CAROLYN’S COMPOSITIONS
FLAX SCUTCHING IN PENNSYLVANIA & EUROPE
When Stahlstown (PA) was a settled and respected stagecoach stop in the days of the early settlers, everything a family used was either grown or hunted in their own back yard. That included the raw materials necessary for fabric production, including sheep and flax. From these they made their mainstay fabrics, linen and wool—fabrics that covered their bodies and kept them warm in the cold winters.
Linen, made from the fiber flax plant, is a fabric dating from pre-Biblical times. Seed was brought from Europe to America by the nation’s first immigrants. In time, easier to produce and care for cotton and synthetic fabrics replaced the linen threads that were woven into linen. It was a long tedious process that included seed broadcasting, plant harvesting, retting, and scutching.
Following the invention of the cotton gin, cotton became the preferred fabric. When synthetic fabrics became available, linen took another hit. Although the European Union subsidizes flax farmers and processors, fiber flax has not been grown commercially in North America for more than forty years.
To view photographs of growing flax, click on:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolyncholland/3907672591/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolyncholland/3907672513/in/photostream/
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolyncholland/3908451126/in/photostream/
The Stahlstown Flax Scutching Festival works to maintain the art of making the flax fibers necessary to linen production. In 2009 the festival will be 102 years old, celebrating flax scotching since 1907 (missing only 1908 and the war years, 1942-1947). (Official Festival website: http://flaxscutching.org/ )
This year also marks the year that the European Cooperative Research Network on Flax and other Bast Plants has designated as the International Year of Natural Fibers. The network is a part of the European System of Cooperative Research Networks in Agriculture. Its fifty-two nation membership includes Canada and Mexico (but, notably, not the United States).
If the European Cooperative network has its way, ancient times will not be so ancient. Producing linen from fiber flax plants may become as current today as it was in pre-Biblical times. They plan to reestablish flax as a “good textile raw material,” a plan that is aided by a modern twist that won’t take us back to the good old days. To accomplish this, the European Network believes the world needs to adopt a new doctrine, one that is firmly based on up to date scientific discoveries, convictions and beliefs.
To re-establish flax fibers as a raw material, and for the spinning industry to survive, flax fibers that are of “satisfactory textile characteristics, suitable for the production of fine yarns,” must be produced. Their ideal thickness cannot be more than one fifth of the thickness of the desired yarn. Deviations, including those due to incomplete or defective fiber extraction, and different specifications of the straw due to its thickness, should not exist.
Furthermore, for the flax fibers to be usable without affecting their potentially natural favorable textile characteristics, the fibers must be smoothly and safely extracted from the holding tissue in which they are embedded (encircling a central wooden cylinder).
Important to a new technology, the use of osmosis to extract fibers, is the fact that flax straw is composed of two types of cells. Static fixed cells form the wood, fiber, and outer skin. Dynamic cells, with semi-permeable membranes, form a holding tissue. Static cells are unaffected by contact with water. Dynamic cells are greatly affected by contact with water.
The natural law of water diffusion (osmotic pressure increases when the water concentration is higher inside the cells than it is outside the cells) comes into play in the latest method of separating flax fibers from the plant. Continual entry of water molecules into the cells creates a pressure that is greater than the plant membranes can stand. The membranes rupture and disintegrate, successfully releasing the fibers they hold.
Scutching flax is a bit of Americana, the frontier’s traditional process of creating flax fibers. This is the goal of the Stahlstown Flax Scutching Festival.
Ligonier Valley settlers grew flax since they arrived in the early 1770s. Flax was called the “Pioneer plant” because it was the first crop grown on cleared land. They soon realized that they could combine the hard work and intense labor with community celebrations with food, fellowship and music.
So rare are flax scutching festivals in today’s world that in 1993 representatives from Kimberly-Clark Canada, Inc., which used fiber flax for cigarette papers, visited then festival chairman, Frank Newell (Stahlstown). Some of the representatives were from France. Later, Kimberly-Clark donated 110 pounds of flax seed to the festival.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolyncholland/3910673985/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolyncholland/3911455524/
Members of the Stahlstown community are proud to host the Flax Scutching Festival, considered the second longest continuous flax scutching festival in the world, and the only one in the western hemisphere. The first festival drew four thousand people traveling on fifteen hundred horses and in nine hundred cars. Developed as a homecoming celebration and picnic, its flax scotching theme represented the experience of residents with first-hand knowledge of the art.
Large crowds still visit the festival. For more information about the Flax Scutching Festival is available by clicking on their website, http://flaxscutching.org/ The September 10, 2009, edition of the Ligonier Echo published an article, Flax scotching celebrates 102 years (page 4).
ADDITIONAL READING:
From flax to linen: The Stahlstown (Pa.) Flax Scutching Festival
THUNDER MOUNTAIN LENAPE NATION POWWOW
NORTHERN BAYBERRY YIELDS READY-MADE CANDLES
BEAR STORIES ACROSS THE NATION
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Comment by Casper — January 1, 2010 @ 8:37 am |