niedziela, 10 listopada 2013

Scarf (through the ages)

Recently, when I have finished my doublet and shirt I've noticed that the neck opening is really wide. As so it does not provide much of protection in cold weather. A natural way out of thi problem would be to wear a hood. But I have not noticed hood-wearing Landsknecht soldiers. So maybe a scarf? Then it all started - when scarves were used? do we have any proof of it's use before modern times? A scarf seems to be extremely simple piece of garment but from some reasons it is not as popular as expected.

For now I want only to hoard some pictures that I have found up to date. Maybe somene will be able to update my list and will help me to find any proof for a scarf in XII/XIII or XVI century.

But, starting from antiquity:

Romans wore two type of neck-wear: focale and sudarium. Both of them used, as far as a I know by the military and civilians. Focale was used as a protection against cold and, by legionnaires as a protection against armor rubbing against the neck. Sudarium was used rather as a sweat cloth. These scarfs were made from linen or wool.

A focale on a modern roman reenactor
In early medieval the scarves were also used, although not as often as by Romans. I have managed only to find one clear depiction. Additionally I heard some stuff about scarf usage by the vikings but without any proof whatsoever The source is Stuttgart Pasalter from the first halve of the IX century:



And following that we have Lubin Codex from the II half of XIV century:

For better picture see here - http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=4360&handle=zm#

And finally, long after medieval times, we have the cravat from the '30s of the XVII century:

Portrait of Ivan Gundulic, 1622.

Cravat is a piece of garment adapted by the French from Croatian (hence the name) mercenaries. After that cravat-scarf is more or less gaining its popularity very fast, and the rest is well known (and not really interesting for me).

Okay, so we have antiquity - IX c. - XIV c. and XVII c. without anything in between (?). Seems odd.. I'll be investigating the thing further. Contact me if you have any additional info.


sobota, 9 listopada 2013

XVI century shirt

Last few days (or rather few weekends) I was busy making a shirt for the XVI century Landsknecht kit. Finally it's ready and I can show me new shirt. It looks like so:


And with the doublet:


The pattern is classical for this kind of garment. (see below): 

Basic medieval shirt pattern (adapted from The Medieval Tailor Assistant)
I have only omitted the side gores, that are sometimes used (not in this pattern), as the shirt is very wide and the gores are totally unnecessary. Of course I have kept the underarm gussets, as they seem to be crucial for a period shirt. The point is to make everything extremally wide. The 

The smocking around the neck is based on this painting:

A young man (Holbein 1518)
I have used this tutorial in order to learn how to do that and must say that this is amazingly fast and easy. The only mistake I made was making the marks 2 cm apart. It would be much better if they would be 1.5 cm or 1 cm apart giving a finer smock.


And that's all. I hope it looks as good as expected. The next thing - a hood based on Sebald Beham woodcut :

Months - December(?) (Beham 1546)