For thousands of years, cotton has been an ideal material for gloves, offering a soft feel, excellent flexibility and breathability, plus strong cellular structure to keep hands warm and comfortable.cotton gloves This versatility makes cotton a prime ingredient in work gloves manufactured with other materials such as polyester and neoprene, which offer different benefits such as heat protection and abrasion resistance. Whether you're looking for a pair of cotton jersey gloves to protect your hands from paper dust and dirt, or a pair of PVC-dotted cotton gloves with increased gripping power, there are many styles and options available in our inventory to meet all your needs.

        Institutional insistence that patrons and special collections staff wear white cotton gloves to prevent skin oils and fingerprints from damaging rare archival and library materials is a flawed policy that can actually do more harm than good.cotton gloves The warmth generated by encasing the hand stimulates eccrine sweat gland activity, creating a moist surface that attracts and distributes surface grime from the fingers through the cotton fabric to the paper being handled. This can contaminate pristine collection pages with invisible grit and grime that can damage delicate papers.

        Cotton also is extremely absorbent both from inside and outside the glove, absorbing and distributing dust particles and skin oil that can smudge paper surfaces. Moreover, the act of wearing gloves muffles haptic sensations and can obscure a sense of the pliability and thickness of paper, making it difficult to feel the way an individual leaf or page turns when holding it in the palm of one's hand. This often leads to clumsy attempts to separate pages or turn the book, which can result in damage.

        Gloves are manufactured in two primary ways: knitted or cut-and-sewn. Knitted styles, including cotton jersey gloves, use fabric components sewn together with needles and a seamless stitch, so the gloves fit more snugly and are less likely to tear or separate. Cut-and-sewn styles, such as cotton hot mill gloves, have four stalls for the fingers and a fifth stall for the thumb, with some styles featuring an additional layer of fabric on the palm for added heat protection. Some gloves combine two or more of these features to create styles such as dotted hot mill gloves and jersey gloves that are both breathable and coated for increased abrasion resistance. Many of our cotton gloves are machine-washable for quick and easy cleaning, while others must be washed by hand. Be sure to read the product descriptions for details about washing recommendations.