As you may have (but probably haven’t) noticed, we’ve just got our grubby mitts on some top-class American-made hemp t-shirts courtesy of Jungmaven. If there was ever a garment that captured 1967 San Francisco (or at least our probably slightly clichéd idea of 1967 San Francisco), it’s these little beauts. As well as looking like something straight out of the pages of Oz magazine, these are made from the world’s number one wonder plant, hemp. And while we’re on the subject of hemp, here’s a few interesting slices of hemp-based trivia for you. So whack on that Grateful Dead cassette, light up some of the ol’ African Woodbine, dust off those dream-catchers and prepare to get experienced.
Although it’s from the Cannabis Sativa family, hemp lacks the all-important THC, so unless you want a pretty nasty headache, it’s probably not worth smoking your brand new Jungmaven tee.
Hemp is one of the most versatile plants going and all sorts of stuff like food, medicine, fuel, rope, clothes and paper can be made from it.
The first pair of Levi’s jeans were thought to be made from hemp, although after a fire destroyed the Levi’s archives in 1906, this can’t be confirmed or denied.
Such esteemed art masters as Vincent ‘One Ear’ Van Gogh and Rembrandt often painted on hemp canvases.
Both hemp and marijuana were legal in the USA until 1937, when a media-frenzy spawned by such classics as ‘Reefer Madness’ and a campaign charmingly titled, ‘Marijuana makes fiends of boys in 30 days’ led to any strains of Cannabis plants, even the harmless hemp ones, being banned. In an curious twist, it turns out that the fellas behind the campaign held a stake in some pretty hefty lumber mills and the fuel industry which hemp was set to replace. Probably just a coincidence though…
The oldest relic of human industry is a piece of Mesopotamian hemp fabric that dates back to approximately 8,000 BC.
Hemp was once a legal tender to pay taxes in the US.
The father of modern industry and all round automobile-artisan, Henry Ford made a car out of hemp in 1941, but due to WW2 cutbacks, it never got past the prototype stages.
George Washington grew up on a hemp plantation, and not so famously once said, “Make the most of Indian Hemp seed and sow it everywhere.”
There’s a difference between hemp t-shirts, and marijuana t-shirts — Hemp T-shirts look like this…
Whilst marijuana t-shirts look more like this…
View all Jungmaven t-shirts here.