From: owner-h-costume-digest (H-Costume Digest) To: h-costume-digest@lunch.engr.sgi.com Subject: H-Costume Digest V3 #171 Reply-To: h-costume Errors-To: owner-h-costume-digest@lunch.engr.sgi.com Precedence: bulk H-Costume Digest Wednesday, August 30 1995 Volume 3, Number 171 Important Addresses: Submissions to the list: h-costume@lunch.engr.sgi.com (or reply to this message). Adds/removes/archives: majordomo@lunch.engr.sgi.com Real, live person: h-costume-request@andrew.cmu.edu Topics: RE: mastiffs Mordants Costume in Poland, 1500-1700 corsets RE: What can a corset really do? Re: what can corsets do? Re: linen dyes Re: Animal Trappings (was Dogs and other pets...) Has anyone seen this fabric? Re: linen dyes Re: Has anyone seen this fabric? Fugawee address Winterthur Research Fellowships New costuming bibliographies available in the archives. corsets RE: 16th century insults ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 29 Aug 95 15:01:28 TZ From: Edward Wright Subject: RE: mastiffs In hopes of terminating this thread, and placating angry mastiff-lovers everywhere, let me point out that I did not say mastiffs were not gentle. I said, "I would hardly call a mastiff a lap dog." If I meant to say that mastiffs were not gentle, the sentence would have looked much more like this: "I would hardly call a mastiff gentle." Now, unless someone can document mastiffs wearing doggie sweaters, can we end this thread? ------------------------------ Date: 29 Aug 1995 15:55:42 U From: "Carole Newson-Smith" Subject: Mordants 8/29/95 3:50 PM Mordants I am contemplating whether or not I want to try dyeing as was done in Medieval times - like I need another hobby. I have read that the proper mordant for indigo (and presumably for woad as well) is stale urine. What other, possibly less pungent, mordants were used that far back, especially in European countries? Carole Newson-Smith (SCA Cordelia Toser) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 20:14:26 -0400 (EDT) From: Astrida E B Schaeffer Subject: Costume in Poland, 1500-1700 It can be hard to find references to Polish and Lithuanian styles; Europe seems to have thought of the area as the vast wilderness peopled by strange folk. However, as far as I can tell, styles did resemble those in the rest of europe at the time, with definite regional differences added on. The best book I've found so far is pretty hard to find (try some University libraries). It's in Polish, was printed in Wroclaw in Poland in 1968, and is called "Historia Ubiorow" There's an accent on the second "o" of "Ubiorow" but I can't seem to get my keyboard to do it. This translates into "History of Clothing". It was written by Maria Gutkowska-Rychlewska. The book addresses european dress in general, and has specific chapters on variants in Poland, Russia, and other eastern lands. There are some black and white photographs, but most of the visuals are line drawings. My Polish isn't specialized in costume terminology, so I have a rough time deciphering the info at times, but what I've read so far has been interesting. There are lots of details on textiles, buttons, etc. On a cautionary note: a series of paintings of Poland's kings and queens was done by at least two artists who were painting from imagination, not reality. These are Jan Matejko, and Marcelo Baciarelli. Bacciarelli is late 18th-early 19th cent., and Matejko is solidly 19th century. Matejko did a series of scenes from Poland's history as well. These tend to the heroic and grand passion; he was painting at a time when Poland was undergoing great national crisis. If you try to find Historia Ubiorow and have no luck, e-mail me privately and I'll send you copies of the relevant pages. If you need a translation, be warned it may take me a long time. I work full time, am starting classes this week, and have a few other outside commitments on top of it all...but I'll do my best. Good luck! Astrida *************************************************************************** Astrida Schaeffer "All life on Earth is a fairy tale in which outlandish creatures pursue impossible lives" - Rutherford Platt ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Aug 95 17:06:12 PDT From: Erin Harvey Moody Subject: corsets On corsets and the wearing of vintage apparel: Many garments were made assumi ng corsets would be worn underneath, regardless of the wearer's "need" for a co rset. Antique garments are very fragile (not just aged, but they were fragile when the were new) and need the correct underpinnings in order to relieve stres s that the body would have on the garment if worn without stays. Most vintage garments were constructed to almost lay over the body lightly, with as little stress on the clothing as possible. My understanding of period contruction is that garments were made to fit closely with no stress on the gown, all stress is absorbed by the underpinnings (corset, bustle, crinoline, etc.). Even the st ays sewn into the bodices were to give a correct silhouette, not reshape the we arer. Photographic evidence (from the mid 19th century) does show many women w ithout stays. By the later part of the century, there are fewer photos of wome n without corsets. I have been teaching Victorian corset construction for many years, and I manufa cture Victorian corests based on close reproduction of actual corsets. As stat ed before on the list, a GOOD FITTING corset is a comfort to wear for many peop le. My experience with my students, customers, and fellow re-enactors has been that a good fitting corset that is well made and worn intelligently is a pleas ure to wear. There are alot of "corsets" out there that are little more than period looking Merry Widows, there are people who insist on lacing too tightly, and there are re-enactors who are not willing to invest in the right corset fo r the right job. Historically, ladies wore different corsets for differnt acti vities (mostly athletic) just as we wear sports bras, push-ups, long lines, etc I wouldn't wear a Merry Widow to play tennis, why do re-enactors wear a fancy/ formal corset for riding/camping/cooking activities? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Aug 95 18:31:50 TZ From: Edward Wright Subject: RE: What can a corset really do? Victorian women not only wore corsets, they also padded their hips and busts. This may account for the complaint that a vintage dress, which otherwise fits, is too tight about the diaphram. If it was meant to be worn with padding, then a modern woman whose hips and bust fit the dress may very well have a diaphram and waist that are too large for the dress. One often-overlooked effect that the Victorian corset had was to round the waist, increasing the waist thickness front-to-back and decreasing the thickness side-to-side. It is this rounding rather than, or in addition to, the waist reduction that combined with the padding to gave the desired hour-glass effect. All of the women I know who've tried corsets enjoy wearing them, provided they are properly fitted, and most say that they find them more comfortable than modern female undergarments. As for how much they take in at the waist, I've heard everything from an inch to an inch-and-a-half, to nothing at all, to actually increasing the waist by about an inch. The differences is evidentally in the fitting. It does not seem to depend on the pattern or style. I have considered making a 16th Century pair of bodies (corset) for myself. Whether men actually wore corsets or not seems to depend on which author you choose to believe, but the most important fact is that I have a bad back and could probably use the support. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 21:53:35 -0400 (EDT) From: Carin Ruff Subject: Re: what can corsets do? On Tue, 29 Aug 1995, Marilyn J Burian wrote: > > Thank you for responding. This kind of information may be > useful since we are obviously not going to able to talk to anyone > who wore corsets in the 1800's. I can't think of any other way of > gathering information about what a historically accurate corset > feels like or does, except by asking the people who wear them. I agree with much that's been said about corset-wearing. I belong to a baroque dance group, and we dance in period-authentic costumes, complete with corsetry, of the 1740's/50's. I find that dancing in a corset is _easier_ than practicing in leotards: the structure of the garments makes much of the posture and gestural vocabulary we try so hard to master intuitive. When I first started dancing in costume, it took some trial and error to learn how to lace the corset just right, but it didn't take too many tries to find a happy medium. Here are my rules of thumb: > The corset has to be tight enough to 1) let me fit into the dress without straining, bulging, or squodging, which is, as has been noted, more a matter of rearrangement that compression, and 2) preserve the line of the dress when it's on (ie, long-waisted, flat-fronted). > The corset is too tight if 1) it begins to bend at the waist into a more 19th-cen., hourglass shape, and 2) I can't draw enough breath to dance a whole Gigue (2 1/2 minutes of vigourous hopping and skipping). In general, I find the corset relieves fatigue in a long evening of performing: one expends less effort, mental and physical, in the basics of movement and can concentrate on niceties of style and expression. It's also reassuring to know that all bouncing is going to be intentional! :-) I find fatigue comes from the sheer weight of the costume, and from the way the 18th-c. corset + panniers tend to concentrate that weight on the hips. Carin Ruff cruff@epas.utoronto.ca ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 18:57:18 -0700 (PDT) From: Heather Rose Jones Subject: Re: linen dyes On Tue, 29 Aug 1995, Teresa Shannon wrote: > Would you be willing to post the book showing the Golden Fleece vestment > lining with information on anything else it may cover. It sounds > wonderful and useful since it does portray an actual medieval dyed-linen > sample, as well as fifteenth century (or 16th?) lining. Sorry, I should have thought to do that at the start. (It's just that I've been trying to _break_ the habit of automatically including footnotes and bibliographies in casual posts ....) "The Conservation of Tapestries and Embroideries (Proceedings of Meetings at the Institut Royal du Patrimoine Artistique, Brussels, Belgium Sept. 21-24, 1987)" Tokyo: The Getty Conservation Institute, 1989. ISBN 0-89236-154-9 It was a trifle on the expensive side (ca. $30) but has some very nice close-up shots of the embroideries in question. Heather Rose Jones ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Aug 95 18:52:39 TZ From: Edward Wright Subject: Re: Animal Trappings (was Dogs and other pets...) | Agreeed, How about a change to recreating horse trapings as in Alcega, and dog | coats such as the protective coats warn by dogs of war and boar hounds? | Laurie If anyone has tried Alcega's pattern, I would be interested in your experiences. I have the pattern, and a wonderful velvet-on-velvet, gold, in a period pattern. All I lack now is the horse. :-) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 01:50:07 -0400 From: MerrimacGA@aol.com Subject: Has anyone seen this fabric? This may not quite be appropriate for this discussion list but I am trying to make a jester's costume in a harlequin style and am having great difficulty locating the fabric. What I am looking for needs to have a diamond-shape, rather than a square-shape, pattern with the colors being black, royal purple, meadow green and either scarlet red or goldenrod yellow. The diamond pattern size needs to be about 2.5" X 2.5". The fabric can't be shiny and can't be pile. I prefer a one- way or two-way stretch knit but at this point I'll take what I can get. Can anyone point me in the right direction? I will mail order the fabric if I have to. - --Mary Macdonald P.S. -- I am considering hand-painting the pattern on fabric OR quilting different colored fabrics together. Ugh! Please let there be some other option! ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 08:18:05 -0400 From: KenDawe@aol.com Subject: Re: linen dyes In a message dated 95-08-28 17:33:50 EDT, peggieg@u.washington.edu (Margaret Griffith) writes: >I was told that linen was really difficult to dye with "natural" dyes. Can anyone tell me >what colors linen could be dyed say pre-seventeenth century? Quick answers from my wife, the spinner/weaver/dyer: Linen does not absorb natural dyes well, for technical reasons we won't go into here. That's why what we see is so often "natural colored" linen. It is dyable, though. Yellow (English walnut hull, vegetable dyes--flowers, onion skin), orange (madder root), blue (woad, weld, indigo), browns, green... Flowers, lichens, and so forth. Black, from black walnut shells, used in an iron pot on "shiny fibers" will produce a "deep, rick gold." Beets or berries give grey ("fugitive dyes", start in color, but the color seeps into the fiber and leaves grey.) Cochineal beetles give bright scarlet, IF you are doing post-Columbus. >Specifically, I am two pieces of linen - one is a reddish brown (chestnut), and the other >is pale pink. Could these colors have been produced with natural dyes in before >around 1650? Yes. The chestnut might be "gettable" from chestnut hulls, and the pale pink could be the "exhaust dye" from the chestnut, that is, what was left over from the stuff that was brown, could have been "waste-no-want-not" dyed with what was left over. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 08:52:59 -0500 (CDT) From: Teresa Shannon Subject: Re: Has anyone seen this fabric? > Subject: Has anyone seen this fabric? > > This may not quite be appropriate for this discussion list but I am > trying to make a jester's costume in a harlequin style and am having > great difficulty locating the fabric. What I am looking for needs to > have a diamond-shape, rather than a square-shape, pattern with the > colors being black, royal purple, meadow green and either scarlet > red or goldenrod yellow. The diamond pattern size needs to be about > 2.5" X 2.5". The fabric can't be shiny and can't be pile. I prefer a one- > way or two-way stretch knit but at this point I'll take what I can get. > Can anyone point me in the right direction? I will mail order the > fabric if I have to. Well, if you did find it in squares, cut on the bias, giving you stretch and diamonds, or I might suggest block-printing or silk-screening. Good luck, Teresa > > --Mary Macdonald > > P.S. -- I am considering hand-painting the pattern on fabric OR > quilting different colored fabrics together. Ugh! Please let there be > some other option! > > ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 22:29:59 -0500 (CDT) From: BPH3213@ACS.TAMU.EDU Subject: Fugawee address Hi, I receeved a request for the address for Fugawee (shoes & buckles etc.) but the header with the return address was striped, so I'm posting it. Fugawee Footwear 3127 Corrib Dr. Tallahassee, FL 32308 1-800-749-0387 shoe catalog + metal (buckles, buttons) catalog is $3 or $2 for just one of the catalogs. I haven't seen the catalog or the products. >From the ad, I'd say they are mostly 18th century period, but that could also be due to where the ad was placed. Bryan bph3213@acs.tamu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 11:27:36 -0400 (EDT) From: Gretchen Buggeln Subject: Winterthur Research Fellowships Winterthur Museum and Library invites applications for its 1996-7 residential fellowship programs. Winterthur Fellowships: Available to independent, museum, and academic scholars, and to support dissertation research for one to six months with stipends from $1,000 to $2,000 per month. One fellowship devoted to the history of business and/or technology is jointly sponsored by the Hagley Museum and Library. NEH Fellowships: Available to scholars pursuing postdoctoral research for four to twelve months with stipends up to $30,000. Winterthur's rich and varied resources have long supported research on a wide variety of topics relating to everyday American life from the seventeenth through the early twentieth century. The library collections include approximately half a million imprints, manuscripts, visual materials, and printed ephemera. Costume historians might pursue topics in textile and fashion history using fashion periodicals or periodicals that promote or describe life-styles, advice literature, descriptions of craft, account books, trade cards, advertisements, records of product designs, and personal papers. Application deadline for the 1996-97 academic year is December 1, 1995. For an application packet, please write to: Gary Kulik Director, Research Fellowship Program Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library Winterthur, DE 19735 (302) 888-4649 or e-mail: Gretchen T. Buggeln Asst. Director, Research Fellowship Program gtbug@brahms.udel.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 08:58:19 -0700 (PDT) From: close (Diane Barlow Close) Subject: New costuming bibliographies available in the archives. Current list members Cynthia Barnes & Julie Lassiter Cheetham have updated their list of frequently recommended books for researching the historical costume of all ages and places and have placed a copy in the h-costume archives (costume_bibliography_general.faq). The file is about 49K large. As well, former list member Dawn Duperault has donated copies of her own costuming bibliographies to the h-costume archives. She's split her bibliographies into costuming books published before 1980 (costume_bibliography_prior_1980.faq) and those published after 1980 (costume_bibliography_after_1980.faq). The prior_1980 file is about 80K large and the after_1980 file is about 9K large. Of course some books are duplicated between the three files, but since the bibliographies were compiled independently and some books are uniquely represented on each list, I've decided to make all three bibliography files available to h-costume list members. To request these files, you'd send: get h-costume costume_bibliography_general.faq get h-costume costume_bibliography_prior_1980.faq get h-costume costume_bibliography_after_1980.faq end as the body of a message to: majordomo@lunch.engr.sgi.com and the server will send you back the requested files. - -- Diane Close close@lunch.engr.sgi.com I'm at lunch all day. :-) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 13:25:50 -500 From: "Carol Kocian" Subject: corsets Another comment about corsets also falls under the "Things I wish I knew": A dress worn over a corset fits closely against the corset. Be sure to allow some room for growth in the dress. (larger seam allowances, overlap in the stomacher, etc.) This way, as the body gets bigger (a natural progression with age for many of us) the corset can be laced to fit and the dress let out. This is more comfortable than trying to lace yourself down to your previous size. Once I made an 1860's ballgown bodice fitted over my corset. Unfortunately I did not consider the room that the waistband of the skirt would take up. I was able to enlarge the bodice to fit because I had enough extra seam allowance. Also for the 1860's, waistline and neckline seams are piped. It would help to leave some extra length on the ends of piping instead of trimming it short for the same reason. (I forgot to do this in the case above. It was a learning experience.) I got one e-mail from someone else who wore a brace for scoliosis in her youth and now corsets. Is there anyone else? E-mail me at ckocian@epe.org The information on beastiality was interesting, but when I wear my historic clothing my favorite activity is dancing. -Carol Kocian ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 30 Aug 95 10:18:36 TZ From: Edward Wright Subject: RE: 16th century insults | I have written to the producer asking for a tape/transcript, and details of | a couple of books being published on the subject next year. I'll let you | know developments! Anyone looking for 16th Century insults might want to look for a book called Shakespeare's Insults. I believe it is still in print. ------------------------------ End of H-Costume Digest V3 #171 ******************************* A non-digest (direct mail) version of this list is also available; to subscribe to that instead, send the command lines: unsubscribe h-costume-digest subscribe h-costume end in the body of a message to majordomo@lunch.engr.sgi.com. Thanks and enjoy the list!