Fullo

A fullo was a Roman fuller or cloth-launderer (plural: fullones), known from many inscriptions from Italy and the western half of the Roman Empire and references in Latin literature, e.g. by Plautus, Martialis and Pliny the Elder. A fullo worked in a fullery or fullonica. There is also evidence that fullones dealt with cloth straight from the loom, though this has been doubted by some modern scholars. In some large farms, fulleries were built where slaves were used to clean the cloth. In several Roman cities, the workshops of fullones, have been found. The most important examples are in Ostia and Pompeii, but fullonicae also have been found in Delos, Florence, Fréjus and near Forlì: in the Archaeological Museum of Forlì, there's an ancient relief with a fullery view. While the small workshops at Delos go back to the 1st century BC those in Pompeii date from the 1st century AD and the establishments in Ostia and Florence were built during the reign of the Emperors Trajan and Hadrian.

Fulling existed of three main phases: soaping, rinsing and finishing.

Clothes were treated in small tubs standing in niches surrounded by low walls. The fuller stood with his feet in the tub filled with water and a mixture of alkaline chemicals (sometimes including urine) and trampled the cloth, scrubbed it, and wrung it out. The aim of this treatment was to apply the chemical agents to the cloth so that they could do their work - which was the resolving of greases and fats. The installations in which this treatment was done are usually referred to as 'treading stalls', 'fulling stalls' or, erroneously, 'saltus fullonicus' and are typical for fulling workshops and are often used by archaeologist to identify fullonicae in the archaeological remains.

After the clothes were soaped in the chemicals the dirt that they had resolved had to be washed out. This happened with fresh water in a complex of large basins that often were connected to the urban water supply. The typical rinsing complex consisted of three or four basins that were connected to each other: the fresh water entered on one side of the complex, the dirty water left it on the other side. Clothes followed the opposite direction of the water and went from the basin with the dirtiest water to the basin with the cleanest water.

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