A 17th century merchant wrote about Muslin....."calicuts made so fine you can hardly feel them in your hand, and the thread, when spun, is scarce discernible" (Calicuts were muslins made in Calcutta)
So I say~ What the heck happened????????????
Here is a pet peeve of mine.....people who think things that are 'olde' are poorly made or somehow insuperior.....and that if its made now~a~days...it certainly must be better. ::sigh::
NOT!
The above picture is the current unbleached muslin that is available at the fabric store. I cant even believe these people call this coarse, nubby, irregular weave MUSLIN! AKKKK
Now this, Dear Friends, is Muslin. Yes, its been spiffed up a bit, having been carefully hand embroidered and made into a baby cap, but you can see the weave and fineness of the material~ soooo soft, and quite thin~ its nearly transparent.
Put together, the modern 'muslin' looks like heavy Jersey cloth up to the original muslin. We are in such a technical FAST era....Quantity over Quality~ I don't like it a bit. If a job is worth doing, why not do it well to begin with? What ever happened to 'learning from history'?
Make room on your soap box for me!!
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with you. Even things that were made 50 years ago are much better than what we get today. There was no "high impact plastic" back then, so parts and gears and such were metal....it holds up to use....plastic doesn't! There was also "pride in workmanship" back in the "old days". I'll bet, now, over half the population has never heard the phrase before. We are in the process of "high tech"ing ourselves right into oblivion. What will we have for people to look at 150 years from now, to see how we lived? I'm afraid it will be nothing but pictures faded to white and piles of rotted materials that couldn't stand up to time. Yet, there will probably be big chunks of that "high impact plastic" because while it doesn't hold up to wear, I think time may be on it's side.....it takes it forever to break down! These days, if it's not lightning fast and envolves a computer chip, it's not worth bothering with. How sad!
LY, Mom
Wow! Stuff to ponder indeed. I've often wondered what that delicate, old, almost organdy-like, but soft fabric was, and now I know, beautiful old muslin.
ReplyDeleteChristine