Her husband was trying to calm her down, assuage her, and in the end what she did was to put a handkerchief over her face and secure it with the brim of a fustian hat.

Fustian, of which I found only one entry before 1401, occurs frequently in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It appears to have been a ribbed cloth. […] On one occasion (1443) it is described as 'white ribbed fustian.'

The different names given to fustian cloths depend upon their degree of fineness, and the manner in which they are woven and finished. […] In all fustians there is a warp and filling, or weft thread, independent of the additional filling-thread forming the pile; but in corduroys the pile thread is only 'thrown in' where the corded portions are and is absent in the narrow spaces between.

The East India company was pursuing its own financial interests, but in doing so was also fostering the establishment of industries such as calico printing — an industry that would have not achieved the same degree of accomplishment if it had confined itself simply to the printing of European fustians (mixed cottons) and linens, both of which were more difficult to print on than cotton.

Fustian is a species of coarse twilled cotton, but may be considered as a general term which comprehends several varieties of cotton fabrics, as corduroy, jean, velveret, velveteen, thickset, thickset cord, and other stout cloths for men's wearing apparel; from their strength and cheapness, they are very serviceable to agricultural people. It is generally dyed of an olive, leaden, or other colours. […] Fustians are either plain or twilled.

Fustian originally referred to a large variety of textiles of linen-and-cotton blend; later it came to mean all-cotton textiles. Common varieties of the fancy fustians are corduroy, jean, pillow, thickset, velveret and velveteen.

Fustians, a large group of general-purpose fabrics were mainly woven with a tight heavy texture. Sometimes they were plainly woven, but fustians could also be fashioned with “tufts” creating fabric like corduroy or velveteen. Fustians were used for anything from draperies to dresses or upholstery to men’s waistcoats.

In the nineteenth century fustian cutting was a major occupation right across the North West and thousands of people in the cotton towns were employed at it. Sometimes the work was done at tables but more often than not the cloth was stretched across rollers and they'd walk up and down all day, slicing through the threads of the weave row by row, using tiny blades fashioned from watch springs and honed until they were as sharp as razorblades. Cutting even a basic fustian, they could walk ten or eleven miles over the length of a shift. With more sophisticated fustians – fabrics like velveteen, for instance – you had to walk further, much further.

What made [Édouard] Manet a veritable prophet in his day, was that he brought a simple formula to a period in which the official art was merely fustian and conventionality.

Anything grandiose or historically based tends to sound flat and banal when it reaches English, partly because translators get stuck between contradictory imperatives: juggling fidelity to the original sense with what is vocally viable, they tend to resort to a genteel fustian which lacks either poetic resonance or demotic realism, adding to a sense of artificiality rather than enhancing credibility.

RUMFUSTIAN. The yolks of twelve eggs, one quart of strong beer, one bottle of white wine, half a pint of gin, a grated nutmeg, the juice from the peeling of a lemon, a small quantity of cinnamon, and sufficient sugar to sweeten it;[…]]

Rum Fustian is a "night-cap" made precisely in the same way as the preceding [egg-posset or egg-flip], with the yolks of twelve eggs, a quart of strong home-brewed beer, a bottle of white wine, half-a-pint of gin, a grated nutmeg, the juice from the peel of a lemon, a small quantity of cinnamon, and sugar sufficient to sweeten it.

Rum fustian [i]s prepared at Oxford as follows: whisk up to a froth the yolks of six eggs and add them to a pint of gin and a quart of strong beer; boil up a bottle of sherry in a sauce-pan, with a stick of cinnamon or nutmeg grated, a dozen large lumps of sugar, and the rind of a lemon peeled very thin; when the wine boils, it is poured upon the beer and gin and drank hot.

Fustian

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Noun

Adj

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