Várzea de Calde – A Village Woven in Linen
Coordination: Luís Gomes da Costa

Portuguese and English bilingual edition, 244 pages
Catalog number: nodar.015 / TRS.007
ISBN: 978-989-99856-1-2
© Municipality of Viseu and Binaural – Associação Cultural de Nodar, 2017

This book and the accompanying documentary film is a huge homage to the cultural heritage of linen in the tiny rural village of Várzea de Calde (municipality of Viseu), declined in a long process divided into various stages, developed in distinct periods of the year and in different locations within the village: sowing the flax, pulling the flax, rippling the linen, retting the linen, squeezing and drying the linen, beetling the linen, scutching the linen, hackling (combing) the linen, spinning the linen on a distaff, spinning the skeins on a loom, boiling the skeins, washing the skeins after bleaching, washing the skeins, drying the skeins, ashing (bleaching) the skeins; hanging the skeins out to dry, doubling the skeins, winding a linen warp, mounting the loom, winding the linen onto a bobbin, weave, cut and sew. In these times in which ready-to-wear clothing is bought within minutes in any store, it’s amazing to see the dedication, hard work and time that was needed to see the flax plant transformed into fabric. Only the necessity of self-sufficiency can explain this centennial abnegation of the women from Várzea de Calde and many other villages of the Portuguese rural world.