As De has already shown, you can find all sorts of lacing patterns over the course of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, particularly if you look at a variety of fashions and in different places and times. But that doesn't justify using different patterns interchangeably; each type of lacing functioned a little differently. So some will work on some sorts of garments, and others will not work as well. And of course, many things were laced -- not just body garments, but also shoes, purses, and utilitarian objects (horse tack? cart covers?). Each situation had its own needs, and may have called for different types of lacing patterns.
AlbertCat wrote: > Criss-cross lacing for corsets and things comes with the industrial > revolution.... the cord being machine made now instead of by hand and > therefore cheap enough to use twice the length. Also, the tightness of > the corsets at the time almost require it. One consideration is whether the goal is to create an unbroken visual area. Spiral lacing allows you to overlap the sides, which is very useful in lacing up parts of a gown where you want the lacing to act like a seam (or, in modern equivalent, a zipper) and you don't want any gapping or slipping. When you have laced something tightly with a spiral, it really doesn't move or gap; the overlapping edges are the equivalent of a bunch of layers wrapped round and round with a cord, almost like a flexible bone. From a distance, the lacing is almost unnoticeable, and artists often did not show it at all even when it's clear it was there (e.g. you might see a dress being laced-up in one scene, and in the next, the lacing isn't depicted at all). With corsets, if I understand correctly, the edges typically were not meant to overlap, and perhaps not even to abut. Spiral lacing wouldn't be as effective as crisscross lacing in that case. Bear in mind also that the modern understanding of crisscross lacing usually means the way you'd lace your shoes -- you always come out of the hole with each pass. That means the lace passes between the edges and you physically can't overlap them, just abut them with a little room for the laces to cross in between. Also, each hole holds only one lace; the laces skip alternate holes as they zigzag up the opening. Sometimes you see a criss-cross pattern in styles that are normally associated with spiral lacing (e.g. 14th century fitted dresses). In the cases I'm thinking of, this is not done with a modern criss-cross, but with two spirals going in opposite directions. This creates a pattern of connected X's (or diamonds, if you like) down the visible side, and a row of "dashes" on the inside. It is very, very strong, and also doesn't have the issue of the sides going slightly offset from each other as with a single spiral lace, because the two laces are counterbalancing each other. Also, with this sort of double-spiral lace, each lace goes through all the holes, rather than skipping in zigzags the way modern criss-cross lacing does, so it is very different from a modern criss-cross in several ways. However, I've seen people point to the occasional double-spiral pattern on a medieval brass as an example of criss-cross lacing. It isn't. --Robin _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
