The Fabric of Civilization Quotes

“Fabric" and "fabricate "share a common Latin root: fabrica "something skillfully produced". Text and textile are similarly related, from the verb texere, "to weave", which in turn derives...from the Indo-European word *teḱs̱  , meaning "to weave".  "Order" comes from the Latin word for setting the warp threads, [ordinare], as does the French word for computer, ordinateur. The French word metier, meaning "trade" or "craft" is also the word for "loom".  

Such associations aren't uniquely European.  In the K'iche' Mayan language, the terms for weaving designs and writing hieroglyphics both use the root tz'ibia.  The Sanskrit word sutra, which now refers to a literary aphorism or religious scripture, originally denoted "string" or "thread". The word tantra which refers to a Hindu or Buddhist religious text, is from the Sanskrit tantrum, meaning "warp" or "loom".  The Chinese word Zǔzhī” 组织 meaning "organization" or "arrange" is also the word for "weave", while Chéngjiù 成就 meaning "achievement" or "result" originally meant "twisting fibers together".  ”
― Virginia Postrel, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World

“To reverse Arthur C. Clarke’s famous adage about magic, any sufficiently familiar technology is indistinguishable from nature.”
― Virginia Postrel, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World

“The cultural authenticity of cloth arises not from the purity of its origins but from the ways in which individuals and groups turn textiles to their own purposes. Consumers, not producers, determine the meaning and value of textiles.”
― Virginia Postrel, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World

“Viking Age sail 100 meters square took 154 kilometers (60 miles) of yarn. Working eight hours a day with a heavy spindle whorl to produce relatively coarse yarn, a spinner would toil 385 days to make enough for the sail. Plucking the sheep and preparing the wool for spinning required another 600 days. From start to finish, Viking sails took longer to make than the ships they powered.”
― Virginia Postrel, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World

“This rare expertise was hard to duplicate, making the maestre sought-after employees who commanded higher wages than male laborers.”
― Virginia Postrel, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World

“Sacchetti ends his story with a popular saying: “What woman wants the Lord wants, and what the Lord wants comes to pass.”24”
― Virginia Postrel, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World

“Contrary to the impression left by toga party costumes, the toga was closer to the size of a bedroom than a bedsheet, about 20 square meters (24 square yards). Assuming 20 threads to the centimeter (about 130 to the inch), historian Mary Harlow calculates that a toga required about 40 kilometers (25 miles) of wool yarn—enough to reach from Central Park to Greenwich, Connecticut. Spinning that much yarn would take some nine hundred hours, or more than four months of labor, working eight hours a day, six days a week. Ignoring textiles, Harlow cautions, blinds classical scholars to some of the most important economic, political, and organizational challenges that ancient societies faced. Cloth isn’t just for clothes, after all. “Increasingly complex societies required more and more textiles,” she writes. The Roman army, for instance, was a mass consumer of textiles.… Building a fleet required long term planning as woven sails required large amounts of raw material and time to produce. The raw materials needed to be bred, pastured, shorn or grown, harvested, and processed before they reached the spinners. Textile production for both domestic and wider needs demanded time and planning.”
― Virginia Postrel, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World

“My dear daughter—I have for some time had hope of seeing you once more in this world, but now that hope is entirely gone forever,” wrote Phebe Brownrigg to her free daughter Amy Nixon, shortly before her owner took her from North Carolina to Mississippi in 1835. One of the rare letters written by a western-bound slave on her own behalf, it concluded, “May we all meet around our Father’s throne in heaven, never no more to depart.”
― Virginia Postrel, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World

“As he seeks to improve Under Armour materials, Blakely increasingly focuses on the earliest stages of the manufacturing process. Starting early provides more possible ways to add features. To develop a cooling fabric, for instance, the company worked with an Asian supplier to develop a yarn whose cross section maximized its surface area. It then infused the material with titanium dioxide, whose presence makes people exercising in hot, humid environments feel cooler.16 Under Armour”
― Virginia Postrel, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World