Blue hats of MS 6613

Hats of MS 6613 - a safavid manuscript with many lovely illuminated pages

These images were gleaned off multiple pages and there are a few similarities across the board:

• Bright sky blue hats with white dots - These may or may not be spangles as they  occasionally appear to raise off the edge of the hat.
• Black decoration around brim - this looks like lace or fur floof
• Brim - the brim is at least half the hat tall
• Point - the point is slightly rounded may be floppy given the multiple directions it moves.

Mughal flat hat

The Mughal flat hat!

Late 15th Century. Shapur with the daughter of Mihrak, by Qāsim.  British Library MS 5600 - f.399v: Look at the detail on her hat! I love the beaded (pearl?) trim on the edge and the suggestion of gems all over.

Hood idea II

Yesterday I published a picture of a hood I'd like to make as I'm quite taken with the ears. I've now found something equally great! Below is an image of a 1535 German design book by Christian Egenolff. The designs seem to cover a great many applications. Some are clearly embroidery charts, others appear to be engraving or carving where rounded lines are utilised. I found the image below on a page of embroidery designs. Though this image has a few rounded lines, I believe the cubic format is intended for embroidery.

The chart features two fools conversing in a garden surrounded by sun flowers. In front of them a wattle fence keeps them penned in. The alignment of the left most flower and fence post and right most flower and fence post suggests this pattern could be repeated with ease. Now I'm torn, should I embroider this along the base of my hood or as shirt cuffs?

Modelbuch aller Art Nehens vn Stickens by Christian Egenolff. 1535. Germany. The Met Museum. Accession number: 33.69(4v)

Hood idea

Lets all take a minute to admire this hat:

I do like a hood with ears and this has some beautiful detail around the seams. I also love the slightly floppy ears - like a x-breed kelpy. This hat is a small feature in the Fable of the Mouth of Truth by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1534). The original is in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum but to make it easier on us, they have released a lovely high resolution image to Wikimedia here. The figure himself a an disguised as a 'Fool'. I'd happily be considered foolish and wear this amazing hood around at cold events if I could figure out how to make the ears stay up.

The hats of the landsknecht

This is a simple image reference collection of the various hats featured in Landsknecht woodcuts. No construction methods are proposed but styles types are grouped to align with my 1520's German hat research. I'm not a fan of Pinterest links within links so this is a more direct way of referencing.  The aim is to reduce the trolling through Pinterest and museum archives next time I need a specific fancy hat reference. Each image will only feature the hat detail and a link has been provided to the entire original image. Reference details are provided in the event the hyperlinks break. 

I started this post with an assortment of 30 images but as I was tidying up the references I realised that they fell into three sets. The British Museum has a collection of 50 odd images of Landsknechts block cut by Jost de Negker. There is a goodly number of Daniel Hopfer and then assorted random images. Unfortunately, some of the images aren't high resolution so end up a little pixelated.

This is by no means a complete collection and if you know of a hat I've missed please link to the museum reference in a comment!

1520's German hat Research part 4

Allegory of Virtues and Vices at the Court of Charles V by Hans Daucher 1522 (The Met Museum accession no. 17.190.745)

The previous parts of this research have discussed Tallerbarret's and Split Brim hats, Star fish and upright brim hats, and multiple ideas on constructing the hat crowns. The fourth, and final part, will examine the decorations on the hats featured in The Virtues. This discussion will also examine the art work within the cultural context to ensure this artwork is reflective of wider society and the information can be extrapolated beyond this context. This part of the analysis is important as many allegorical hats (and clothes) are not representative of what was worn at the time, being either a fantasy creation of the artist or an artists impression of 'ancient' clothing. I'm of the opinion in the SCA, that if you can find it and make it, you should wear it.  You should also be aware of its history and context so when asked why you're wearing a beautifully absurd hat, you can explain it's origins and inspire others.

Again, a lengthy and picture heavy post which can be found under the jump cut.

1520's German hats research part 3

Allegory of Virtues and Vices at the Court of Charles V by Hans Daucher 1522 (The Met Museum accession no. 17.190.745)

In the previous two posts I reviewed the hats of The Virtues with regards to the varied brim construction (split brim and floppy hats). There is significantly less material to work with on this topic as displaying the full crown of a wide brimmed hat often means obscuring the face of the wearer. Working within the limited confines of the The Virtues, I've attempted to propose some constructions methods to achieve the look on display. These are aimed to direct future experiments with cloth to determine how construction and use requirements (function) might dictate form.

The rest of the post is below the cut as it's picture heavy, again.

1520's German hats research part 2

Allegory of Virtues and Vices at the Court of Charles V by Hans Daucher 1522 (The Met Museum accession no. 17.190.745)

The Allegory of Virtues and Vices at the Court of Charles V features a lovely spectrum of hats from the early 16th century. Tallerbarret and Split Brim hats were discussed in the previous post so this post will look at floppy hats, upright brim and combination hats. I consider floppy, or "Star fish hats" to be distinct from split brim as cuts do not overlap and more slashed than cut and pieced. For this analysis "Split brim star fish hats" will be a combination of both where the splits clearly extend to the crown and overlap in places and are additionally slashed. There are a variety of floppy hat patterns to be found here (beware the poor livejounal formatting) and a good tutorial by Geoneva von Lubeck can be found here. 

Further analysis is under the jump cut.

1520's German hats research part 1

Allegory of Virtues and Vices at the Court of Charles V by Hans Daucher 1522 (The Met Museum accession no. 17.190.745)

When delving into a new area it's important to have a few prime images to fixate on otherwise you'll get lost down the rabbit hole. Often people use an image of something they've seen someone else wear and they try to find references to reference it, make it fit a costume or make it more period. In this case, I started by collecting a Pinterest board of Landsknecht, Cranach and general German-ish hats. This gave me a good reference base for the variety of hat types available within my scope. I then narrowed the field by focusing on one item and using it as the basis for my research. If you want to do the same, there's a large collection of hat references collated by Jeanne de Pompadore here. It'd be nice if they're hyperlinked to a primary source but they typically contain sufficient information in the caption to help you find the original without needing to use Google image search.

Personally I found my focus image deep in a Pinterest linked-linked-link. The sculpture by Hans Daucher contains a good number of hat types. As it's a crowd scene, it also has a few back of hats so we can see the crown detail. I've numbered the hats to assist as I discuss the various types and my construction conclusions.

Details are below the jump cut as this the first of three long research posts

Tyrant productions part 2

So, since I've been making hats recently, I decided Tyr needed one to complete his outfit. As many before me have discovered, accessories like hats take a costume from 'I rolled out of bed' to 'I am Dressed'

Let it never be said that Tyr doesn't like hats (don't believe me? I've got so much photographic proof).

This hat was made in a similar way to the St florian square hat however I used white silk for the lining and didn't cut any shapes out of the wool. He doesn't have a device that'd translate well into cutouts and I was hesitant to ruin a perfectly good hat. We did add a button to the middle because it seemed the right thing to do. Proportionally the button should be bigger (or the hat smaller) but it is what it is.

The hat has had two formats so far. Originally the hat was edged with a galvanized steel embroidery loop size extra extra large. The sort you can buy at Spotlight. This turned out to be a mistake as the edge was too heavy and while it didn't deform while worn, it did try to edge down the wearers head. At festival someone showed Tyr how to tuck under and sew down the edges of the square to make it more of a puff to stop the runaway brim. Very similar to how the St Florian 1 hat ended up. It seemed to work but it still wasn't ideal.

After festival I cut out the embroidery loop and threaded the edge of a witches hat through instead. I had to trim the witches hat wire slightly and crimp it together with some metal tubing. It has significantly reduced the weight of hat however the brim will now pringle if jammed onto a head oddly. Given pringling or maybe drooping appears in some of the documentation, I'm not too worried about that. I've also unpicked the puffing and tacked the corners of the square to the edges of the hat. I think it's a little plain but it looks lovely with the feathers on it. Maybe someday it'll get some slashing, who knows?

Turns out, it's almost impossible to take a selfie of the crown of a hat if its brim has a diameter of 50cm. Though, if you stuff a bike helmet in it, and place it on the floor, the dimensions are about right.

St Florian hats

St Florian Hat 1 at Rowany Festival. Photo by Rache Vess.

Late last year I made some hats for the upcoming B&B of St Florian. The hats needed to be appropriate to their German garb and tie into the St Florian device which is a purple buttony cross on a white background.

For these hats I used a heavy black wool which was a little too stiff for a coat. Their expect-ellencies supplied me with some purple and white satin material which they were going to use on other aspects of the garb as well. I used halloween witches hats to provide rigidity to the brim.

This project suffers from the same problem my cranach hat did, where black wool is very hard to photograph well so instructions but no step by step photos are below the cut.

Pelican Outfil #6 - The hat and wings

The hat (and wings) on a Peri. The hat often has the same texture as the wings.

The hat has been viewed in passing but was the best part of the whole outfit (in my opinion). The hat came about when discussing my vision with Iglasia. She and Ciara encouraged me aim high and ignore my doubts about allegorical hats. While I was in my home town, frantically embroidering, Iglasia and her husband Edmund whipped up a base for the hat and wings because they're amazing and creative.

Not being hatters we went with a theatre style base - coat hangers with a stocking stretched over it. 

Once I reached Brisbane, we created a knob out of polymer clay which we baked in the oven and painted gold.  I had originally considered making leaves of silk with lightweight wire to support the flare. After long discussions with a variety of people, I decided to use ostrich feathers instead. So we went on a mad dash through Brisbane to buy some large white ostrich feathers before the event. Norm from the Feather Duster Superstore was amazing and provided us with some lovely quality feathers! (Check them out here - their website has had a makeover since last year and is MUCH easier to find what you might need). We got enough to make the hat AND a set of wings.

Late that night, the night before the ceremony, Ciara sewed the feathers to the hat by whip stitching their stems to the frame. Helen and Iglasia helped me with embroidery and finishing the hems on the dress while everyone helped make the wings happen. I'm so appreciative of my friends staying up late to help me when I had underestimate the amount of time this project would take - and then added the Hat and Wings on top!

If I had of given myself more time, I might have decorated the feather stems with gold sequins or something. Still, I love how it turned out and can't wait for a chance to wear it again.

Linen coif experiment

Playing around with scraps of white linen to make a cute little viking hat. Needs ties and hemming. I have very tolerant friends.