Monday 24 June 2013

Digression: The White Queen, Episode 1

What do you mean, you haven't been watching it? What's that? You were afraid the costume would be hopelessly inauthentic? Then you're in the right place! Reading this simple synopsis could save you hours...

Theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeir armour's made of plastic
Their doublets are elastic 
They really are fantastic
The Yorkist fam-i-leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*

Sir John Grey: I'm going to die because my armour's made of plastic.
Yorkists: So's ours!
Elizabeth [wakes up]: I was only dreaming, so who gives a -
Son [waking up]: Mummy - why can't we afford hats?
Elizabeth: Because some bugger nicked our land. Let's talk to the king.
King: Well hell-OH! I'm the king of discount sofas. Look - I'm wearing one as a doublet! And one plastic spaulder.
Elizabeth: I'm so poor I have to wear the same zip-up kirtle in scene after scene.
King: Let me help you with that by writhing around in tight-fitting quilted acrylic britches.
Elizabeth: I say, your majesty! How come you can't afford a hat either?
Edward: Let's get married by an anomalously untonsured friar!
Elizabeth: Woohoo! Now I'm queen I can afford a powder-blue crushed acrylic velvet gown! Meet my family... [several hundred Woodville children emerge from a back room in a manner reminiscent of 'The Sound of Music' and launch into a chorus of "Doe, a deer, a female deer, slaughtered under a full moon at midnight and its entrails spilt onto a pentagram"]
Edward: Oh.
Random Woodville: I don't trust him. And I'm so advanced I wear shirts from the future. And no hose, apparently.
Edward: Behold my palace, with its pointy-headed guards, inaccurate banners and random man with barrel.
Barrel dude: Mar-nen!
Duchess Cecily: Ah. Peasants.
Jacquetta: What's up with your head, weirdo?
Edward: Don't mind my mother. And that's my brother Dickon. He has his own disabled parking space...

*I am indebted to Mr Brian Wainwright for permission to use this lyric, which he posted to a Facebook Group dedicated to the period, in which the series was being discussed. I doff m'pointy felt cap in his direction.

Thursday 20 June 2013

Body linens

That is to say - shirts and braies for the gents, smocks for the ladies. Cotton was a rare expensive luxury fabric in the later Middle Ages, as was silk. Nearly everyone would have worn linen next to the skin. Body linens were frequently washed and would have softened with use so are actually very comfortable and cool (a major factor if you are wearing armour on a hot day). For men a set of body linens consists of braies (like boxer shorts with a drawstring waist) and a shirt, which unlike later shirts would be simple in form without a collar or frills anywhere (I'm talking of the majority here; some aristocratic dandies may have had something fancier - there is a self-portrait of Durer wearing an embroidered shirt for instance, but even this has a simple boat-neck). Some had a slit at the front for ease of getting the shirt on and off, some of these have a tape stitched around the collar for tying. Earlier braies were much fuller and longer, with a drawstring (or tape) which emerged from the waist at several places to provide an anchor-point for the laces holding up the separate hose. Once joined hose with a codpiece (see separate entry on hose, to follow) started to be worn from around 1400 onwards, braies 'shrank' to something a lot briefer and closer-fitting.

Any shirt longer than hip length becomes a nuisance under joined hose and leg armour; the few contemporary depictions of shirts bear this out. Old linens, btw, would be recycled as linen-rag paper.

A shirt with a belt over the top is fine if you want to play at being a pirate but nonsensical as period costume (what's holding your hose up? And if you're wearing split hose tied to the braies-girdle, why are you showing everyone your knickers?).
The above picture is from the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry of around 1412-16 (French); the male reapers in the background have stripped down to shirts and braies; the women in front are revealing the sleeves and - in the case of the right-hand figure - hem of their smocks. The men's shirts represent, unusually, a range of colours, presumably achieved with the standard woad (blue) and madder (read) dyes.
A study of hanged men by Pisanello (Italian), dating from the 1430s. Shows shirts and braies.

Wednesday 19 June 2013

L'homme armeƩ and all that...

This blog grew from two things - at a surface level it grew out of a series of Facebook Postings on a group called "The Neville Guide to the Wars of the Roses", in which I babbled about fifteenth-century costume, arms and armour to a group a tangentially interested readers and writers of historical fiction (devotees of the "toff soap-opera" narrative of the period, as I sometimes think of them). Deeper down, it grows out of a fascination with the period which started in childhood with the Ladybird title "Warwick the Kingmaker", and subsequent readings of Josephine Tey's "The Daughter of Time" and Paul Murray Kendall's biography of Richard III.

Later, I got involved in Wars of the Roses reenactment and thus drawn into the dark labyrinth of authenticity (this doublet is wool, yes; but what breed of sheep? How wide was the loom on which it was woven? What dyes and mordants were applied? Hand-stitched, of course. But what precise material was the needle made from? What sources are there for that exact stitch? Do contemporary manuscripts bear out that pattern of doublet being worn with that design of boot?).

Anyway... some of those who originally read the FB posts may appreciate better sourcing and some illustrations. Hence the blog. Enjoy.