The flax plant is what is used to made linen. Linen is not easy to produce and is therefore rather valuable to the clothing manufacturers. When you think of summer clothing you probably don’t consider linen but it is in fact a very good material that allows your body to breathe.

Linen has been traditionally used in clothing and is completely different from modern day Billabong, Zoo York and Animal Clothing.

Not many people realise quite how long the history of linen actually is. 4 centuries before Christ was a time when many people grew their own flax plants and this of course made it easier to create linen. What individuals would do is take the flax plant fibres and weave them together to make clothes for their families. 4000 years ago was when it is believed that the first linen industry was active this took place in the ancient cities of Egypt.

For the Egyptians linen conveyed status and wealth. Linen used on tables was first started by the wealthy Egyptians but soon dispersed to the low classes in society.

As societies around the world progressed several different types of table linen came to be. This was when linen started to become recognized as a clothing material as well. For people who cared about their clothing it was essential to have a tailor at hand to make sure that the clothes fitted properly.

It was the rigidness and durability of linen that made it so popular for use in clothing and it is only recently that cotton has been used in place of linen for clothing manufacture.

Clothing is and tableware is not the only use of linen one other use includes as a canvas for oil paintings. The rigid but slightly rough texture of linen gives great depth to many of the oil paintings that are being produced.

There are lots of other uses for linen, which include wallpaper, window treatments and weaving.

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