Browsing by Author "Suomela, Jenni"

Nettle (Urtica dioica) has been used as a textile fiber among other bast fibres. Its culturohistorical significance is not clear, due to lack of studies focusing on nettle fiber. Main reason for that is the similarity of nettle fiber with all other bast fibers in their microscopic structures. The identification may have been inadequate. Main purpose for this Master's Thesis was to find those structural features that makes nettle fiber distinguishable from other bast fibers and to find the methods to study these features. I chose flax and hemp to be the reference fibers, because they are the two other bast fibers growing in Finland that can be used in textiles. My Thesis is divided into three parts. In the first theoretical section I study nettle as a textile fiber, and identification methods and physical structures of bast fibers in general. In the research section I introduced the methods suitable for identifying bast fibers from each other, and explained the structural differences between nettle, flax and hemp. The methods I used in this study are longitudinal observation, cross sections, Herzog's test with polarized light microscopy and SEM. From these results I created an Identification Manual for Nettle Fiber. It is a practical manual for archeologists, conservators and all textile researchers to use. From the photographic material I précised referential photo collection of physical structures of bast fibers. The manual and the photo collection are found as appendixes at the end of the study. In the final section of my research, I piloted the manual to a small sampling of textiles from the Finno-Ugric and Historical collections of The National Museum of Finland which were suspected to be made from nettle fibre. My conclusions in this study is that it is possible to identify nettle from other bast fibers. I was able to identify the materials of the textile sampling with the methods I had chosen. 16 from 25 samples that I studied were nettle. This partly disproves former results. My study points out that it is important to re-identify materials in ethnographic museum textiles to find out and discuss further the culturohistorical significance of the nettle fiber.