Add to ORKGOver many thousands of years there have been political, social meanings woven into the very fabric of cloth. Fabric is politically and semiotically charged even before it has any further imagery added to it. With the production of cheaper cotton and mass printing techniques in the eighteenth century the handkerchief, kerchief or bandana become the perfect vehicle for political messages, signifying complicity or resistance to political ideologies. I will trace the rise of the use of propaganda handkerchiefs from political protest such as Berthold\u27s Political Handkerchief, which was a British working class newspaper that was printed onto cotton in 1831 to avoid a tax on paper, to American examples, which exist from the early 19th century. ...
