made any so don't know
how well it stands up to being wrinkled and moved. >>>

Fairly much interchangeable with modern oilskins (many of which are based
on petroleum waxes).  Can be made very stiff and crackly if you use a pure
wax only mix, or can be pretty much like oilskin if you use a
wax/oil/resin mix.  Drawback to the 19th century recipes I have used is
that they remain tackier than modern oilskin, and can be pungent
(particularly if you include raw lanolin).  And, of course, extremely
flammable.  I'd advise using a modern oilskin.  They're pretty much
functionally identical, and easier to get hold of than making your own.  I
have around a hundred or so metres left.  Want some?

Iarnulfr.

<the end>
Edited by Mark S. Harris	oilcloth-msg	6 of 7