Adventures in London – for when research exceeds the bounds of books

Bacton Altar Cloth: Also Daffodils?

My previous post about motifs 1, 58, and 61 on my map of the Bacton Altar Cloth explained our thought that these were daffodils. As we studied the embroidery more we noticed two general rules that made us doubt the species identification:

1. Although motifs repeated, sometimes with slight variance in colouring, no species seemed to be represented by different shaped motifs.

2. While flowers might be exaggerated in size, both the flowers and the leaves seem to be fairly botanically accurate.

Motifs 9 and 22 of the Bacton Altar Cloth, species undetermined

Motifs 9 and 22 show how different colours might be employed on matching flowers. Although they are not identical – the cut stem bends up on one and down on the other, and the petals of the bud are outlined slightly differently – the shape appears to be traced from the same pattern. The flower in motif 9 is worked mostly in blues, but 22 has portions in fuchsia. Motif 9 has bits of purple and green on the upper leaf and yellow in the lower leaf where 22 has instead white and yellow in the upper and blue in the lower. Identical source design; similar but distinct thread choices.

To ascertain whether species repeat on the Bacton Altar Cloth, we must label every motif with a name; we’re working on that. But it seems that if you find a rose, and then another rose, the design will be the same for both.

To explain the botanical accuracy of the leaves, I must start with a biology lesson. Most plants are grouped into one of two broad categories: monocots or dicots. Monocots usually have leaves with parallel veins and flower parts in multiples of three, and dicots usually have leaves with branching veins and flower parts in multiples of four or five. There are other significant botanical differences having to do with the seeds, roots, and vascular systems but I doubt 16th century herbalists recognised these commonalities; embroiderers certainly weren’t trying to portray such nuances.

Understanding differences between monocots and dicots is easiest with images. Many monocots we grow in gardens sprout from bulbs: tulips, daffodils, irises, and lilies are all monocots. Grasses, including decorative species such as bamboo and pampas grass, are monocots, though they have branching root systems rather than bulbs. Few monocots reach great height, palm trees and banana plants being exceptions.

Examples of monocots: tulips in “The Great Fountain Garden” and daffodils in “The Wilderness” at Hampton Court Palace

Dicots are even more common in our gardens and woodlands. Roses, daisies, grapes, peas, marigolds, foxgloves, columbines, and pansies are all dicots, just to name some species depicted on the Bacton Altar Cloth. Most woody trees and shrubs are dicots, except evergreens like pines and spruce; they don’t flower and are neither monocots or dicots. Dicot leaves have veins that branch in a variety of different patterns. Quite often there is a prominent central rib in the leaf with smaller veins splitting off from it. Sometimes these smaller veins then branch again, forming a lace-like network.

Examples of dicots: Black-eyed Susans from Sunnyside Community Gardens in Islington,
and a pomegranate tree from the Rose Garden at Hampton Court Palace

The yellow flower might also be called a coneflower or a daisy, and might easily be confused with an echinacea, which is why gardeners use latin names like *Rudbeckia fulgida*

Like many monocots, daffodil leaves grow from the base of the plant. They do not branch out from the stem as most dicots, including the hollyhock, do. Daffodil leaves have parallel venation; hollyhocks have branching veins in each leaflet.

How do differences between monocots and dicots appear in the Bacton Altar Cloth? All the motifs have the same general shape, with a cut stem and curving stalk off which leaves branch, sometimes with and sometimes without a petiole (that’s the stalk between the stem and the leaf). None of the designs cluster the leaves at the base, the way a daffodil grows, but they do accurately portray some leaves as having petioles (as the hollyhock does, above) and some without (like the daffodil).

The embroiderers also depicted some leaves with branching veins, as in the raspberry and thistle below, and some with a central rib but no branching, as in the iris and lily. So none of the leaves have precisely parallel veins, but the monocots still appear distinct from the dicots.

Examples of dicot plants embroidered with branching veins in their leaves:
*Raspberry motif 75* and *Thistle motif 53*

Examples of monocot plants embroidered without branching veins in their leaves:
*Iris motif 15* and *Lily motif 34*

This brings us back to the original question: what species are plants 1, 58, and 61? The flowers appear to have a central yellow tube surrounded by white or yellow and white petals in sets of three, rather like a stylised daffodil might. But the leaves have branching veins and and emerge in clusters far up the stem, not singly from the base.

I also mentioned that each species only gets one motif, and yet here is motif 37, looking even more like a daffodil to me than number 58. All of its leaves emerge low on the stem and lack branching venation. Its blossoms show a central yellow tube with five white petals at the base, but I imagine a sixth petal hidden completely behind the yellow tube. The zigzag ends of each tube call to mind the ruffled effect I see on many daffodils.

So, what are these two plants meant to be? Was motif 1 a daffodil drawn by a less knowledgeable herbalist or maker of pattern books? Is it meant to be a dicot species with a tube shaped flower, not a daffodil at all? Did the person selecting the motifs consider plants 58 and 37 different species because they were labeled with different names? Even today we call members of this genus narcissus, daffodil, paperwhite, Lent lily, and jonquil. In the 16th century they might have born such names as affodill, asphodel, and narcissus.

The Affadille, folio 003r of ‘The Tudor Pattern Book’ Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1504, produced in England c.1520-1530. Photo © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
and the Common yellow Daffodilly from John Gerard’s *Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes*, first published in 1597

What flowers do you think these motifs represent?

Bacton Altar Cloth: Daffodils

One of the great pleasures in studying the Bacton Altar Cloth, even from afar mostly via photographs, is that so many intriguing questions present themselves. What materials were used? Who stitched the designs? How was the fabric and embroidery used before it was an altar cloth? How would contemporary viewers have interpreted the work? To answer such conundrums clearly will take considerable time devoted by many people with diverse expertise.

One question seemed easy enough, but has dominated our initial attempts to describe the altar cloth: what flowers do the embroidered motifs represent?

At first we flipped through the photographs identifying easy ones that we knew from our own gardens or from their frequent use in Elizabethan embroidery, but names for many motifs eluded us. We began discussing sepal prominence, stamen colour, fruit clustering, and leaf position. It’s been more than two decades since I’ve taken a botany exam or done fieldwork to plot species density, but those dormant skills are apparently still tucked away in some cobweb-clogged corner of my memory. The younger me never imagined, as I poured over my immense copy of Radford, Ahles, and Bell’s Manual of the Vascular Flora of the Carolinas, that one day I’d be attempting to decipher plant species depicted in four-hundred-year-old silk embroidery floss, yet here we are.

Luckily motif 1 (based on the “map” of motifs shared here), though sadly cut during construction of the altar cloth, was simple to describe: a daffodil.

Daffodil, the first motif on the front of the Bacton Altar Cloth

Since this motif is partial, we could learn more about it by finding matching motifs elsewhere on the work. Number 58 from the left side panel is almost complete, and appears to be worked from the same pattern. Same downward-pointing yellow and white flower, same cluster of three leaves somewhat awkwardly appearing above the flower’s arched stem.

Nearly complete daffodil, motif 58, worked from the same pattern as motif 1

The colours chosen for these leaves and stem are a bit different from the first daffodil, and motif 58 does have some spaces where the fill colour is missing, but the outlines appear the same.

Are there any other daffodils? Yes, another partial one, also on the left side panel, motif number 61. Unfortunately not one that I managed to capture clearly and crisply, so this blurry image will have to do for now:

Might this daffodil be the missing half of the first daffodil motif? I think it possible. The colour difference between the photos is the result of the different light levels in the different parts of the display case and should not be taken to mean that the embroidered silks or the background were as strikingly different as they appear here.

When the embroidered cloth was cut, the cut edge was simply folded under, hiding part of the floral motif, which could account for the entire upward pointing blossom visible in motif 58 but missing from both motif 1 and 61.

Here are images of the backs of two daffodil motifs showing the slightly variable amount of fabric that was folded under.

The back of daffodil motifs 61 (right) and 58 (left) from the left side panel of the Bacton Altar Cloth show how the cut edge of the embroidery was folded under.
Photographs copyright Natalie Bramwell-Booth

If you will allow me to just admire those colours a moment, the bright blue of the stems, the many hues of green that make up each leaf, the saturated orange and the delicate yellow of each blossom…sigh. Oh, to have seen this embroidery when it was fresh and new, each stitch of silk floss bright as from the dyer’s vat, not faded from centuries in the sun, each silver thread glistening in the candlelight instead of being tarnished and dull!

But never mind the amazing artistry of the piece – what are the species depicted? I thought that it was simple enough to call motif 1 a daffodil, but the more I looked, the more I doubted myself.

Thoughts, questions and observations to be continued.

Bacton Altar Cloth: First MEDATS Presentation

On Saturday 9 January our little study group held a public but relaxed and conversational online meeting about the Bacton Altar Cloth as part of a lockdown-inspired series of more smaller, more accessible events hosted by the Medieval Dress and Textile Society. We shared our photos – ok, mostly my photos – of the Bacton Altar Cloth taken last winter when it was on display at Hampton Court Palace, answered queries from some of the nearly 120 people who joined the call, offered some of our unanswered questions and received many helpful suggestions from participants.

Bacton Altar Cloth on display at Hampton Court Palace

If you haven’t seen the Historic Royal Palaces video about conserving the altar cloth, I recommend taking a moment to watch it, as it provides an excellent summary of the history of the object and the people and places associated with the textile, shows some nice views of both the front and the back of the embroidery, and also explains much of the great excitement surrounding the Bacton Altar Cloth now.

During the MEDATS session we presented some of our observations about the materials and embroidery techniques with which the altar cloth was made, gave a summary of its history and its recent conservation, and hypothesised about which plant species each motif represents. We started with the motif that I numbered 1 (based on the map shared here) but only made it to motif 15 out of 80 because we spent so much time happily zooming in on details of the work, occasionally sharing images from herbals, jumping to other similar motifs on the altar cloth, debating the exact botanical features that define whatever species we were considering at that moment, and taking a wide variety of questions from the audience.

As we reluctantly concluded for lack of additional available time, the presenters (Christine Carnie, Jenny Worrall and myself, though we also dragged Natalie Bramwell-Booth into the discussion multiple times without warning and are immensely grateful that she was a good sport about the whole affair) suggested a second meeting two weekends following, which met with energetic approval.

Afterward we all noticed images from the talk, which had not been recorded, being shared online. Rather than attack people for taking screenshots without permission and sharing them without attribution, we discussed the problem and decided that, since I honestly don’t mind sharing the photographs I’ve taken, and since there is such great curiosity about the Bacton Altar Cloth and hunger for more images of it, I should begin posting photographs to my blog along with explanations of which plants we think might be portrayed in the motif.

Eighty motifs, though, it quite a lot of research and writing, and hours of time spent studying period herbals, illuminated manuscripts, and contemporary portraits. Let’s see how many patterns and plants we can name if we work together!

Bacton Altar Cloth “Map”

I needed a “map” of the Bacton Altar Cloth so that I could communicate with others about which of the original floral motifs we wanted to discuss. I have not assigned numbers to the secondary embroidery that was added later – the animals, insects, trees, and other smaller figures squeezed between the original motifs – only to the professionally embroidered flowering and fruiting plants.

Here is the same image without the numbers over the motifs:

Numbers were assigned starting with the top left side of the front panel and then following it across the rows and down, as if reading a block of text. Then I numbered the top panel, then the right side, then the left side, and last the rear panel.

Mudlarking Inventory

Today has been a getting-ready-to-pack day. We need to submit a complete inventory of all our belongings, along with the replacement value, to the moving company. This is SO not fun. However, it is probably an excellent window into what we value. The total cost of the furniture we’re shipping is far less than the value of the musical instruments, and that is exceeded by the value of our books. (Current number of books inventoried: 1,442, including a sizable library for the children. I’m sure we’ve missed a few that we’ll find as we keep looking around. Chunks of our book collection were also left in storage in the US.)

But even more interesting, to me, was the inventory I took of my mudlarking things. I sorted, I repacked, and I chose which items I wanted to carry to the Museum of London for identification (answer: too many. Especially heavy ones.)

I won’t be taking the pottery types I feel fairly confident that I’ve identified correctly, like the hand-painted china in blue:

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…and other colors. Actually, I might take these in, see whether she can give me some names of types represented:
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Combed Staffordshire slip stays home (can you tell I LOVE picking these bits up?):
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…but I’ll ask questions about these similar but not identical pieces:
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No need to carry in the salt glazed Bellarmine potsherds, even if the little face (left, middle row) is cute:

…but I might learn a bit about these more modern (I think all 19th and 20th century) stoneware bottle fragments:
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I can recognize the stripes on this mochaware and banded ware:
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…but not all the swirls and spots on this assortment of fragments:
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…and certainly not these. I just need a name for them, so that I can look them up and learn more:
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I’m pretty confident that I’ve separated my creamware:
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…from my white salt glazed sherds:
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…and my pearlware (which is mostly shell edged):
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I’m not confident that these are all black basalt stoneware:
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…and I hadn’t realized what this piece was until yesterday (having never even heard of Chelsea sprig):
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…but I figured out how to tell my Westerwald stoneware:
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…from my debased scratched blue and white stoneware a while ago. Though the differences are subtle.
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While I am overly fond of my roof and floor tile fragments (especially the two medieval painted ones, bottom left), I’ll leave them home – they’re heavy.
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The transferware can stay home, too – I just don’t have time to delve into all its 18th and 19th-century variety:
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…even for the extra fun colored bits. Not taking them:
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…or the spongeware:
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I’ll bring in my jar of delft, because I’m not terribly confident about sorting these fragments and suspect some other styles are mixed in:
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The heaviest lot I’m bringing is these large chunky redware pieces (plus many more bags of smaller redware and the 14th-16th century green lead glazed bits). I just can’t resist the functional, hand-formed shapes, although clearly most people prefer to leave them on the shore:
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These bits of redware are a bit more refined. Must learn more about them:
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And if I’ve identified these correctly, this blackware could date from late Tudor or Stuart times:

Wow, I spend a lot of time learning about pottery, for someone who never cared much for it. Hobbies, how they change us. My real interest is more the costuming bits like aglets (left) and pins:
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And more aglets (left), next to printer’s type:
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Buttons and beads are always fun to find, though I don’t think any of these are exceptional:
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Hooks and eyes are lots of fun to study (for a costuming geek, that is):
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and some are very hard to distinguish from bits of wire and metal scrap:
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My bag would be so much lighter if I didn’t haul large metal chunks like these home:
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along with nails:
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and glass:
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The little things usually make me the happiest. Like round things…whatever their original purpose (toy, industrial tool, shot), they’re round things and I like them:
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I found a lot of unidentified scraps of lead before I ever found a lead fabric seal (not pictured):
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And there are still an amazing number of leather fragments preserved out there:

along with an assortment of other random items from throughout history, like wig curlers, bottle stoppers, belt buckle bits, knife handles, etc.:
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Goodbye, Thames, you mysterious history-hoarding old river. I’m going to miss you.
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On the Train to York

My time in England is nearing an end, and looking back I realize that precious few adventures actually made it from my brain to the computer screen. I suppose no one who knows me will be surprised that I’ve been a bit busy.

I am pecking out this essay on the train, the earliest I found leaving Kings Cross Station for York. Outside the sky is turning from gray to pale blue and the morning mist is clearing. From time to time we pass fields of startlingly vibrant yellow – the rape plant, from which we get rapeseed oil (rebranded as canola oil in North America), is in bloom. Last spring I had to ask a nice church warden what this plant was and I think he was quite startled by my inability to recognize it. But I’m a North Carolina girl – I can identify tobacco, soybeans, cucumbers or cotton while driving 70 miles an hour in the rain, but I’ve not seen the crops of the upper Midwest.

The train pulls into Grantham and I look up to study the church spires. One particularly tall one is currently swathed in scaffolding. My first thought is a desire to visit the church, and the second a wish to climb the spire. Whenever given a chance to climb up and take in the view, I say yes.

Today is only my second long train trip north. Though on a few of my driving trips out of London I’ve been rather envious of the rail passengers speeding past me as I trundle up the M1 at a mere 70mph, it has usually made more sense to just drive. This allows me to bring my step ladder (a really useful tool when photographing table tombs) and carry as much food as I need (I never take time for a lunch stop – daylight is too precious to waste in a shop or cafe) plus large rolls of paper for drawing the hats on effigies or for making brass rubbings.

This will be my last big trip. I’ll get a car in York and drive all around Leeds today, venture far further north and east tomorrow. Last stop tomorrow should be the final effigy on my “most important” list, the last one with an early gable hood and the frontlets worn long. I can’t believe I’ve done it, traveled the length and breadth of England (and just a tiny bit of Wales) but I have. My beloved map, my indespensible tool both for explaining and planning research, is covered now with the white dots that mark places I’ve visited.

I even made it to Morchard Bishop, a place so far out in Devonshire that it was an hour and a half drive from anything else (church, castle, or historic site) that I wanted to see. I justified the drive by sandwiching it in on a family trip to Cornwall that I’m sure I wouldn’t have undertaken (fun and interesting though it was to drive 769 miles over 3 days with three children wedged into the back of a too-small rental car) had I not known of the effigy’s existence.

I just passes a large sign beside the tracks that said Edinburgh 250 miles. Sorry, Scotland, but I don’t think I’ll be visiting you during this Adventure in London. Perhaps if you told me about some effigies I should visit….

Mudlarking Finds

Mudlarking is time-consuming. I spend hours collecting, washing, drying, sorting, arranging, photographing, labeling, and writing about what I find. But I love it. I can’t WAIT to show things to people back in the US who will be able to learn from, and teach me about, what I’ve found.

Tuesday during the low mid-day tide I celebrated my children’s return to school by doing something they find mind-numbing: kneeling on hard rocks and not paying enough attention to passing boats to keep my feet dry. (The Thames doesn’t have waves, but large craft create them; they can rather quickly go further up the beach than you expect.)

I exercised little self-restraint while collecting, picking up anything that caught my eye and quickly plopping it into the bag. I had some delightful discoveries when I washed up.

This find made my day. The domino is thin, about 1.5mm. I suspect it is bone or ivory. I found it propped sideways against a rock, just one thin short edge visible. (I’ll send a photo into the Museum of London to see whether she wants to record it.)

I suppose it goes well with my best find from two months ago (the last time I was out on the Thames), a wooden die:

I found a few very curious things that I cannot identify, such as the bit of antler, top left. It isn’t JUST an antler, because the narrow end is clearly worked – rounded, with some cuts. A friend suggested that it might be the top of a walking cane, but I’m not sure the top is smooth enough for that. It doesn’t have the slick, worn pattern I’d expect regular use to create. Hmmm…do you have ideas?

The rest of the objects are natural (not man-made) items I collected. Below the antler is an oyster shell – the discarded “street food” wrapper of Elizabethan London. Usually I ignore them – they’re everywhere and ugly – but this one has a faintly opalescent blue color. Below that, two bits of agate, and at the bottom, coral. These didn’t erode from the local clay; they were imported. When, and from where, I cannot tell. The other objects are mother of pearl. Someone must have worked them nearby; the small patch of beach I visited is littered with them.

What I most enjoy finding are the really tiny things. The way I FIND tiny things is to hunt for pins. When I’m close enough to the ground to find lots of pins, I’m close enough to find fabulous treasures (like a domino!). I’d heard that there was a spot with a LOAD of pins near my favorite hunting ground, but I’d never encountered it because I hadn’t been looking there when the tide was low enough. Tuesday I found it. I saw the ground just bristling with pins, I started picking them up…and counting. 341 pins and two very wet feet later (and my jeans, all the way to my knees) I quit – the incoming tide had covered the sweet spot. Before finding this “nest” of pins, I’d collected quite a few, so (as usual) I counted them when I got home. How many do you think I found?

Five hundred and thirty two. Those little piles are 25 pins each. Later, like when I can no longer go mudlarking in the Thames, I must study them. Sort them. Learn from them. Maybe polish them up and see how shiny they can get!

Besides pins, the tiniest things I found were beads (middle). The column on the left at first seamed like beads – the larger object has the tiniest hole I can imagine running through the center – but now I wonder whether they might be a fossilized something? On the right are two marble-like objects. The lower one is coarse – cracks all over, not perfectly round. Are they man-made? Were they for industrial purposes, not playthings?

More strange and unidentified finds below: on the left, a rusted bit of pipe (now blocked with rusted-on sand, but originally hollow) with intricate piercings. What can it be?

The second column is buttons. Top a modern, boring one that says “Cherokee” – but below that is one that says “16 Fenchurch St” and “Kin(g?) Bros.” I can find the shop location – about a 20 minute walk from where I found the button, in the middle of the City of London – but I cannot decipher or locate the name of the tailors. The odd twisted bit below the third, upside down and totally plain button, is (I think) a button shank, one on which the soldering has failed, detaching it from its button.

The third column, top two items, are twists of wire that likely held goods ready for sale, maybe pins. Below are a series of wires that have been shaped, worked – but I cannot discern their uses.

Last a collection of seven aglets, two very thin wire rings, both split, and two hooks for holding clothing closed. I especially love the large bent hook, so clearly hand-made.

I have no idea why I picked up so many rusted iron nails and odd brass tacks this time out. The super-tiny tack on the right even has a pattern on its head.

Even after cleaning and studying, some of the metal and wire fragments I find are just that – unidentifiable scraps. I was actually at the point of putting away the items below before I figured out what those two similar gray bars on the left are: printer’s type. I have a colon and a lowercase letter “m”.

The long wire with the metal tag was also a surprise, because the reverse looks like this:

A merchant’s tag, perhaps? And is that a letter T before the S, or perhaps a poor impression of a J?

And pottery. Of COURSE I found pottery. I’m really no expert at identifying it, but I’ll do my best. I’ve linked to Julia’s excellent blog posts about similar mudlarking finds; her writing has been fascinating and informative to me.

Some is hand painted in blue:

or other colors:

Some is transferware (the top left has three tiny people on it):

Some is stoneware with blue accents…hmmm…except for the top right and top left, which might be different.

A few are unique, like the eagle-like cup handle (?) and next to it the tile with the fleur-de-lis. Some are enigmas, like the ridged one in the middle with black squiggles. And the four with blue paint might be delftware…if I’m identifying it correctly.

There are lots of bits with green glaze, and some of them are likely Tudor or Medieval:

Some are way too big, and I probably should have left them on the shore, but then I thought I might have a pottery-making friend who’d like to see them. The one on the right might be a stove tile – it has glaze on one edge as well as the top surface.

Some have holes, as if they might be colanders. Or are curved like handles. Or have holes because they came from, well, what? The last two are likely pipkin handles.

Blue and green shell-edged pearlware is so common that at first I thought it was something completely modern, not Victorian.

I never get tired of the patterns on combed slipware:

There is assorted white pottery – some salt glazed, some pearlware, some who knows what:

Some is delicate porcelain:

and some is coarse and chunky, like this roof tile (I liked its triangular hole), handle to a “Bellarmine” jar, and a piece of redware painted with green slip.

Some are slightly less common, like the black basalt stoneware, spongeware, and bandedware. Hmmm…and the bottom most banded piece might not belong with that group.

And pipes. Even though the spot that was so rich in pipes a few months ago has been picked over until it is nothing but boring fragments of pipe stems and crushed bowls without maker’s marks, I did find these to take home. A few maker’s marks, a couple ends of the pipe stem (see how it tapers to such a narrow end, and the way it is rounded?), and one fancy Victorian pipe stem. It says “Parker” on the reverse and “(J)ohn St” on this side.

I also brought home a few glass fragments. The photo simply cannot capture what is so intriguing about these. The top bit has aged iridescent, the large one is full of tiny air bubbles, the white one has a lovely shine, the scaly one is an opaque teal color, and the bottom one is simply a nice worn bit of sea glass.

Treasures. Every last thing is, to me, a tiny treasure. And as annoying as it is to clean and dry and store everything (and to loose the use of my kitchen counter while I work through the task), I can’t wait to go mudlarking again.

Tailoring Doublets and Hose, Part 2: Draping the Toile

Several months passed between my Tailoring Stitches and Techniques class and my Doublets class. Here Claire and Melanie took on five students: an experienced sempstress who works on an Elizabethan farm, a young woman who works on costuming in an opera house, a graduate student who has taken several other School of Historical Dress classes, and a brand new graduate student with no sewing experience whose adviser told her to sign up for this class but who had not at ALL anticipated how much this was a hands-on exercise (despite this, she did lovely work and kept an admirably cheerful spirit throughout). And me.

We had quite some time to get to know each other, spending six long days tight-packed around the table in Jenny’s workroom, all of us stitching together, learning together, confused together. We had time to talk, to tell stories. We talked about our lives and families, our jobs and hobbies, our homes and hassles. Many of us told stories not only about our partners and children, but of our mothers and grandmothers. Stories about sewing, cooking, teaching and more. We ate lunch together around Jenny’s kitchen table, took tea together every time it was offered, and politely shared the melt-in-your mouth homemade shortbread cookies and assorted sweets. When class ended, it almost seemed as if we were friends.

Patterning Doublets: the Toile

One key thing that I knew I’d learn in the doublet class – because in other classes, students had talked about it, and about how difficult it was – was how to design a pattern. This is something I have attempted before, but I was sure I’d have a lot to learn.

I did.

We started with something familiar to me: draping a toile, or muslin, which is also sometimes called a pattern block. (Toile is apparently a British term and muslin the American, but because most of the authors I read for costume information – Sarah Thursfield, Janet Arnold, the Tudor Tailor team – are British, some of the UK terminology is more familiar to me than the US versions.) What this means is taking large pieces of inexpensive fabric, often medium weight unbleached cotton, and pinning it snugly around a person so as to capture their three-dimensional shape. When you remove the pins and lay it out, you have two dimensional pattern pieces.

I won’t try to tell you how to drape a toile – there are books and websites out there that will do a better job. I learned by reading Sarah Thursfield’s Medieval Tailor’s Assistant. Later I took a workshop taught by Drea Callicut in how to fit and pattern a self-supporting linen kirtle (known in Society for Creative Anachronism circles as a Gothic fitted gown, or GFG). She used the instructions created by Charlotte Johnson (How to Pattern a Gothic Fitted Dress). With coaching and practice, I got better.

Since our class lacked a model, we fitted a full size articulated dressmakers dummy. Smooth, pin, pinch, pin, repin, shift, wiggle, pin, mark your pin lines, remove the toile. No need to ask whether he was comfortable, or would he lift that arm, or “oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to prick you!” or “I told you not to look down at me while I’m pinning, it changes the way this drapes on you, please stand up straight like I asked.” He was easy to work with.

We also took his measurements. Later, we had a live model come in for a fitting, and were shown again exactly where on the body to start and end each measurement. I learned a few useful tips:

If you start by fixing something around the person’s waist (his actual waist, not where he’s used to his trousers sitting) – something like a tape measure or a belt – and make sure it doesn’t shift while you’re working, you have a useful baseline for many measurements. You need to measure from under his arm to his waist, and from the nape of his neck to his waist, and maybe even total distance over the shoulder from front waist to back waist. If you have that waist point clearly marked, you’ll be able to take more accurate measurements more quickly.

But you’ll still do a bit of poking hard to find the bone for things like the shoulder point.

When you need to find the nape of the neck, have him tip his head forward. The bone that sticks out is the nape of the neck.

The doublet sleeves should be snugly fitted, just like the body. If the gentleman being fitted flexes his arm as pictured below, you can measure the outside and the inside of the arm and get a better idea of how much length you’ll need to keep the finished sleeve from riding up well past his wrist.

I feel as if I should be able to point you, the reader, to a useful list of what measurements you need to take, but I cannot think of one. We received a handout from class, but of course the School of Historical Dress holds that copyright, and I cannot post it here. If you know of a book or website with this information, please share!

Patterning Doublets: Pattern Drafting

Then came the mind-whirling, amazing, hard to describe stuff. We watched as Claire and Melanie each drafted a pattern, but not in any way I’d ever done it before.

I’m used to taking the toile, laying it flat, and smoothing out the inconsistencies between the two halves of the toile. Even if you’re pinning on a very symmetrical person, each half of the toile will have a slightly different shape, and honestly most people are far from symmetrical. Then you add a bit where you want to pad and shape the garment differently than the basic human form – a bit more added in a nice rounded shape in front on the lower torso to make a peascod belly, say.

They took measurements, a huge piece of paper, and a compass. (An enormous beam compass like this one.) Although they looked at the toiles and measured a few parts of them, they didn’t use the shape of the toile as the basis of the pattern. After they drew the X and Y axes, every point they used, every curve, every straight line was created by casting circles from a previous point (or points). Every circle had a radius that related to a fractional part of a yard, or sometime to a fractional portion of some length that had already been plotted onto the pattern. They’d try one curve, decide they didn’t like it, try another. They’d need a point from which to cast a large, shallow curve – and they’d have to find two other possible curves cast from the pattern to create the point they needed.

If this doesn’t make sense, forgive me. I really haven’t wrapped my head around it yet. I need practice, lots of practice, before I will be able to really explain what they wanted us to learn.

Their patterns grew, bit by bit, with curves and points and lines that all had a numerical relationship to one another. Claire and Melanie had different “favorite” curves they preferred, or repeatedly found useful. They had different ways of describing what they did. But their technique was the same: geometrical construction and a whole lot of “that’s the way I think it should look.” Of course, Claire and Melanie have also studied extant garments and looked carefully at cutting diagrams in period tailoring manuals. The patterns they’ve observed in those heavily influence the choices they made as they shaped their patterns.

It was amazing. Mind blowing. And really, really hard to learn to do. Thankfully, we didn’t have to tackle that until the next day.

Please ask questions – it helps me figure out what I still haven’t described.

Tailoring Doublets and Hose, part 1

I’ve taken three related classes at The School of Historical Dress this fall: Tailoring Stitches and Techniques, Doublets, and Hose. Each class day is long, as we often have more material to cover than can fit in several days of a 9-to-6 schedule. Sometimes we leave with homework sewing. Sometimes we rush lunch a little. Often we stay a few minutes later. Or an hour. And always, class ends before we can finish our sewing projects.

This is far from a complaint – I LOVE my time in class. It is just exhausting, consuming, and indicative of how massive a subject historical tailoring really is.

My instructors were Jenny Tiramani, Claire Thornton, and Melanie Braun. These amazing ladies worked together recreating historically accurate clothing for Shakespeare’s Globe and on the V&A books Seventeenth Century Women’s Dress Patterns, Books 1 and 2. They’ve sewn, designed, researched, written, taught, and learned together – and it is clear throughout the classes that they are still questioning, observing, and reevaluating their techniques. Hearing them at work is both fascinating and reassuring: if they debate how something should be done, I can hardly fault myself for being uncertain!

I consider myself a competent seamstress with little knowledge of tailoring techniques. I had attempted some fitted clothing that a tailor would make – gowns, doublets, kirtles – but with only modest success. I had draped toiles and created patterns from that. I had read the little 18th century sewing pamphlet The Workman’s Guide to Tailoring Stitches and Techniques – which made me more certain that I did NOT know how to be a proper tailor.

I still don’t know how to be a proper tailor, but I’ve learned a lot! I will try to share what I have learned, hoping both to cement it in my mind and make it available for others. Please assume that any errors are due to my faulty memory, not the instruction received; class moves so quickly that I simply can’t take adequate notes. I haven’t yet learned to write while sewing.

TAILORING STITCHES AND TECHNIQUES

Who were the tailors?

Tailors likely evolved from the Linen Armorers, a group of people skilled in sewing many layers of fabric to give a precise shape. Tailors, historically, stitched layers of fabrics, interlinings, and padding to create the desired shapes; modern ones do more stretching and shaping the wool to fashion the garment. Tailors were men; women could be seamstresses or embroiderers, but there isn’t evidence of women making outer garments until roughly the 1690s when female mantua-makers appear in the record. Tailors were almost certainly guild members, and likely had a specialized skill set even within the tailoring profession. The most extreme tailoring – peascod bellies and skintight hose, puffy paned breeches and gowns over farthingales – happened in the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean period (1580-1640).

This class took place over two days, during which we constructed a sampler using techniques found on extant garments from 1400 to 1800:

Materials

One fabulous part of classes with The School of Historical Dress is getting to use the right materials. One frustrating part is trying to figure out the terminology so that I could, if I wanted, buy comparable tools and materials later. Not only are the fabric, thread, and tool terms specialized, but some of them change meanings over time, and some terms are used in the UK but not the US (or vice versa). Struggling to master the tailor’s language reminds me how much I have to learn, and how daunting it is for a beginning sewer to tackle recreating historic clothing.

My sampler outer blue fabric is a wool melton, closely enough woven and felted that the cut edges do not fray. The panel on the left (above) has a linen canvas interlining from top to bottom, with a tightly woven white linen lining on the top half and a shot silk taffeta lining on the bottom. The silk looks green because the warp threads are teal blue and the weft threads golden cream. The right panel has a natural linen canvas interlining stiffened with rabbit hide glue and two layers of undyed wool voltaire pad-stitched over it. We sewed wool and linen with two-ply linen thread, and the silk and buttonholes with silk twist.

Techniques

Before cutting, we traced our pattern pieces with chalk, then tacked the stitch lines with cotton basting thread. I’m not used to tacking anything, but Claire stressed the importance of this technique throughout the class. While doing the sampler (which had nothing but straight edges and right angles) it just didn’t make sense: why did I need to tack my sewing line, if it was 3/8 inch in from the edge? I have enough sewing experience that I can just “see” 3/8 inch, half an inch, and a quarter inch. When we sewed the doublets and hose, THEN the technique made sense. Where exactly does that shoulder come to a point or that side seam end? The chalk lines wear off during the extensive handling the fabric gets before you reach the assembly stage; without the basted seam line, we couldn’t achieve precise fit.

We cut our pieces with 3/8 inch seam allowance. Jenny stresses that we should work in yards and inches because, at least for an English tailor, these were the basic units of measure they used. We delved more deeply into this in later classes, the concept that tailors cut patterns based on halves, quarters, thirds, etc. of a yard (and related measures).

Then we tried out different seams. I cannot begin to teach these adequately here, so if any seem unfamiliar, find a good book that will explain them. Backstitch, half back stitch, and running stitch were quite familiar to me; we used these to assemble our wool panels.

The right-hand panel is joined to the center with a less familiar seam: counter hemming. This works well here because of the strong cut edge of the wool, and creates the flattest join. The right and center panels are overlapped 3/8 inch, and each raw edge is felled. I am fairly certain that my teachers advised me to do the outside seam first, and then finish the inside edge, with the theory being that the first seam would look the neatest. I’m also fairly certain that I forgot and did it the other way around…no way to tell now that it is sewn.

We used a running stitch and a felling stitch on the wool seam allowances, and discussed which direction to sew. Do you sew right to left, or left to right? I’m right handed, and most of the time I sew from right to left, but the tension and shaping in your stitches is slightly different if you fell the opposite way. I tried both, and they both left neat rows, so I think I could happily work either way. The surest way to know which direction an extant garment was sewn is to discover a knot in the thread showing that they started at that point, and that almost never happens.

Speaking of knots, we didn’t use them. We anchored threads by sewing a stitch or so forward, then back. I learned that technique long ago, but I know it is still not what most beginning hand sewers are taught. I highly recommend it; this anchoring technique is stronger and more secure than tying a knot in your thread, especially in loosely woven fabrics. It also saves you the trouble of fiddling with little knots. Although there is evidence that some historical garment seams were sewn with a knotted thread, I agree with my teachers: forward and back anchoring is a more common and better technique.

We used different seams to join the silk. The center seam is prick stitched, meaning I sewed the fabric right sides together, then folded the fabric to one side and top stitched the seam finished about 1/8 inch from the fold with a sort of running stitch that left long stitches underneath and tiny pricks of thread visible on the surface. On the inside, three layers of fabric (both seam allowances and one piece of silk lining) fold to one side, with only a single layer of silk to the other. Works fine on a thin taffeta, probably isn’t the best technique for bulky fabrics. This technique also leaves raw edges on the inside, which would not work if the inside were ever exposed.

Another silk seam is counter hemmed, like the wool. Because the silk frays easily, each edge is folded under and felled on a creased edge. It makes a neat, flat, completely finished seam, with raw edges enclosed on both inside and out.

We attached two pieces of wool to the bottom hem. One is pleated on with three rows of large, even gathering stitches, the other, cut on a curve, is eased on with two rows of much smaller gathering stitches.

On to the techniques that a tailor, but not a seamstress, used! We tried quilting through a layer of wool slither (or roving, the loose woolly stuff that is combed and ready for spinning) and quilting through multiple layers of woven wool cloth – both techniques used from medieval times. We quilted channels and stuffed them with the wool slither, creating the thicker, firmer lining necessary for Elizabethan clothing forms. We pad-stitched two layers of wool onto glue-stiffened linen, attempting to set a gentle curve into our right hand panel. Others were more successful at this than I was.

After sewing linings and interlinings to the wool, we raced to complete closures. Cloth-covered pasteboard buttons were no problem for me, and cloth buttons were familiar. Thread covered buttons would have been new to me, but they gave us each one instead of teaching us to make them. (A tailor probably would have bought the buttons, anyway, from someone who specialized in such.) Eyelets I know well how to complete, and I’m solid on making a buttonhole using blanket stitch, but I never had learned how to make a proper buttonhole stitch. And at almost 6 p.m. on the second day of class, I was too tired to master it. I tried, I got some of the stitches right, but I didn’t get them all right. Perhaps it would have been easier if I hadn’t been trying to learn how to make a buttonhole stitch while also learning how to make a long 18th century buttonhole, the sort where the silk lining is sewn down separately and only the outer fabric and interlining are caught in each stitch.

My sampler is incomplete, and I fear I no longer remember which techniques were to be applied to which sections, so it will probably remain that way. Still it is an interesting and (thanks to the handout with all the names of techniques and materials used) useful reference. I look forward to practicing the less familiar portions of the project while sewing my family new historical clothing.

Research without a Car

The UK permits you to drive with your native license for 12 months after you immigrate. After that, you have to get a UK license, which is far more difficult than I imagined it would be. But I’m working on it. Because the car clubs I belong to know exactly when I entered the country, they won’t rent to me again until I get a license.

I’ve had to live without independent wheels since August. Mostly this means I’ve been in London, which is not much of a limitation on learning: being here means access to a never-ending source of interesting exhibits, talks, classes, and conferences. It amazes me how many places nearby are still on my list of “you should go see that” when I think of how busy I’ve been and how much I’ve seen.

Most recently I’ve been working on updating my beloved map of effigies and brasses:

https://1500stitches.org/map.html

I added a few more effigies that I found listed in Arthur Gardner’s Alabaster Tombs of the Pre-Reformation Period on England, effigies that didn’t turn up in my initial search of the database of Pevsner’s Architectural Guides. I worry that I may be missing more effigies in Wales…I only found three relevant locations with alabaster tombs (plus one where I assume the effigy is ruined or inaccessible, since the church apparently fell into abandoned disrepair in the 20th century and I can find no images of the effigy online). But how am I to locate any freestone or wood effigies that might be there – besides reading every single church guide and hoping I notice the ones that list a monument from around 1500?

I further subdivided the color categories on my map, allowing me to display the butterfly headdresses separate from the truncated hennins and gable hoods. I also separated out those monuments with a wreath, padded roll, or crown displayed over either a simple veil or (more commonly) long hair. I only see this style on effigies, never on brasses; what does it mean?

This left a pleasingly small pile of “other” hat styles, mostly variations on widow’s veils. Many of the hats that I couldn’t identify from the photos I initially found online, I have since visited and can now more accurately describe.

I smile seeing the places marked “visited”. I have learned and seen so much in the last year. But there are still so many more to see…and many of these are the difficult ones. The churches for which I cannot find a keyholder, the places where I must write in advance for special permission to photograph, the church that is condemned and is now a hard hat area, the chapel that is gated and locked because they’re doing a long-term study about the effects of bat guano on effigies (really!), and the many churches that are just further away than I have yet driven. I will spend the next two months planning trips, researching routes, calling church wardens and vicars and volunteers, and perhaps finding a few friendly couches on which to crash.

This fall I only managed two trips via train and bus: one to Carlisle and the Lake District, another to Bristol and surrounds. My mother joined me on those excursions while my mother-in-law stayed in London to help Tom juggle the kids. We had quite a good time and no shortage of fascinating things to see! But just describing why we missed the bus to Greystoke is a post unto itself…so I conclude with happy thoughts about the enjoyable plotting, planning and organizing ahead.

And Happy Thanksgiving to my friends in America! I believe that we will, as last year, simply ignore the holiday. No point cooking a huge meal for just my family when it is a regular school and workday.