Sigh. Must reconstruct my thoughts, stupid e-mail program erased my message when I hit "send". I hate Microsoft.
Assuming the patterning isn't a matter of artistic license, I think this is a combination of bias use of a woven stripe fabric, and piecework (constructing fabric out of contrasting strips). Painted fabric wouldn't hold up well. Piecework would have been in the craft vocabulary because of domestic textiles and repair work, as well as to fill in missing corners during garment construction (widening skirts, lengthening sleeves, etc.), If a tailor had striped fabric to work with, it isn't a stretch to see him play around with the patterns that so easily pop up when moving one piece of striped fabric around on top of another. Especially given the existing patterning in contemporary architecture, tiles, etc. Chevrons, here we come! My question is: how many of the striped garments depicted in the Codex are diagonals as opposed to verticals and horizontals? Would it be more expensive to be wasteful of cloth by using up a length of woven striped cloth on the bias, or to pay for the labor of building up a bias cloth out of scrap straight-grain contrasting strips? The people shown in the Codex are either of high rank, or are employed by someone of high rank who wants to show himself to best advantage (See? I can afford to dress my retainers this way.) If labor is cheap, I could see the noble in a bias-cut garment wasteful of cloth, and his retainers in piecework strip versions made of scraps. Certainly at the other end of the century the argument for constructed stripes is easier to make. For example, many of the frescoes at Runkelstein in Tyrol show people wearing graded stripes. One man's stripes, to judge by the scale of his body to his garment, are about 1 - 1.5 inches at his collar and get to be 6 - 8 inches (if not wider) at the hem of his floor-length houppelande. Astrida _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
