kersey

Kersey is a coarse, ribbed woolen cloth named after Kersey, a village in Suffolk, England. The village sits in the Brett Valley, where sheep farming and wool production were the economic foundation for centuries. By the 13th century, Kersey was producing a distinctive twill-woven cloth—heavier than broadcloth, rougher than worsted—that was exported across Europe and eventually to the American colonies.

Kersey was the fabric of the common people. It was warm, hard-wearing, and cheap. In the 14th and 15th centuries, English sumptuary laws specified which social classes could wear which fabrics. Kersey was always at the bottom of the hierarchy—the cloth that laborers, servants, and soldiers were permitted. Shakespeare knew this. In Love's Labour's Lost, Berowne says he will woo in 'russet yeas and honest kersey noes,' rejecting silk rhetoric for plain woolen truth.

In colonial America, kersey became the standard fabric for enslaved people's clothing. Plantation records from Virginia and the Carolinas list kersey in bulk orders—yards and yards of it, distributed annually as the clothing allowance for enslaved workers. The fabric that had clothed English peasants now clothed American bondage. Kersey's cheapness made it the default for people whose comfort was not a consideration.

The village of Kersey today is one of the most photographed villages in Suffolk—a single street of Tudor houses descending to a water splash ford. Tourists come for the picturesque cottages, not the textile history. The looms are gone. The sheep still graze the surrounding fields, but their wool goes elsewhere. A village that once outfitted the bottom of the social order is now a destination for watercolorists.