Things happening here? 

First important action of the day was going with the little cat for a vet checkup. We'll get the results of the blood check once the vet has them, and hopefully they will be okay. Renal values were a little worse last time than before, and we hope it has stabilised. We're also to give her eye drops now twice daily to prevent more issues with her eye deteriorating. She's blind already, or practically blind (it's hard to tell, we are not getting good answers on the "where does the mouse tail point on this board if you look here" questions) but I have learned today that there can also be troublesome changes inside the eye, and these need to be watched out for. The things you learn.

Also there's work going on for a workshop that I will give in October, apart from the ongoing "make clothes for Oswald". The hood is done, though I want to do a few more try-on tests to see if it fits our interpretation; the cloak is also almost done and needs a few more centimetres of seam and then the button closure. So the parts left are the hose and the tunic/pourpoint, which means I'll soon run out of the easy things and have to tackle the interesting bits. 

The figure itself then has to be dressed at some point, which will be rather interesting, as he is heavy and, of course, not as flexible and especially not as cooperative as a human being.

Most photos from the trip have been sorted by now, and I have also started sorting out a programme for the Textile Forum. There's one more workshop to prepare for right after the Forum, which means everything should be all done, dusted, and packed up when I leave for the Week of Madness. 

I'm back home from a lovely trip, and I did get to see a lot of medieval fabrics. I went with a friend to Halberstadt (to see the birds on fabrics exhibition), to visit Quedlinburg, and we had a look at things in Magdeburg as well. Last minute I decided to take the camera,  and the extra weight was well worth it - I have a nice bunch of lovely photos of things now.

Because I was running out of time, I did not take photos in Magdeburg Cathedral, which I somehow regret a little now - but then that's maybe an excuse to return some day.

We did manage, however, to get a very nice close look at some knotted fringes in preparation for the Textile Forum, so I would count the whole trip as a full success.

I'm off for a little study trip with a friend, so there will be no blogging during the next week! 

The exhibition in Halberstadt is beckoning,  and I will be following the call. We'll be having a look at some other textiles here and there, while we're in the area, so I will be back on the blog on Monday, September 28.

As the blog software somehow refused to take the comment, I received mail from Beatrix where she tells me that it's not only fourteen, but 24 items on the list of occurrences in the article. 

Well, well, well. I had been so focused on the first page (which included the references to the re-drawn women's depictions) that I did forget to check the second page - where, indeed, there are more non-executioners, but mostly wrestlers and fencers. 

There are more executioners on the first page, but that does indeed shift things a little. There's definitely much fewer executioners in the later of the sources listed, dating to the late 1490s and later,  than to the middle of the 1490s (which is why I wrote about it being mostly executioners before), but overall it's a rather short timespan, and it would probably need more individual sources to see if there's a shift in who is wearing the pieces, or whether it is just a (random) selection effect.

Beatrix has also given the link to the digital version available on her researchgate account, so you can read it for yourselves.

Back in March or so, I posted the CfP about the seminar "Weaving Knowledge" - and now I happened to run across this: 

The conference is taking place on September 25 and 26, so the weekend after the coming one, and apparently there's an online attendance option. I have not been able to find anything online about it except the CfP, and the link written on the poster will take you to a registration page for the conference, also no further information given (nor in the registration confirmation email) - but if you are free on the weekend, and interested in practical aspects of historical textiles, it might be a nice thing to do.

Layered clothing is a thing in the late Middle Ages. There's been layers before, obviously, and there are passages in the Nibelungenlied that point towards some of the additional layer garments (like a cloak) being not strictly optional bad-weather garments for someone like a queen, or very high-ranking woman. 

But this is the first image that I have seen which very clearly shows two doublet-type garments worn on top of each other: 

This is a detail from a "Carrying the Cross" scene in the Bode Museum, Berlin, dated to c 1425. You can find the full piece and the corresponding database information here in the Berlin Museums Database.

The man on the far right is clearly wearing long hose or joined hose, and he is also wearing a doublet-like garment with button closure in the front that goes down to very shortly above his knees. Interestingly, the front is unbuttoned up to his belt, and the corners of the garment tucked into the belt. This reveals a shorter doublet-like garment, laced close. The guy to his proper right is wearing comparatively boring ringmail and a breastplate, and something under the ringmail which might have a sleeve that forms soft vertical folds, or the vertical lines might indicate some kind of padding and quilting (the garment from Chartres also has vertical quilting lines down the sleeves).

This is certainly... interesting. Very interesting. If these garment types were layered here, is that a common occurrence? Would something like the Chartres garment have been worn over a second doublet-style garment, then a ringmail? There are rust spots on the lining of the Chartres doublet which point to something metallic having been in contact with it. 

Only a shirt underneath the ringmail is theoretically possible, but might not be the most comfortable arrangement. We do have some few examples of laced-closed doublets that were definitely worn under armour (see for instance this article, and sorry for the paywall). So - how many of the pieces we see on late medieval paintings were worn solo? How many were worn over a second layer of armour, be it textile, metal, or both? 

It also adds some more interesting aspects to the Oswald reconstruction. Though due to time and budget restraints, I don't see a full ensemble of two doublets and the ringmail come about... 

If you should have seen anything similar somewhere, please do let me know! I am still all excited about this discovery and would love to know if there's more...

All the discussions about size, fit, and how to wear a sprang cap aside - one of the interesting side track things that I have realised is that there seems to be a rather narrow selection of who is shown wearing these caps, and in what context.

In their article "Enigmatic Beauty", the authors have a list of fourteen examples of headwear with sprang or net inserts. Some of these are shown as re-drawings in the article, some are only listed (for instance there are several occurrences in the Schatzbehalter from Heidelberg University). Interestingly, there seem to be almost only midwives, executioners, and to a smaller extent servants who are wearing these caps.

That is one of the additional instances I could find - and, again, we see an executioner.

So the logically following question is... why do we have the caps in these rather selected circumstances, and, at least as far as I can tell, rarely anywhere else?

Executioners are a sort of special person, as they are doing work that is considered dishonest. Yet they are still needed - and as a lot of saints get to be executed in some way, they are frequently depicted. Usually, they are wearing up-to-date fashionable garments, but they are also not the most positive characters. So are they wearing the caps in the images because they did so in real life? Or was it some kind of slander? Unfortunately, I regret sometimes these days that I didn't catch more background knowledge about art history, which would be helpful in things like that - but the executioners and sometimes some (male) servant wearing a cap like this does not point towards a high status, at least not as a piece of menswear.

If we look at the women, the scene where there's most of the depictions is the Birth of Mary. Here, we have a clearly domestic scene. Mary is on the bed, there's usually someone in the background doing something in the kitchen, and there are one or several other woman assisting with the birth and the newborn child. Notably someone usually identified as midwife - and that woman, sometimes wearing an apron, sometimes not, has this cap on her head - while Anna, the new mother, and the other assisting women usually wear a headcloth, or sometimes nothing (maybe signifying an unmarried status). Sometimes, the midwife has her sleeves drawn up, or wears a sleeveless dress (sleeves removed?) and her shirtsleeves are visible. 

To me, this gives the impression of someone partly undressing to do the work necessary, which would have been including different kinds of fluids that you'd not want on clothes more than cannot be avoided. She's not wearing the complete "outside" dress usually including several layers, and she's not wearing the full headcloth that is also usually seen. That full headcloth that, coincidentally, might or might not have been fastened to something worn underneath - because some constellations of that headcloth would require glue, magic, or, well, something to pin them to in order to stay where they are. 

I would be inclined to see the cap as an under-cap, thus, designed to sit on the head firmly enough (while hopefully still comfortable) to pin the rest of the headdress to, or if no pins were needed to provide some more friction between fabrics than between fabric on hair. That would also explain why we don't see it worn out and about by women, though they do sport many different kinds of headcloths otherwise. 

(I will be keeping my eyes open for more examples of this kind of headwear - so if you happen to know more images apart from those already mentioned, these are very welcome!)