Plate No. 027fabric
Unbleached
Bleached
- First documented
- Antiquity
- Origin
- Dhaka, Bengal, Bangladesh
- Fiber
- cotton
- Weave
- plain weave
- Family
- plain
Plate No. 027 · fabric
Muslin
Muslin is a plain-weave cotton, light and open, whose name once meant the most prized fabric on earth. The handloom muslins of Dhaka in Bengal were woven so fine that whole lengths could reportedly pass through a ring, and they clothed Mughal courts and European fashion alike. Industrial spinning collapsed that trade in the nineteenth century, and the word drifted down-market; in modern sewing rooms muslin means the cheap, unbleached cotton used for fitting test garments.
Named for
From Mussolo, the Italian name for Mosul in Iraq, the trading city through which Europeans first met the cloth. The finest muslins were woven in Bengal.
In the record
- 2013The jamdani technique of figured Dhaka muslin was inscribed by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage.