Cutting Voluminous Garments: A Rumination

Tacuinum Sanitatis (BNF Latin 9333)
Fol 103, 15th century CE*

Detail of mural at
Kanonikerhaus in
Constance, Germany,
c. 1320 CE*

Just a few days ago, I was reading a paper by Tina Anderlini on Academia.edu about 13th century European clothing, and how important it was to have the right elements in a costume, even though the basic element was simply a voluminous robe.   In a supplement to the paper, Tina gives sketches as to the cut of the clothing components. Links to the supplement may be found on Tina's French-language blog, Paroles d'Arts.  (The supplement itself is in English.)

As is apparent from the patterns sketched in the supplement, and from the photographs with Tina's blog post, 13th century garments such as the robe she writes about were voluminous, and featured from four to about half a dozen shaped gores.   That fact raised a question in my mind; how did people manage to cut out the pieces necessary to make such garments?

The answer may be simple for rich people's robes.  They would likely have been made by professionals, who could simply use a big table on which to spread the fabric and cut out any gores.  Because both fabric and gores were not very wide by modern standards, it was only necessary to have a reasonably smooth flat surface that was long enough and high enough off of the floor for ease of cutting.  The art of the 14th through 16th centuries does show clothes makers using or having such a table (see the images to the right).

Taymouth Hours (Brit. Lib. Yates
Thompson, fol. 180v), c. 1325-1335 CE*

But I have not been able to find, so far, a piece of period art from the 13th century showing the cutting of garments at the time of the clothing types described in Tina Anderlini's paper.  That raises a question.  Were big tables used at that time for clothing cutting? And what did poorer people do when they wanted to try making similar garments for themselves?

Tacuinum Sanitatis (BNF NAL 1673) Fol. 94,
Fol. 94, 1390-1400 CE 

The earliest art I found was an early 14th century mural of a woman trying to do something with shears and fabric held in her lap, though it did not appear as though she was cutting shaped fabric pieces for a tailored garment (upper left). I also found a 14th century marginalia piece purportedly showing St. Francis making himself a robe using the ground as a work surface, but that robe is not really a shaped or terribly voluminous garment, and the rolling hills shown in the image are not a plausible work surface, even for simple tailoring (lower left).

During the early Iron Age, fabric was woven and then sewn or pinned into garments with little or cutting, so this question did not arise.  Nor did it arise during the Migration Period or the Viking Age.  Based upon period artworks, clothing in those periods was fairly short (ankle length or just touching the floor at most) and was not very voluminous compared to fashions in later centuries.  In addition, most tailoring was simple.  It involved either small pieces (such as the Thorsberg trousers), larger pieces cut or torn along straight lines, perhaps with small cutout areas such as the curved sleeve heads and armpit gussets for which evidence was found at Hedeby, for example.  Some of the scraps found at Hedeby show slightly curved seams, which likely were made by subtly changing the width of the seam as one sewed. Probably all of these items could have been made without a solid horizontal surface.  I did most of the work on one of my apron dresses without a large flat surface.

In her study of the medieval Greenland clothing finds, Woven Into The Earth, Else Østergård suggests that the kind of shaped-piece cutting necessary for the kinds of late medieval garments found might have been accomplished by temporarily removing a door from its hinges and using it as a cutting surface.  (p. 94).  It is difficult to imagine a better cutting surface available to poorer people who made their own clothing, or a better example of people living far from the center of Europe, trying to emulate current fashions.

I will have to look more seriously for 13th century art depicting the cutting of clothing, to see whether better evidence for the door theory is available.

* All images in this post located on Karen Larsdatter's Medieval Material Culture pages.

Early Period Links

I'm still not ready to return to regular costume blogging, but over the past day I've found a number of fascinating Early Period links that I'd like to bring to the attention of my readers.  Most of these involve serious reproduction projects.

First of all, textile geeks and Early Period costuming buffs will want to check out Carolyn Priest-Dorman's latest post (just a day after her re-posted Viking double weave article) about her project to attempt to replicate textile specimen Jorvik 1307.  She started by spinning warp and weft yarns of  thicknesses and wool types to match the original.  I'm always humbled when I read about people taking clothing recreations to this level.

Over at The Reverend's Big Blog of Leather, I found an article by the eponymous Wayne Robinson describing how he made a pair of 6th-7th century CE Anglo-Saxon shoes he made, based on one of the Sutton Hoo finds.  Recent posts by "the Reverend" that are also shoe-related include this short post, with large, clear color pictures, about the world's oldest shoe, and this post and this post about late 16th century shoe horns.

From Irish Archaeology's website comes this recent article about an Iron Age body found in County Offaly wearing a very modern-looking leather-and-metal armband. Known as Old Croghan Man, the find is dated to between 362 BCE and 175 BCE. The article features a beautiful photograph of the armband that deserves a place on one of my Pinterest boards.

Finally, The Greenland Gown Project by Doreen M. Gunkel merits a serious look from students of early and medieval costume. She is in the process of making a replica of one of the 13th century Norse gowns discovered at Herjolfsnaes in Greenland.  She is starting by researching and searching for an appropriate breed of sheep from which to obtain suitable wool fleece to spin into yarn to use to weave fabric for the gown. Ms. Gunkel asks interested readers to register, but registration is free and gets you e-mail updates as she writes about new developments in the project. 

Happy reading!

A Little More Context

Mongol Ruler and Consort Enthroned, detail

Last year, I blogged about a 13th century CE Central Asian find in the Astrakhan region of Russia consisting of enough textile pieces to reconstruct the complete costume of a Mongol woman. The find was described in detail in one of the 2011 issues of the Archaeological Textiles Newsletter (now the Archaeological Textiles Review).

Today, I found a website showing a color photograph of a Persian miniature that I believe gives context to this grave find. It's a copy of a Persian miniature depicting the Mongol court, entitled "Mongol Ruler and Consort Enthroned". I found it shown on several different sites and, piecing together the information I located, it's from Jami' al-Tawarikh, and it illustrated a work called the "Universal History" written by Rashid al-din; Il-Khanid period, Tabriz, Hazine 1653, folio 23a. It is mounted on an album containing illuminations of different sources. Here is a cropped version of the image, showing just the Mongol women.

The interesting thing about the miniature is it depicts a large number of women, and they are all dressed like the woman found in the Central Asian grave; red, cross-wrapped robes, and odd hats perched on their heads (though the hats are not black, but red). Perhaps this is what all of the khan's women wore, in period, regardless of rank (though the primary consort is shown in white). The miniature does not of course show all the layers each woman was wearing, but the woman from the grave find could have fit into the scene. I also found this image on the site of an SCA member, Richard Cullinan, who notes that this is one of the few period artworks showing female Mongol costume and shows a copy of the full image. Note that the women's costumes show brown around the neckline and sleeve edge--and the robe in the grave find was trimmed with brown silk and was worn over a brown underrobe.

Neither this miniature nor the grave find give a complete answer to what the women of the Mongol court might have worn in the 13th century. However, reconstructing the early history of costume involves assembling information from many sources. This miniature, whether or not it took liberties with costume depictions, is another puzzle piece that should be consulted to determine what the women of the Mongol court wore, and that element makes it doubly useful and interesting.

EDIT: (3/22/2013) After reading Lara's comments (see below), I found a translation of William of Rubruck's account of his observations of Mongol life during this period. That account may be found here. His account of Mongol women and their clothing rings true in light of the Asktrakhan grave and other sources. I'd just like to quote one passage in particular:

But on the day following her marriage, (a woman) shaves the front half of her head, and puts on a tunic as wide as a nun's gown, but everyway larger and longer, open before, and tied on the right side. For in this the Tartars differ from the Turks; the Turks tie their gowns on the left, the Tartars always on the right. Furthermore they have a head-dress, which they call bocca, made of bark, or such other light material as they can find, and it is big and as much as two hands can span around, and is a cubit and more high, and square like the capital of a column. This bocca they cover with costly silk stuff, and it is hollow inside, and on top of the capital, or the square on it, they put a tuft of quills or light canes also a cubit or more in length. And this tuft they ornament at the top with peacock feathers, and round the edge (of the top) with feathers from the mallard's tail, and also with precious stones. The wealthy ladies wear such an ornament on their heads, and fasten it down tightly with an amess [J: a fur hood], for which there is an opening in the top for that purpose, and inside they stuff their hair, gathering it together on the back of the tops of their heads in a kind of knot, and putting it in the bocca, which they afterwards tie down tightly under the chin. So it is that when several ladies are riding together, and one sees them from afar, they look like soldiers, helmets on head and lances erect. For this bocca looks like a helmet, and the tuft above it is like a lance. And all the women sit their horses astraddle like men. And they tie their gowns with a piece of blue silk stuff at the waist and they wrap another band at the breasts, and tie a piece of white stuff below the eyes which hangs down to the breast. And the women there are wonderfully [J: astonishingly] fat, and she who has the least nose is held the most beautiful.

The gown worn by the woman in the Astrakhan grave tied on the right side.

The "Golden Horde" Costume

Last summer, I started writing a blog post about an article in Issue No. 52 of the Archaeological Textiles Newsletter that consists of a detailed discussion of a 13th century clothing find in Central Asia.  Because the article is so interesting, I decided to complete that post and share it with my readers. So here it is.

The article in question has nifty color photographs of the actual brocade fragments found in the grave, and discusses in detail a much more complex costume than the Gnezdovo costume I recently wrote about. The article in question is about a Central Asian woman of approximately the 13th century CE, which the authors refer to as the "Golden Horde" period; the full citation reads:

Orfinskaya, Olga and Lantratova, Olga. Female Costume of the Golden Horde Period from Burial 93 of the Maiachnyi Bugor I Cemetery in the Astrakhan Region of Russia. Archaeological Textiles Newsletter, No. 52, pp. 48-63 (Spring 2011).

The red "corset"

I have reproduced a few of the line drawings from the article here, to give the reader a better idea of the complexity of the costume.  The woman wearing it was clearly buried during the winter, as her costume features four layers of underwear and three layers of gowns, some of which were padded.  The sketches showing the three gown layers appear below and to the right.

Reconstruction sketches of Gowns
(from top to bottom, Gowns 1, 2, and 3)

The very first clothing layer, worn next to the woman's skin, consisted of a loose pair of knee-length silk underpants and an odd red silk garment that the writers say looked like a "corset".  They describe this garment as being made in layers, with a "warmth-keeping lining made of plant fibre and fragments of underlining of cotton fabric" as well as having "parts of sewn-on leather appliqué details ... found on the inside of the garment."  (p. 48)  The sketch to the left from the article shows its reconstructed shape.

To be fair, the authors admit that the function of this garment is not clear:  "The width, shape and multilayer structure of the article enable us to surmise that it is either a maternity belt or corset for a very plump woman helping to distribute pressure at the waist evenly."  (p. 48)  However, the fact that the garment does not seem to have been boned and closed with only three ties indicates that it did not constrain the torso much.  To me, that suggests that it was designed more to keep the belly warm than anything else.

The authors are quite serious about the woman being very large.  The height, top to bottom of the garment, based on the remains of it, is given as 70 cm (about 27 inches) and the width of this "corset" is given as 290 cm (about 114 inches).  She also wore a pair of trousers, the maximum width of which was 160 cm (about 62 inches) at the hips. Although trousers may be very wide even if the wearer is not, the fact that both the corset-like garment and the trousers are extremely wide argues in favor of her being of substantial size.

In addition to the corset-like garment and the trousers, the woman wore three silk blouses underneath her three gowns sketched above. Most of these survived only in a fragmentary condition, but one of the gowns had sleeves that ended in cuffs. 

The three gowns were made from different brocades and used contrasting brocades as trim. The gown worn directly on top of all the underwear ("Gown 1", the calf-length gown shown above) was of a red silk brocaded in gold and was trimmed with a brown silk, also gold brocaded.  The long gown, worn directly above it ("Gown 2"), was of a brown silk brocaded in gold and was trimmed with a brown silk with gold brocade and a red-brown silk with gold brocade.  The short, jacket-like gown worn on top ("Gown 3") was also of a brown silk brocaded with gold.

It's noteworthy that the different brocaded fabrics show up on portions of different garments.  For example, the brown brocade that was the main fabric for Gown 2 was also used as trim for Gown 3, and the main brocade used for Gown 3 was used as trimming on the innermost gown, Gown 1.  Gown 1 and Gown 3 were lined with cotton taffeta and also had a filling of cotton (cotton wool, in the case the outermost gown, Gown 3).

In addition, the woman lay on a mattress covered with silk brocade and wore a close-fitting, "balaclava-shaped" cap which covered her head and neck, and a headdress made of black silk gauze, neither of which are pictured in the article.

These details suggest three things to me.  First, that the woman was buried in the winter, since she is dressed for cold weather.  Second, that she was wealthy, because all of her clothing layers (as well as the mattress she was buried upon) were brocaded in gold.  Third, even the wealthy did not waste or casually use gold brocaded silk, because the same brocade appears in different garments.

The article is too long and detailed to give more of the details here, and I am reluctant to reproduce all of the photographs here.  I commend the article to your attention, however.  Even if you cannot afford to purchase this issue of ATN now, eventually it will be available to download free from the ATN website.