The Tudor Revolution

So if you are new to my blog, Hello! I took July off to focus on work and realities of covid life. Thanks for hanging in there.  This week we are doing to cover 16th Soccocia and their role toward the origin of pockets. People need a place to carry and keep their small items as they walk around. In the middle ages you might have a pilgrim satchel or a belt pouch. Some women in the middle ages had the brilliant idea to stop wearing their money purses outside of their over gowns and instead would wear them between their kirtle/sottona layer and over gowns. This arrangement still gave you access to the purse, but made it harder for thieves to cut your purse strings and run.  Fast forward to the 16th century and we find the heirs to this practice in socaccia. We have some visual evidence of these in mid to late 16th century art out of Italy. This is a detail of Alessandro Allori's,  Woman at her toilet, ca 1575-78. Currently in Florence, Church of Santa Maria Novella, Gaddi ...

This post could  also be called, "Its ok to grow & change your mind."  It's hard to believe that I wrote my first blog about my first effigy corset 8 years ago. There has been a lot of changes, more detailed research, and better access to digital archives of historical clothing. I've loved watching the conversation evolve over time & learning what I can to contribute to the conversation.  Last fall I had to make myself a new set of stays. My 5th set for me, in addition to everyone I've helped or made them for over the years. My previous sets are all still functional,  but my body shape has changed. Since living in Colorado I've dropped quite a bit of fluff, and my stays became so large on me they were no longer supportive & causing back pain.   My new stays were made using the same method I had previously except I omitted the diagonal "whalebone" channel. They fit well. As the time I made them, I had a small front gap for negative ease or...

Albrecht Durer, Portrait of a Young Venetian Woman, 1505 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_a_Venetian_Woman#/media/File:Albrecht_D%C3%BCrer_089b.jpg It is my understanding that this painting was produced on Albrecht Durer's visit to Venice in 1505, while he was studying the artistic techniques his Venetian contemporaries were using at the time. While the multiple rows of pearls can look intimidating, reproducing this necklace with modern jewelry making supplies is quite easy. I have strung this with silk thread, as it would have likely been at the time, but found it hear breaking when I eventually had a stand snap and I lost several tiny pearls. Empty plastic water bottles can be a great way to store broken necklaces waiting to be restrung in a pinch.  I made one of these for a silent auction to benefit a friend. Materials : - Nylon coated metal beading cable, a bit more than twice your finished length.  - Needle nose pliers - Wire cutters - 4 crimping beads - Necklace...

Anne Boleyn by Lucas Horenbout Strawberry Hill ID: sh-000468 My newest Tudor project has been researching this portrait to reproduce it the image. Scholars have identified this as Anne Boleyn, from her time serving in the household of Catherine of Aragon. The gold frame now around the miniature identifying this miniature as Catherine was added in the 19th, century. This miniature also bares a good resemblance to Anne's commemorative medal which was struck in 1534, with a more fashion forward version of the English hood. This medal is now housed in the British Museum. Anne is known to have used her clothing to make political statements. During this period of history, people used their clothing to show alliances. Fashion was very political. Anne is famous today for her preferences for French fashions, manners, and politics. What is commonly overlooked or forgotten is that she was English first. Anne wanted to be seen as a virtuous, English Queen. To better fit this role for stat...

While I am doing blackwork for 8 hours at a time, my Venetian camicia is not ready to be posted about yet. Instead I want to share some important information for anyone trying to make a French gown with accessories from The Tudor Tailor . I love this book but there were a few problems with the publication. The woman's foresleeves do in fact have a pattern included with the gown and kirtle, but the instructions were omitted at the time of publication. The wonderful women at The Tudor Tailor have since realized their mistake and will provide anyone with a pdf version of the instructions on their website. Detail of  Elizabeth I from The Family of Henry VII, Hampton Court Palace.  These sleeves are similar in size and style to the instructions given on The Tudor Tailor website.   I have observed that is is just one kind of foresleeve. I am working on a extensive handout on these accessories because of all of the variations available....

Miniature of Anne Boleyn. While this image has the best detail of any of the French Hood  portraits there is still debate over the portrait being painted within her life time. So do you all remember the dress I made based off of Anne Boleyn's miniature? I chose the miniature because it seamed to have the best detail. Well, I was never fully satisfied with Anne just having gold brass beads on her neckline. They gave the idea of what the gown had, and I was asked to do this on short notice. All of that aside, now I have been allowed the time to go back and do it right. so I plan to. Detail from the beading on Anne Boleyn's Bodice. After some research and digging around I stumbled across a few extent garments from The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. amazingly they have thread covered buttons made with gold thread, and on one example they are purely decorative. Any avid costumers out there can imagine the excitement I got from this discovery. Copyrigh...

So now that I have had some distance from my work with the Tudor Project, I want to fairly analyze my work on the Anne Boleyn  portrait reproduction. The Research I wish I'd had 6 more months to do research. In the months since our project completed more research on early Tudor garments has been published by the Tudor Tailor workshop in England. In addition to their new book, The Queen's Servants , I have found illuminations depicting French and Flemish court ladies in full length.  It is my belief that Anne would not have been wearing a hoop skirt as I did last fall. According to the Tudor Tailor shop hoops are not worn in England until the 1540's, putting them well out of what Anne was likely to be wearing. Incase you need further help to visualize the difference, take a glance at these two portraits of Princess Elizabeth. The portrait on the left is from a mural at Hampton Court. On the right there is a portrait which was painted later for King Edward VI,...

I am thoroughly addicted to a new forum for research. Have any of you heard of the website Pintrest? Pintrest.com is an online pin board that lets you save images and describe them in your own words. You can browse other people's images and boards or save images from any where on the web. My favorite part of using this is that all of these images are basically saved to a cloud network. If my computer crashes, none of my images saved to pintrest will  be lost. The only issue I have found is that some of these images have been too small to  be "pinned" or that the "pinning" tool has had problems transferring them over. Its not a regular problem, but it does happen. I started using this so much that I have create a second sister account just for 16th century research. I encourage you to follow my pintrest boards and research I am in the process of writing up at: http://pinterest.com/ladyisabelle/

The Tudor Project was one of the most informative and incredible experiences I have had in my young career. The goal of this group was for each person to commit to reproducing a portrait from the court of Henry VIII of England. Everyone thought it sounded simple at first, but then many of us started to research and examine the details of this clothing. Eventually we were discovering things that had fallen in the cracks of previous researchers or re-creationists. This is not to say that we think we are better than those before us, or who have different views on the construction of this clothing. Everyone that I worked with feels that we are standing on the shoulders of giants, but that we are the ones choosing to reach for the sky. There are many different stories to how this started, but what it all boils down to is that we were a group of people willing to find our way into the right places at the right time and help each other to finish our goal. When the procession s...