Hi everyone, I was just pointed to this discussion by a friend who remembered a conversation we had a few months ago about the construction of common people's clothing versus noble clothing. As someone who's primarily studied the garments of the working class, the sometimes striking differences in construction intrigue me.
Last summer, I did a reconstruction of Netherlandish Working Woman's Clothing using cutting techniques I learned from other 16th century working people's garments such as the Shinrone Gown and the Dungiven Jacket. Both of these garments make use of rectangles and triangles in what could be termed a "medieval" way. And yet in shape the garments look like clothing of more wealthy people, clothing whose construction is quite different and more wasteful of fabric. The reason I bring this up is that both the Shinrone Gown and the Dungiven Jacket share a feature in common with the illustration in question (and the line drawing in Houston): square-bottom armholes. The way the armholes are cut in the Dungiven Jacket and Shinrone Gown wastes almost no fabric. On one, the cut fabric is folded inward and becomes a lining/facing. On the other, the fabric is folded out and becomes a shoulder wing. It's a fascinating use of cut and incredible conservative on yardage. I used this armhole-cutting technique on my Netherlandish dress and it "cuts the right jib". I've blogged about my reconstruction here: http://reconstructinghistory.blogspot.com/2007/09/netherlandish-working-wome n-part-2.html Kass <http://www.reconstructinghistory.com/> Looking for the perfect gift for the RH fan on your list? Try a RH Gift Certificate <http://www.reconstructinghistory.com/index.php?s=&c=123&d=160&e=&f=&g=&w=21 &q=1&p=360&r=Y> . They never expire! http://reconstructinghistory.com http://community.livejournal.com/rh_community/ http://kass-rants.livejournal.com http://www.reconstructinghistory.blogspot.com/ -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Robin Netherton Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 5:08 PM To: Historical Costume Subject: Re: [h-cost] Where was this from again - FOUND IT C M wrote: >>>> Yikes! I just wrote the British Museum to see if they had a clue.... Oh well, I've looked like an idiot before! :)> I will follow up with Strutt - thanks for your pointers.> Sg> > ------------------------------ > > http://www.thearma.org/spotlight/NotesLEJEUDELAHACHE.htm > > Second and fifth image, caption MS Nero D.IX folio 103 Well, very cool. Real needle-in-a-haystack stuff to find the right image from that truncated reference out of Houston. I am pleased it turned out to be one of the two candidates I turned up, and the one I thought was stylistically promising, but my patience in looking for examples of plates from those mss was exhausted much earlier ;-) Note that's not just "Nero" in the BL cataloguing system, but actually "Cotton Nero." The Cotton collection has loads of sub-collections with different names. There's a superscript on the folio number 103 that (based on the elusive note 7 I found on another page on this website) is an r, meaning fol. 103 recto, the front of the page. If anyone is really hot for this image, you can probably purchase a slide of the image from the BM. You will need all the above information to specify what you want. Can't tell on my monitor if the seams match Houston's, but from the position, it's certainly the figure she intended. Which secondary source she drew her copy from is anyone's guess. --Robin _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
