Pssst! Want to buy a copy of NESAT XII?

The North European Symposium on Archaeological Textiles, or "NESAT", is a symposium that is held about every three years.  Each NESAT has produced a symposium volume of papers on archaeological finds relating to textiles and costume that are eagerly sought after by people, like me, who are interested in the history of costume (especially early period European costume).  But the print runs are small, and the volumes remaining after the conference participants have received their copies tend to be expensive.

When I was making a lot more money, the expense was not as much of a problem.  But now I find the typical $70 USD price of the newer NESAT volumes prohibitive.  My collection of NESAT volumes ends with NESAT XI.  I have not been able to purchase NESAT XII and NESAT XIII, which were published after NESAT XI came out in 2013.

Recently, I began looking for the NESAT volumes I lacked at reduced prices.   To my dismay, I could not find a seller of NESAT XII that had the volume in stock for any price.  So I checked the webpage of the publisher of NESAT XII, Archaeolingua. Archaeolingua is based in Budapest, and all transactions in its webshop must be made in either Hungarian forints or Euros, but I figured if anyone would still have the book available, it would be them.

To my surprise, I was able to obtain a copy for 20 Euros (a bit less than $24 USD)!  The copy was an e-book, of course (a PDF, to be exact), but that was an advantage, since I was able to download it immediately as soon as my payment (via credit card) was accepted.  

NOTE:  I was not able to find the book's page via the search function, but if you choose the category "Archaeolingua Series Maior" you can page through the four pages worth of books to find it.  Be aware that the site can be balky.

The Lengberg Finds and Late Medieval Tailoring

A few years ago, I wrote several posts drawing my readers' attention to the work of Beatrix Nutz with various 15th century undergarment finds from Lengberg Castle in East Tyrol.  A few days ago, I found the video that appears to the right of this blog, which shares some original research that is even more startling.  A webpage by the University of Innsbruck briefly describing this project can be seen here. 

The video is a narrated slideshow about the implications of the Lengberg finds for the history of tailoring. The slideshow was created by Professor Nutz and two independent American researchers, Rachel Case, and Marion McNealy, who used their long experience in historical sewing to make reproductions of some of the Lengberg finds to discover how they must have been created.   The result is a fascinating look at some long-forgotten techniques of European tailoring.

Their analysis started with the find that resembles a modern long-line bra: a few other costumers had previously recreated that item, as the links in this sentence show.  Rachel and Marion believed that the "bra" was actually only part of an undergarment which was more of a supportive dress, since the "bra" had a calf-length skirt attached.  They reasoned that, without a skirt, the bra would tend to ride up and be uncomfortable and less supportive.

Of even greater interest, and research value, were pleated pieces of linen that the team concluded was the underlayer of a dress.  Two such finds are discussed, one believed to have been made for a grown woman and one for a little girl.  The fact that bits of blue wool remain fastened to the right side of the linen tend to support that idea.  Between their review of period artworks showing dresses with similar shaping in the bodice area, analysis of the finds themselves, and their recreations, the three researchers reached some interesting conclusions.

Their first theory, as noted above, was that the "long-line" bra likely had an attached skirt. (I wonder what the costumers who have made non-skirted versions think of this idea.)

Their second theory is that the purpose of the pleated sections of the dress-lining was to shape the gown over the chest.  Though it isn't clear what purpose the pleats served for the little girl's dress, the effect of the pleats over the chest on the woman's dress would be to emphasize (without supporting, because the skirted bra undergarment does that) each breast separately as its own rounded shape--a profile that appears in period art and that Nutz/Case/McNealy call "apple breasts."

This "apple breast" shape was achieved, they believe, by stitching the pleated linen lining to the wool outer fabric by a technique used by modern tailors to create wool suits today.  It's called pad stitching.  The sempstress.com site has a tutorial explaining the technique here.  The lined garment would then be steamed or pressed to further perfect the shape of the gown, which would be worn with a skirted bra-type garment.  Bias-cut sections located in the strap areas are also critical for the correct shape.

Why didn't this tailoring style persist?  In the early 16th century, fashion for women shifted to styles that compressed the breast, and sometimes the waist, to create a more conical shape.  This silhouette was created primarily by an undergarment called "stays" and more recently, the "corset".  Shaping with a corset did not require unusual shaping of the gown, so the pad stitching fell into disuse, and the corset remained the primary women's shaping garment for the next 400 years.

This slideshow is heartily recommended as a great way to absorb the critical details of a key piece of new research from the Lengberg finds.

A Peek at NESAT XII

The twelfth North European Symposium of Archaeological Textiles ("NESAT") took place last year in Hallstatt, Austria.  Though to my knowledge the book containing the papers presented at that conference has yet to be published, the table of contents from that volume and several of the papers from it have turned up on Academia.edu.  Membership in Academia.edu is free, and is not confined to professional scholars.   

What I'd like to do here is point out some of the currently available material for my readers, so that they can save up for the NESAT XII book if they wish or simply use the material itself if it meets their needs.

The conference program for NESAT XII (68 pages long, with article abstracts) is here, and the table of contents for NESAT XII may be downloaded here.

The papers I have seen from that NESAT volume that are available for free download so far are:

Cybulska, Maria and Mianowska-Orlińska, Ewa.  Analysis, Reconstruction and Interpretation of Two Early Medieval Embroideries from Kruszwica, pp. 311-320.  (This one is posted in Scribd format.  I was able to download it, but I can't recall if I have a Scribd account; if you don't, you may be unable to download/read it.)

Gleba, Margarita.  Production and Consumption: Textile Economy and Urbanization in Mediterranean Europe 1000-500 BCE (PROCON).  pp.  261-270.

Nutz, Beatrix. Mining for Textiles -- Textiles for Mining,  Preliminary Report on Textiles from Gold Mining Sites in Austria, pp. 25-42.

The paper that excites me the most, however, is not available for free download.   Predictably, it is about Viking era clothing:  Hana Lukešová.  Old Fragments of Women’s Costumes from the Viking Age – New Method for Identification.  pp. 145-154.  Professor Lukešová's abstract states: 

"The first step in the working method involved a detailed study of the textile fragments. A computer programme for vector drawing was used to assist in the synthesis of complicated finds. The second step was to compare the stains and imprints on the textile fragments with the shape of the metal objects that possible to find a correlation between the textile and the metal. In the third step, a portable XRFspectrometer was used to check the elements present in the stains on the textiles. These were then compared to the element spectrums of the metals that were found close to the textiles."

The abstract states that all of this elaborate pattern-matching has allowed her to create "distinct reconstructions of many of the finds, and to expand the knowledge of the details of women's costumes from the Viking Age in the western Norway region."  I can hardly wait to see what Professor Lukešová has come up with in the way of reconstructions.  (The abstract admits that most of the textile finds come from the chest area, so "the features of complete women's costumes have intentionally been left open").

There are other interesting topics being addressed in this NESAT, including:  Bronze Age tailoring; Chinese silks found in the Merovingian graves in the Saint-Denis Basilica in France; the Dätgen trousers (roughly contemporaneous with the Thorsberg trousers); a reconstruction of a Renaissance era coif found in a Copenhagen moat; and a study of embroidery on Bronze Age costumes from Scandinavia.  Clearly we historical costumers have some excellent research to look forward to and to support our own work.