Book Review: Extending Knowledge of Costume Through Art Analysis

From the Casemate Academic website

From the Casemate Academic website

The two books I have obtained for my costume history library most recently involve very different historical periods but a common method; they both seek to increase our knowledge of clothing from their respective periods through a through analysis of period art.

These are the books I mean (links below are to the hardback editions, but e-book versions of both are available, and my copy of Woven Threads is an e-book):

Mannering, Ulla.  Iconic Costumes:  Scandinavian Late Iron Age Costume Iconography.  Oxbow Books--Ancient Textiles Series No. 25 (2017).

Shaw, Maria C. and Chapin, Anne P., eds.  Woven Threads:  Patterned Textiles of the Aegean Bronze Age.  Oxbow Books--Ancient Textiles Series No. 22 (2015).

I have finished reading Iconic Costumes, but am still thinking my way through the material, and I am still reading Woven Threads.  Even so, there are some observations I would like to make about both that, in my opinion, demonstrate that both books are well worth reading.

Iconic Costumes seeks to obtain information about costume from the Migration Period through the Viking Age by examining and analyzing the details of artistic depictions of human beings in of Viking and pre-Viking Age Scandinavian art.  Most of this art is in the form of carvings on artifacts such as the Oseberg cart, guldgubbar (tiny, thin gold-foil plaques found in graves), or jewelry.  In contrast, Woven Textiles primarily analyzes surviving frescoes from buildings erected by the Minoan and Mycenaean Bronze Age cultures in order to learn more about costumes and patterned textiles depicted in those frescoes.  Both books reference non-artwork archaeological finds to support their conclusions.

Professors Shaw and Chapin have an easier time than Professor Mannering, for all that few textile remains survive from either culture, because despite its peculiar lack of perspective to a modern eye, Minoan and Mycenaean art is much more representational than early Scandinavian art, and has the additional benefit of having been originally created in color (and the colors survive to a surprising degree) while early Scandinavian art is mostly sculptural in nature.  Early Scandinavian art is also highly stylized, and the human figures depicted are nearly always too small to show much detail.  The Aegean frescoes often showed human figures life-sized, or close to life size, and many of them survive nearly complete and in good condition.  Even the fragmentary frescoes have much to say about patterns that may well have been used to decorate fabric.

That being said, both books manage to answer a significant question relevant to the history of clothing for their period of study.   It's the same question for both books:  Does period art really reflect what people actually wore as costume?

The authors' answer in both cases is "yes."  Having observed and analyzed most of the human figure representations dating from Iron Age Scandinavia, Professor Mannering observes: 

The vast majority of the iconographical costumes recorded are encountered in the archaeological textile and clothing material.  At the same time, there is information on the depictions [sic] that is not seen in the archaeological textile finds and vice versa. ... 

A typical male outfit in the Late Iron Age consisted of trousers, a tunic with sleeves, a rectangular cloak, belt, and shoes, while a typical female outfit included various dresses, skirts, blouses, cloaks, hairnets, and shoes, demonstrating both continuity from previous periods and new trends. ...

Generally, the investigation shows that the depictions represent clothing items that occur in the archaeological record. ... Thus, the depictions reveal costume items, e.g., kaftans, female jackets, and skirt and blouse ensembles that most likely were present in the archaeological record in the Late Germanic Iron Age, but that have not been positively identified yet.  They also demonstrate that the female dress most likely was long-sleeved, something which has not yet been securely documented via the archaeological record. (pp. 176-177) .

Professors Shaw and Chapin focus more of their efforts on comparing Minoan and Mycenaean styles by means of the surviving pictorial art.  They rely heavily on Elizabeth Wayland Barber's work as support for their conclusion that the patterns observed in clothing shown in fresco art could have achieved on textiles.  Like Professor Mannering, they conclude that certain patterns likely were used on real clothing from the fact that the same patterns turn up in clothing depictions on multiple frescoes.   However, there are enough surviving decorated fragments of cloth in archaeological finds to support Professor Barber's belief that patterned cloth was produced in the Aegean during the Bronze Age.  There is also support in contemporary Egyptian tomb art, which shows foreigners wearing garments, decorated in patterns, that compare closely to the Aegean fresco designs.

In general, Shaw and Chapin show that the creation of patterned textiles (whether through weaving, embroidery, applique, block printing, or other textile-related arts) came from centralized workshops, centered upon the great palaces of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations, and that such items were worn only by the elite; ordinary folk made do with plain cloth.  It appears that Mycenae produced less elaborate fabrics and costumes, and reserved the more elaborate ones they did produce for unusual occasions.

Artistic evidence for how the Minoans themselves defined the luxury in luxury textiles is not confirmed by recent archaeological discoveries surveyed in Chapter 2.  Artists working in the Neopalatial era depicted their best fabrics as finely woven with colorful and complex patterns and embellished with decorative borders, fringes, and tassels; these pictorial details are consistent with the bits of surviving textiles.

*   *   *   *

The few fragments of cloth--all linen--that survive from Mycenaean contexts support the impression that Mycenaean textiles were plainer and less decorative than textiles of the Minoan era.  Linen fragments found in Grave Circle B at Mycenae and in a tomb at Ayia Kryiaki on the island of Salamis, for example, were tabby-woven (a plain weave) and undecorated.

*   *   *   *

Some Minoan-styple forms of costume, particularly festal attire with flounced skirts, continued to appear in Mycenaean art, particularly in procession frescoes, but the fanciest rapport patterns of earlier generations were replaced by simple striped designs or by fabrics woven with uncomplicated all-over scatter patterns.  Decorative bands that reinforced edges, seams, and hems on bodices, skirts, and tunics were still made by the Mycenaean weavers, but even these were plainer than before.  (Chapter 9, italic emphasis in original).

Both books are well-illustrated with excellent photogtaphs of items of the period artworks that were analyzed.  Understandably, most of the illustrations in Iconic Costumes are black and white or line-drawings, but there are also some color pictures of actual clothing finds and guldgubbar.  Woven Threads includes both color photographs of surviving frescos and portions of frescoes as well as colored illustrations of particular pattern motifs.

There is a large amount of food for thought in both books.  (For example, Professor Mannering concludes that the scale of the female figures in period art makes it impossible to draw conclusions about women's wearing of the two-brooch costume--e.g., the "apron dress" or "smokkr".)  I think people interested in the history of clothing should read them, whether or not they are interested in the clothing of the Bronze Age Aegean or Iron Age Scandinavia, just to observe how the authors analyze and apply the different types of clothing evidence available to them.

Another Opportunity!

As I mentioned before, the spare brooch I offered a few weeks ago to the first interested reader of this blog is not the only duplicate item I have that might be of interest of readers of this blog.  Here's another one:

As some of my readers may be aware, books in Osprey's various military history series vary a lot in quality, both in terms of the clarity of the writing and  the depth and documentation of the information provided. This one is better than average.   It has a lot of good, clear photographs of period art (i.e., frescos, pottery remains) showing military figures in action, and some photographs of surviving weaponry and armor remains, in addition to Osprey's famous artwork depicting reconstructed figures.  In fact, as one of the reviewers of the book on Amazon.com noted, the book concentrates more on clothing, armor, and weaponry than on period battles, fighting and tactics.  If period clothing, armor and weaponry are among your interests (and if you're reading this, likely they are), you may want this book.  It's in brand new condition.  If you would like more information about the book, please check out this page on Osprey's web site.  (There is a "look inside" link on the page which for some reason was not working for me; this Amazon page provides views of the table of contents and quite a few other pages, including pages with illustrations, inside the book.)

Bronze Age Greek Warrior currently retails for $18.95 USD/£11.99.  I'm certain I paid less (I bought it on EBay, and the only reason I would do that with a book in print would have been to get a bargain), but I cannot find the original item write-up on EBay and the packing slip does not state the price I paid.  Moreover, Paypal doesn't keep records far enough back for me to locate the payment record that way.

So I will handle this item the same way I handled the brooch, i.e., by setting a price low enough to make this a reasonable purchase even if I end up sending it halfway around the world.   I will send the book to the first person who contacts me (via comments or otherwise) who is willing to pay $12.00 USD plus shipping by book rate (or the equivalent, if such a rate is applicable in shipping to the buyer's address).  My e-mail address is cathy at thyrsus dot com.

EDIT:  (5/26/2015)  I have an interested party for the book.

EDIT:  (6/4/2015)  I've learned tonight that the person who bought it has just received it.  

Greek Hairnet Questions

Because the textile-making technique now known as sprang was definitely used by early Scandinavians, as the Borum Eshøj find and other contemporaneous archaeological finds attest, I have been planning for a while to learn sprang to make myself a hairnet.  However, several minor events combined to cause me to think about a different early culture that probably also used sprang to make hairnets--the ancient Greeks.

When I posted about my Greek head wrap a few weeks ago, one of the issues that came up during the discussion was whether sprang, the ancient net-making art, was used by Greek women for hairnets.  Janet Stephens, hairdressing archaeologist, believes that ancient Greek women wore sprang hairnets.  Her most recent video (to the top left of this post) shows the use of such a hairnet as a 6th century BCE hairstyle. Unusually, most of the nearly five-minute video does not depict hairstyling--it shows Stephens making a simple sprang hairnet on a homemade frame.  The interlinking, though of a very basic pattern, is carefully and elegantly done, with one curious exception.  To understand the significance of this exception, it is necessary to explain how sprang is worked.

Sprang does not use a weft, but consists of twists carefully made on paired sections of a continuous warp thread.  The way it is worked means that the final part of the work appears in the middle of the woven fabric, and it is crucial to secure these middle, unweavable threads so that the piece does not unravel.  (Why this part is unweavable is easy to see from watching Stephens's video.)  Most sprang tutorials suggest fastening a separate thread across the middle section or using a crochet technique called "chaining"  to fasten the center threads together and keep the piece from unraveling.  Stephens simply ties a tight knot around the middle threads, resulting in what I consider to be an ugly stump that sticks up at an odd place on the finished net. 

Seeing Stephens's video raised two questions in my mind:  1) what evidence there is for the wearing of sprang caps by ancient Greek women, and; 2) are there any surviving nets with a "stump" like the one shown in Stephens' video?  To my surprise, I was able to find the beginnings of answers to both questions in a relatively short span of time.  I'd like to share them here, because they might be of interest to people attempting to learn sprang, as well as to people interested in ancient Greek costume.

Evidence for sprang hairnets in ancient Greece.

On JSTOR, "a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources," in the institution's own words, I found an article that has provided me with material that went a long way toward answering my first question.   JSTOR now allows free accounts and searches, even for "independent researchers" like me, and one can read articles from many journals for free on the JSTOR website, but downloading most articles incurs a charge, which can be paid via Paypal.  The other night, I paid to download a copy of an article from the American Journal of Archaeology by Ian Jenkins and Dyfri Williams which discusses the evidence for ancient Greek women wearing sprang hairnets in some detail.*

Jenkins and Williams note that there are not only pictures of women wearing what look like hairnets on ancient Greek pottery, but there are also pictures of women carrying or holding items that look like sprang frames.  The article includes lists of surviving pottery bearing each of the two kinds of images, including the museum inventory/accession numbers and museums where the original pots may be found.  Pictures of some of the pottery showing hairnet wearers I had previously located on the Internet (see below) and posted on Pinterest in my search for nets of the same shape as Stephens's net also appear in the Jenkins and Williams article. 

Even more interestingly, the authors note that there are a handful of woolen sprang fragments in the British Museum that came from tombs near Kertch, in the Crimea.  The tombs date from approximately the fifth century BCE (contemporaneous with the Greek pottery images) through the second century CE, and are located close to the site of Panticapaeum, an ancient Greek city. The British Museum's accession register lists "a quantity of human hair" as being with the fragments, further suggesting that the sprang fragments came from a hairnet; unfortunately, the hair has become lost, making it unclear at best whether the hair was found in such an orientation with regard to the fragments to support the conjecture that the fragments were part of a sprang hairnet.

In short, though there is some primary evidence indicating that ancient Greek women wore sprang hairnets, it is more suggestive than conclusive in nature.

Nets with Tassels or Stumps.

The ancient piece of pottery Stephens shows in her video shows a woman wearing some kind of hair bag or net.  I originally assumed that it would be easier to identify ancient Greek art showing women with hairnets than looking for printed material, so I began my digging for more information about Greek hairnets by looking for images on the Internet, both of Greek pottery of surviving sprang hairnets. 

After doing Google image searches for a while, I recalled that I had recently read an article posted on academia.edu by Anne Kwaspen about a number of Egyptian hairnets that are now in the Katoen Natie art collection.**  Those hairnets are from Egypt, not Greece, and they date to between the 5th and 7th centuries CE--about a thousand years after the images on the Greek pots, but like the Crimean fragments they were worked in fine wool.  Kwaspen's article has wonderful color photographs of a number of the Egyptian finds, which clearly show that most of them are shaped like rectangular bags.  A few of them, however, end in a tail or stump-like point that resembles a few of the images in Greek vase paintings.*** Stephens's net is the same shape as some of the nets shown in vase paintings--except for the stump.

Although most of the images I saw during my search featured either hair tied with bands or headwear that looked more like the headwrap I've already made, there were at least three images that had a little point, or stump, or tail, reminiscent of the sprang net Stephens made for her video.  However, both the Kwaspen and Jenkins and Williams articles indicate that tails were made by row decreases in working the sprang, not simply by tying the center threads together in a big knot.****

Final Thoughts.

My understanding from these sources is that our evidence for sprang hairnets in early Greece consists mostly of pottery art that appear to show both sprang hairnets in wear and sprang frames.  The period Crimean sprang fragments and the later Coptic nets, though far from solid proof that Greek women wore sprang hairnets, provide additional if indirect support for the hypothesis that they did.

Most of the sprang hairnets found in the Old World do not have points or "stumps"; they were finished differently from Stephens's net.  A few surviving Coptic nets do have tails, but those tails do not look like the "stump" on Stephens' net, and neither Jenkins & Williams nor Kwaspen suggest that tying the center threads together was a method typically used to finish a sprang hairnet.  The fact that the style Stephens achieved with the sprang net she made does not match the period art so well also tends to indicate that the "knot" method for finishing nets was not used by the Greeks. 

Stephens is a hairdressing archaeologist, not a weaver, and she only needed the hairnet she made for a brief video demonstration, not for daily wear.  Thus, her decision to finish off her sprang net in the quickest and simplest way possible is defensible.  Still, if I were in her shoes, I would at least have fastened the drawstrings to the net in such a way that the "stump" would be on the inside (and thus much less visible) when the net was worn.  I would like to use a more subtle (and, hopefully, more period) means of keeping my net for unraveling, if I can manage that.


*     Jenkins, Ian & Williams, Dyfri. "Sprang Hair Nets: Their Manufacture and Use in Ancient Greece," American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 89, no. 3, pp. 411-418 (1985).

**     Kwaspen, Anne.  "Sprang Hairnets in the Katoen Natie Collection," in De Moor, Antoine & Fluck, Cäcilia, eds., Dress Accessories of the 1st Millennium AD from Egypt, pp. 70-95 (Lannoo, Oct. 5, 2011).  Katoen Natie is a corporate sponsor of art through an organization called HeadquARTers, which sells the 1st Millennium book in its gift shop, here.  You can find out more about HeadquARTers here.

***  See, e.g., Jenkins & Williams, Plate 46, Fig. 13 (excerpt of scene from the tondo of a cup by Onesimos in the British Museum).  Interestingly, Jenkins and Williams mention "Coptic hairnets" in their article.  Jenkins & Williams, p. 418.  The article notes that the Coptic nets are identifiable as nets, because "the drawstring occurs invariably on only one side of the top edge" and, in many cases, because of "the presence inside of varying quantities of long hairs."  Id.  I would not be surprised if the nets in the Jenkins & Williams collection are the same as the Katoen Natie nets, though I don't have enough information to establish that as fact.

**** See Jenkins & Williams, pp. 414-15 (suggesting a method for narrowing or decreasing the piece's width in the center section to produce a tail); see also Kwapsen, p. 89 (discussing techniques for narrowing a sprang hairnet at the top).