German embroidery design 1535

Embroidery chart by Christian Egenolff. 1535. Germany. The Met Museum accession number: 33.69(4r)

I really like the zig-zag and sort of trefoils of this pattern. The chart really strongly reminds me of a Mamluk pattern currently residing in the Ashmolean. I'm not sure what I'd use this on though as the best effect would come from repeating the pattern which would create quite a wide band.

Linen embroidered with blue flax. 10th-15th century. Fustat, Egypt. Ashmolean Museum. EA1984.560

German embroidery pattern 1535

Embroidery chart by Christian Egenolff. 1535. Germany. The Met Museum accession number: 33.69(4r)

I'm not sure where I'd use this design. The width may work for both collar and cuffs for a landsknecht shirt. I'm not overly taken with the design but it does remind me of some of the beautiful mumluk patterns.

German embroidery chart 1535

Embroidery chart by Christian Egenolff. 1535. Germany. The Met Museum accession number: 33.69(4r)

I love this embroidery chart. It looks like carnations and an iris. It'd be quite simple to loop this around and around a Landsknecht collar or cuffs. The design on the left, I can't decide if it's bells or acorns or some sort of pod on a vine.

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.

Tyrant productions Part 1

The start of my year was very much caught up in preparations for Rowany Festival. If you are familiar with my projects, you'll know I've been the RF cartographer for 6 (?) years. Ever since I created the job really. It involves a lot of fiddling around with maps and doing my best to please over 800 stakeholders. This year, I was also making garb for Tyr. He needed enough garb for a 6 day event and he's not the sort to schlep around in a basic t-tunic. Oh no. Unfortunately, the only items he had were a couple of shirts I'd acquired at Pennsic and a vest he brought along.

As the shirts were late-period-ish, we had to settle on a wardrobe collection that'd please his sense of flair and wouldn't be too challenging for my sewing skills. We eventually settled on Landsknect, partly because I've been collecting images for hat making, and partly because it has so many options.

I'm not going to go into everything we made, but by the end he had 4 pairs of pants, multiple shirts and a vest. As I've never made fitted pants before, it was quite a learning curve. Tyr also helped out by fray-stopping all the slashed edges. He also sewed some codpieces.

Tyr accidentally in the background... photo by Rachel Vess

I suspect Tyr is really proud of this codpiece. He designed and made it himself. As one of two token American's he didn't really need to advertise but it garnered no end of appreciative smiles. Unfortunately, it was washed in warm water and the red ran so the codpiece is no more.