The undyed seed-hair fiber, the world's everyday cloth.
- First documented
- Antiquity
- Origin
- the Indus Valley and Mesoamerica, India
- Fiber
- cotton
- Weave
- the seed-hair fiber, woven into countless cloths
- Family
- fibers
Plate No. 126 · fabric
Cotton
Cotton is the soft white fiber that grows around the seeds of the cotton plant, and it is the most-used natural fiber in the world. Spun and woven, it is breathable, absorbent, soft, and easy to dye and wash, which made it the everyday cloth of nearly every culture that could grow or trade it. It was domesticated independently in the Indus Valley and in Mesoamerica thousands of years ago, and Indian cottons like calico, muslin, and chintz drove centuries of global trade. Cotton also drove the Industrial Revolution and, darkly, the Atlantic slave economy that fed the mills. Most of the plain-woven cloths in this catalogue are cotton.
Named for
From the Arabic qutn, through Old French coton; the plant and its fiber were known to the Arab world long before medieval Europe.