there and almost everywhere by women. Even in the fully developed export-oriented
woolen draperies of the high and later Middle Ages, female workers still outnumbered
males; but throughout western Europe, men had succeeded in decisively dominating this
industry.
In the commercially oriented Franco-Flemish draperies, production became organized
by a “putting-out” system under the supervision of entrepreneurs known as drapiers,
almost always men, the exception typically being their widows. Some drapiers might also
be wool merchants; but most purchased wools from such merchants, who often delivered
them already sorted by staple length, beaten, cleansed, greased, and sometimes partially
dyed in the wool, usually woad-blue as the foundation for other colors. Under the
drapier’s supervision, these wools were “put out” to combers and carders, almost
exclusively female, who prepared them for spinning in their own homes—often rural
cottages, for piecework wages. Thus prepared, such wools were then similarly “put out”
to spinners, again females, whether using the distaff or the wheel, also working in their
own homes or cottages. The warp and weft yarns so spun were then delivered to the
weavers, who were almost exclusively male by the high or late Middle Ages—all the
more so since the master weaver was frequently also the drapier.
The broadloom required two weavers, one on each side, to operate the treadles for
separating the warps and to pass the weft-bearing shuttle back and forth through the
warps; their assistants, who wound and fitted the warps and wefts, were usually females.
The woven cloth was then delivered to the fullers, who were again almost exclusively
male, as were the other artisans in the finishing processes. After the cloth had been
thoroughly scoured, degreased, felted, and subjected to a preliminary napping (teaseling)
and “wet-shearing,” it was hung by tenterers on large frames, to be dried and stretched so
that no wrinkles remained, and then returned to the drapier. He might choose to sell this
broadcloth, whose manufacture had taken over two weeks, to cloth finishers or
merchants, who might then commission shearers and dyers to finish the cloth; or the
drapier himself might send the cloth to the shearers and dyers; or the woolens might be
exported to Italian towns, Florence especially, for such finishing.
In the leading Franco-Flemish draperies, formal guild organization by the later Middle
Ages was confined largely to the four major urban-based and male-dominated crafts: the
master weavers, who as drapiers depended on profits for their incomes, while their
journeymen weavers received wages; the master fullers, dependent piecework employees
of the drapiers; and the master shearers and dyers, most of whom were independent fee-
earning craftsmen.
The ultimate, late-medieval commercial preeminence of the luxury-quality woolens
was due not just to changes in fashion or technology but more particularly to adverse
economic changes that sharply raised transportation and marketing costs in international
trade to a prohibitive level for the cheaper textiles. Most of these rising costs resulted
from the widespread, prolonged warfare—and associated fiscal, monetary, and
commercial policies pursued by the combatants—that afflicted so much of western
Europe and the entire Mediterranean basin, Christian and Muslim, from the later 13th to
the mid-15th centuries. Europe was also seriously afflicted, during the last hundred years
of this era, by plagues and famines; but in France the industrial and commercial
transformations were readily apparent well before these later calamities.
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1712