The Armour Archive

Here is the sketch for the Mk 5.1 shirt. The left side shows the bodice and arm smoothed out flat, which makes the gusset have to fold. The right shows the bodice falling into folds and the gusset flat.



I am pleased to see that the shirt behaves in a similar way.



I am reasonably satisfied with how it fits and looks. The shoulders are comfortable, and the wrinkles seem well behaved and similar to our images. In linen, and on a slimmer and more symmetrical guy, I think it would look OK.



In the end, I decided to go with the option "B". The side panels add two more seams, but they lay out very economically on the 36" muslin.

Although the armpit construction is not one we have extant examples of, I think it does a pretty good job of looking like that fellow that John V pointed out earlier.



I'm going to think about this a bit and decide whether it needs any further changes before I put it into production.

Mac

Just a quick update. I've got my hands on a copy of the book about Rodrigo's grave clothes, and it has enough information that we can be pretty sure of the cut of his shirt.

I will present some images from the book and a sketch of the cut soon.

Teaser..... It's stranger (but better) than I imagined.

Mac

What is the book about the grave clothes?

Maria Socorro Mantilla de los Rios y Rojas et al., Vestiduras Pontificales del Arzobispo Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada. Siglo XIII: Su Estudio y Restauracion (Madrid: Instituto Conservación y Restauración de Bienes Culturales, 1995)

It's stranger (but better) than I imagined.

Isn't that true of all this stuff?

James Arlen Gillaspie wrote:

It's stranger (but better) than I imagined.

Isn't that true of all this stuff?

Thanks for the reminder to get back to this. I've bought a copy of the book on Rodrigo's grave clothes, and will post some images from it as soon as I can.

Mac

Mac, if you ever have time for this we would love to see your further work.

Sean M wrote:Mac, if you ever have time for this we would love to see your further work.

Thanks for the reminder!

It's on my list, and I hope to be able to follow up on this soon. (keep reminding me )

Mac

Here is some more grist for the mill: the linens of Mary in the altarpiece from Schloss Tirol by Meister Konrad c. 1370/1372 (the basin on the right holds the Son of Man, because momma ain't got no money for a cradle even if papa is a carpenter).

Sean M wrote:Here is some more grist for the mill: the linens of Mary in the altarpiece from Schloss Tirol by Meister Konrad c. 1370/1372 (the basin on the right holds the Son of Man, because momma ain't got no money for a cradle even if papa is a carpenter).

It looks like a pair of hosen, but I can't tell what they are sitting on.

Mac

I like the idea that they are hosen, although the received wisdom is that women only wore the knee-long type. These would go at least half way up the thighs.

Since Mary has to work for a living, maybe she has to hike her dress higher than would be decorous with 'just above the knee' hose?

Sean M wrote:I like the idea that they are hosen, although the received wisdom is that women only wore the knee-long type. These would go at least half way up the thighs.

Since Mary has to work for a living, maybe she has to hike her dress higher than would be decorous with 'just above the knee' hose?

It's hard to get a sense of scale, but they are cut straight across at the top, so I think we can presume that they are women's hosen and end at the tops of the knees. That is to say, they are not Joseph's hosen, which I think we can presume would be at an angle at the tops.

Mac

Here is the whole scene better zoomed than in the linked Wikipedia photo. Meister Konrad seems to be leaning on "and there is no sense to trying to learn the proportions of the female body" but I used the size of the booties on the ?hose? as a yardstick.



I guess the wooden tub could be Meister Konrad's interpretation of a manger.

Taken in the context of the full image, (where the Mother of God has a very leggy figure) it seems likely that the hosen are supposed to be knee-highs.

Mac

An anonymous Kriegsbuch or Büchsenmeisterbuch from 1411, ÖNB Wien Cod. 3069, has some nice pictures of hose in various states of disarray including:



This is folio 88r of the manuscript and scan 185 of the version at http://data.onb.ac.at/rep/1001EF8B The library's page is http://data.onb.ac.at/rec/AC13934231

Unfortunately it is incomplete and has very little text

Sean M wrote:An anonymous Kriegsbuch or Büchsenmeisterbuch from 1411, ÖNB Wien Cod. 3069, has some nice pictures of hose in various states of disarray including:


This is folio 88r of the manuscript and scan 185 of the version at http://data.onb.ac.at/rep/1001EF8B The library's page is http://data.onb.ac.at/rec/AC13934231

Unfortunately it is incomplete and has very little text

So... I finally went and had a look at this MS.

Wow!

It's an early illustrated military treatise. It has some of the same stuff as Kyeser, but some other material as well.... Some of it rather perplexing.





It even shows how to wear those inflatable leather flotation devises.



Well worth a look!

Mac

"The Workwoman's Guide" from England from 1840 speaks of buying linen for shirts in different widths measured to the nail (1/16 of a yard, or 2.25") In contrast, medieval linen for shirts is often a yard or more broad. A law from Nuremberg says that linen should be either 1 or 2 Nuremberg ells wide, nothing in between. I wonder if that says something about cutting strategies? https://archive.org/details/workwomansguide00workgoog/

Either she or another post-medieval, pre-sewing-machine source talks about the advantage of reducing the number of seams so you can get this chore finished and move on to another. So they were concerned both with saving fabric and with saving sewing. For me, this means that part of making a 'medieval-inspired' shirt is using the materials which I have efficiently, even if the resulting shirt will be cut differently than a shirt made from different materials.

Next time I make some medieval shirts I think I will make them with a trapezoidal body and trapezoidal sleeves, rather than a rectangular body and trapezoidal sleeves.