Help!! need to find 1550's ladies art / info...

[act2redux]

I want to make new garb for this spring WITHOUT making my costume diva crazy.  I can find peasant looks, royal looks...not much in the way of lower nobility or upper merchant.  The general royalty look is approx. 1550s ...big sleeves, conical torsos - but not pointed, gabled head pieces or french hoods...from either france or england...so Tudor, Im guessing.  They are willing to let me make up a character (sort of) to match the gown...but I was thinking about non hooped, linen kirtle underneath, and linen kirtle with velvet guards (maybe embroidered, couched...some fancy needlework, but not all the jewels..)  I simply cant seem to find the artwork to support it or even give me enough info to make a change!???   Does anyone have any suggestions??

[gem]

Since it sounds like you'll be making your garb, you might think about posting in the Sewing forum, since some of our most knowledgeable experts don't always get over to this forum.

That said, do you have a copy of The Tudor Tailor?  There are period art examples of people from all different classes.  Margo Anderson's new Tudor Woman's Ensemble also references period artwork (though does not reproduce it). 

Also, don't know if you've looked here already, but the Elizabethan Costuming Pages have a list of links to various online collections of 16th c. portraiture.  Just scroll down to "Pictures of 16th Century Costume."


One of the things to keep in mind is that many of the visual examples are going to be in forms other than paintings: woodcuts, medals, tomb effigies, etc... a little less showy and a little more work to suss out the details.

Good luck!

[act2redux]

You're right, I will be making my garb- and I am going to order the new MA Tudor womans ensm...as soon as the funds appear.  I have looked thru the Tudor tailor...and I'm currently at work, but to the best of my foggy recollection the peices in that book are for the most part pretty much into the Elizabethan period.  I will take a look at that again tonight, tho.

I have bee to the costuming pages too- and there are a couple of things there that seem to me to "fit" ....I'll go back and take another look there as well. 

sorry, I have just gotten sort of discouraged as there don't seem to be a lot of surviving portraits...I'll try to be more patient about the other forms of visual info as well.

thanks!

[gem]

Well, try to be more patient... and remember that some of the information you're looking for might be in *print,* not pictures--so you'll have to read the text (and not just the captions) as well.  Portraits feature people wearing their "Sunday best" (if not outright allegorical costumes), so what's depicted in the portraiture (lots of jewels) may not represent the everyday dress of those people (less ostentatious embellishments). 

And from a quick flip through the first 25 pages of Tudor Tailor, most of the images are from the 1540s-1560s (although the last chapter/s of the book do cover the more typical Elizabethan fashions--big wheeled petticoats, ruffs, etc).  And not to be nitpicky, but Elizabeth took the throne in 1558.

I think this should be a great project; the more research I do, the more in love with more middle-class dress I become.  And I *totally* sympathize with the "I know I've seen it, now where the h*ll was it?!" syndrome!!

[act2redux]

I'm so new to this that even the research is daunting for me ~  add to the fact that our faire is definately set in the Tudor time period ....in France.  Altho' I like the Venetian stuff best, I'm on cast and supposedly from the local area.  They are not nearly as nit picky as they could be, so I can stretch a point or hey, even a look some...but they have the nobles already as well as the peasants pretty well covered...I want to do that not as much seen at our fair- wealthy merchant/ lower noble thing.  I admit, I am struggling with wanting to really do some wowzer outfit, but trying to keep myself reined in there!  If I can get this project nailed down at least in terms of the end look/ colors I can get started....(any blackwork or things like that I will have to spend the time to do it by hand as I don't have a machine for it.)

I got a blessing yesterday and had enough $$ extra to allow me to order the new MA pattern plus spent a lot of time online last night and I think....I may have come up with a look that will fly ...I'll try to post sketches/pics when it becomes appropriate

[gem]

Huzzah!  Post your sketches in the Gallery of in-Progress Projects thread in Sewing, and you'll get lots of comments.

Oh, in France... that's exciting, and not seen as often (our fair has had French characters, but the thing is sort of set in England...ish.  They're not particularly strict.).  Have you looked into Flemish dress?  I wonder if that might be *too* low-class for what you're wanting, but with the two kirtles and the black over-partlet, it could definitely fit in with your Tudor contemporaries.... and it's the right region.  Just Google "Flemish Dress," maybe as an image search, and loads will come up (there was a Flemish fad among costumers about 5-7 years ago).

And I *know* I just did a little machine blackwork on my partlet, but really: by hand is better!  And if you do counted blackwork on a little embroidery linen (and don't worry about doing the double-running stitch), it goes really fast.  Have you been to the Blackwork Archives?

Fabrics-store.com is having a sale on their 5.3 oz linen until Nov 15 (not all the colors, but a lot of them).

[act2redux]

I will look at the Flemish thing - I got to order the new MA pattern yesterday and I have swatches of linen coming from the fabric store.com- I don't know if they will get here in time for me to access the sale- we'll see I guess!  I will post when I get it figured out more so than now!

[isabelladangelo]

Try:
http://www.elizabethan-portraits.com/Various_3.htm

As well as http://www.wga.hu


They'll have mostly upper class but you really do only need to make most of the outfits out of "lesser" materials to make the outfits more lower nobility.   Unadorned velvet or a silk shantung (not dupioni) would work well.

[gem]

I have the bizarre good fortune of having Fabrics-store.com linen colors appear EXACTLY ACCURATELY on my monitor!  I don't even bother ordering swatches anymore.  It's dangerous, really....  I ordered 20 yards in their last sale (August), and have only used about 4 of it.  And I'm already considering ordering more.  Ouch!