Clothes of the Common Woman 1480-1580 Part 2: Making the Garments

Description

Author:

Huggett, Jane.

Summary:

Part 2: Making the garment. Part of the “Living History Reference Books: Clothing Series”. “This book should be read in conjunction with Clothes of the Common Woman 1480-1580 by Robert Morris, which looks at what types of clothing constituted the wardrobes of ordinary women of the period. Drawing on much the same sources – wills, inventories accounts, literary evidence, period woodcuts and other visual sources – this book tries to define and describe the different clothes, as well as providing patterns and instructions to enable re-enactors to make them. You should also read the appropriate textiles and accessories books. For the early part of the period it would also be useful to read the Medieval Tailor’s Assistant (Sarah Thursfield 2000), especially for the excellent patterns. … It is one thing to reconstruct from written sources the wardrobes of ordinary women, another to identify them with the visual sources, and a third problem to deduce from the preceding two how the different items were constructed. Until the 1540s these problems are made worse by the paucity of any kind of English evidence. Even thereafter the evidence we have leaves much to be desired. Ordinary women figure far less frequently in visual sources than do ordinary men, far fewer women leave wills than men, and even those who do are the more affluent, and the same applies to inventories. Archaeological evidence is virtually non-existent – there is, for instance, no equivalent of the Mary Rose finds for women, and literary references are few. … Of necessity therefore [the author has] had to look before and beyond the period concerned, and to make deductions particularly on cut and construction from mainly upper class visual evidence.”

Further details:

Softcover: 23 pages.
Language: English
Illustrations: B/W line 
ISBN-13: 1858042135
Product Dimensions: 21.0 x 15.0 x 0.5 cm

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