What (besides cardboard) can go into a mitre or biretta to make it stiff?

[PazzoGrande]

The mitres and birettas that I’ve seen are made with cardboard, then the cloth is sewn over it. It doesn’t seem like it would last very long.

What other things have been used? I would imagine that cardboard wasn’t around as long as these two garments were, so what did they use before?

I also would imagine that the fancy ones that the Pope has and some of the more grand antique ones that some bishops have aren’t just cardboard either, or else they wouldn’t have lasted for so long.

 

[DJJG]

Years ago I imagined they used starched cloth like with the nuns bibs (not sure what they are called) and priestolars and nurses hats.

 

[YoungTradCath]

The top fabric was probably sewn over a skeleton of extremely starched woven cotton. Part of one of my uniforms is the collar and cuffs, which are pinned to the coat and are extremely stiff, very much like cardboard, except they hold their shape. They were manufactured that way, and even with washing, they don’t lose their stiffness. Although, I wouldn’t see why a mitre or biretta would need to be cleaned very often. Maybe once every ten years or so a spot cleaning with soapy water, with light dustings-off in between.

Besides, many vestments aren’t made with garment life in mind. Very many of them are made of cheap polyester or synthetic blends. Things made of stuff like that aren’t intended to last very long. We have to remember that companies are in business to make money, including vestment-sellers, and high garment life cuts their profits over time. I imagine most vestments in the past, especially the old ones that have survived to current day, were made by extremely skilled hands, by haberdashers or skilled parishioners.

 

[LoyalViews]

Starch, of course Though, I think some sort of thin, hard, paper-like plastic could be used as well?

 

[malphono]

I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that the traditional interlining was starched linen, same as was traditionally used in palls. These days, any number of things are used, from cheap cardboard, to litholin (a type of very stiff artificial linen from which “pontiff-type” collars are also made), to plastic, etc. if I;m not mistaken, cardboard is the least durable, and it also has a tendency to bend out of shape thus rendering the item nearly useless.