Cologne border

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Cologne border is the name for woven and partly richly embroidered textile ribbon fabrics made of valuable materials about 10 to 15 cm wide. They were made in Cologne between the 13th and 16th centuries.

They show complex figurative representations in connection with texts, a fact that is unusual for medieval paramentics . The borders were mainly applied as decorations on liturgical vestments . They often have a thematic reference to donors, to the city's history, and they also visualize the formation of Christian legends in medieval Cologne. The ribbon fabrics were made from half silk and wool , are embroidered in different amounts and were a top export for the Cologne textile industry until the Reformation . As far as we know today, they were mainly made in the women's monasteries and Beguine Convents , but probably also by the women's guilds in Cologne. Due to their widespread use, the Cologne braids have become synonymous with late medieval Cologne textile production.

The braids were primarily used to decorate liturgical textiles, especially on chasubles , dalmatics and pluviales , but probably also had their place privately in the rich Cologne bourgeoisie. The borders were occasionally provided with texts, the names of Jesus or Mary and with figures of the Cologne veneration of saints. The use of texts or words as an integration into the aesthetic design of the decorative shapes on parament of the Middle Ages is only known on the Cologne braids. Occasionally the borders were also provided with the donor's coat of arms , which allows valuable conclusions to be drawn about clients, foundation events and social references.

Cologne braid fabrics were traded all over Europe, which shows their textile, cultural, economic and art historical importance for Cologne. And the braids are still highly valued today. So they are still today after wear of the carrier z. B. liturgical vestments, repeatedly sewn onto new fabrics and vestments. As a result, a number of Cologne braids have been preserved. This re-use can lead to considerable difficulties in dating, but a large number of the braids have been preserved to this day, mainly through this practice.

Cologne braids can be found in almost all historical church treasures and museums in the world. Pieces or fragments of borders that have survived to this day are also preserved in almost all known textile collections, including in collections in Cologne parishes and in the Rhineland that are not publicly known. The Museum Schnütgen in Cologne has the most extensive collection of woven fabrics, smaller collections are in the Diocesan Museum in Cologne and in the Museum of Applied Arts in Cologne. Nevertheless, they have so far only been insufficiently researched. Since the 1930s at the latest, it has been a research desideratum to scientifically inventory the preserved Cologne braids and depict them as an object group of textile art.

Research project Cologne braids

Since spring 2007, the Institute for Textile Design and Textile Science at the University of Cologne has been working on a corpus of Cologne braids under the direction of Marita Bombek, Gudrun Sporbeck and Thomas Blisniewski in collaboration with the Institute for Historical Textiles (Cologne) . By 2009, this project will record the stock of Cologne border that is located in the area of ​​the city of Cologne .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Database of the Cologne braids raises new questions: Cologne ribbon fabric as an export hit of the Middle Ages? In: Kölner Universitätszeitung . No. 5 , 2009 ( uni-koeln.de [PDF; 1,2 MB ; accessed on April 12, 2010]).

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