E House wrote:
The whole houppelande discussion got me in the mood for something: I think I wanna wear a bunch of bells on a gown. At the hem, or maybe tiny bells all over, like spangles. Funfunfun. Cold medicine. I'm thinking late 14thC/early 15thC would be the right era for it, but I've never really looked into anything involving bells before. Anyone know of a style (other than houppes, which I just plain don't feel like making) that would work well with this? Any literary mentions of it? Illuminations/paintings?
In some 30 minutes or so my updated bells-with-garb page will be live. Its at http://www.virtue.to/articles/bells.html
(If it doesn't have a picture of the Chaucer Squire at the top, it's the old version.)
However, it doesn't directly address bells ON clothes, just bells WITH clothes. I don't think I've seen anything that looked like bells (or even bezants) on a hem. There were definitely instances of bezants all over one sleeve, and there's no reason you couldn't decide that they might have sometimes been bells.
And sometimes they show up on the points of hoods, but not on the skirts, I think.
As for houps vs. other, they do seem to be all houps, although some are the men's "aren't my cheeks cute" type of houp.
The Museum of London Dress Accessories book has a number of citations, and you could check Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince for earlier. (Although I think I have looked there and found no bells.)
-- Cynthia Virtue and/or Cynthia du Pre Argent _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
