Valuable Cloth

The 'Valuable Cloth' exhibition displays unique medieval textile discoveries from Lödöse in Sweden. The collection at Lödöse Museum is Sweden's most extensive, and includes everything from coarse protective cloth to fine red suit fabric. At the Aboa Vetus Museum, the exhibition has been complemented with examples of textile discoveries and handicraft tools from medieval Turku.

Fabrics reveal a great deal of information. They tell of the medieval textile trade and its related business, the adoption of new methods of weaving and production and of course of changes in fashion. In olden days, cloth had great significance as a valuable commodity and method of payment. Woollen clothing was practical and warm, but was also an indication of the wearer's level of wealth and position in society.

The development of weaving technology in Sweden is revealed in the weave of the fabrics, which, in Lödöse, was mostly twill, whilst Turku's discoveries were more often of simple cambric. Typical of Lödöse textiles were striped and crinkled fabrics, which were not evident in medieval Turku. More typical in late medieval Turku were monochrome dyed woollen fabrics that were very often red. Flax fabrics are rare archaeological finds, because they could not be preserved in the Finnish soil. In the Middle Ages, flax cloths were bleached rather than dyed. Silk was a very expensive imported product, and the age of cotton had not yet dawned.