The Armour Archive

I made this recently as a commission for a friend gifting it to another friend:



The design of the purse itself is based on extant round-top trapezoidal alms purses from France in the 14thc. The appliqued and couched figures are based on the Tristan tapestry in the V&A. (Enter "Tristan" (without quotes) in the pink search box on the left and then click the image of the so-called quilt to see a small picture; otherwise, you can see larger chunks in Embroiderers by Kay Staniland and in The Pictorial History of Embroidery by Schuette and Müller-Christensen.)

In what turned out to be a good example of the benefit of sharing research, during private correspondence with Karen Larsdatter she spelunked around in the depths of a useful Belgian website I'd offered up, http://www.kikirpa.be/www2/, and found valuable pictures of one of these styles of purses, including one of the inside that had been conserved, as well as the back. These pictures gave me the impetus to attempt a re-creation.

For larger pictures of this project, see here, here, and here. NOTE: If your browser automatically resizes images to appear whole in your window, don't forget to use the magnifying glass option to enlarge these.

Anyway, it was a fun project and took about two weeks of here and there time to make. The original Tristan tapestry is appliqued in wool, and I must say that though I used a mixed bag of materials, the wool was the easiest to work with. (I also used flax linen, hemp linen, and silk.) The couching was silk floss that was couched down with silk thread. The rigid internal ring was a metal "craft" ring I got at a local craft store, five inches in diameter. The ground cloth is navy blue silk broadcloth, and the inside is lined in natural linen. I interlined with buckram which is completely speculative on my part; I just wanted to experiment in giving it a chance to keep its shape. The little brass objects are tiny 14thc-style buttons; I'm not sure where my husband found them, but he had them lurking in a supply box somewhere and they were calling my name.

-Tasha
Edited to change "Christensen" to "Müller-Christensen"

Love it!

Very Nice! this reminds me I've got some silk velvet to show you for possible purse use.

Hmmm.. Nice yellow jupon I bet I can guess who's getting this

Dave

I can't fool you, Cet.

Must keep my daughter from seeing this Or I'll have to try making one or buying one for her, 'specially with the lady and puppy dog on the flap.

Beautifull work.

Nifty! Glad to see how the project turned out.

Btw, Brizio, there actually is an embroidered bag on Bildindex (which seems to be in either this style or a similar one) with a sweet little puppy-dog on it:
http://www.bildindex.de/bilder/MI01745c09a.jpg
http://www.bildindex.de/bilder/MI01745c08a.jpg
http://www.bildindex.de/bilder/MI06543c06a.jpg
Can't quite read what the doggie is saying on the little inscription ... is that the medieval German word for "woof"?

Yeah, Doug Strong, aka Talbot, first tipped me to that cache of purses on bildindex.de -- supposedly belonging to Hermann von Goch, previous high muckety-muck city official in Germany who was apparently hung for naughtiness along the lines of bad financial dealings... IIRC? Karen, do you recall the story as you were best able to unravel it? I like to feature images of that purse along with the others from that 14thc cache in my slide-assisted lecture on the topic of embroidered purses from the 14thc.

Anyway, that particular little purse is truly gorgeous -- I LOVE the padding of the doggie! And, the way the top slots up and down on the purse string is rather cool too.

-Tasha

Tasha McG wrote:Anyway, that particular little purse is truly gorgeous -- I LOVE the padding of the doggie!
-Tasha

That technique is called trapunto, I believe.

Alcyoneus wrote:That technique is called trapunto, I believe.

Umm ... it'd be trapunto if the surface wasn't embroidered, I think. (At least, I associate trapunto with a sort of all-about-texture, not-about-color sort of technique -- where you're creating your figure by just creating a shaped and raised surface.)

I suspect it's an applique with a bit of padding between the surface and the motif. I don't think there is a name for that, other than just being an appliqué over some padding.

Tasha McG wrote:Karen, do you recall the story as you were best able to unravel it?

Ah, the sad, sad life of Hermann von Goch. Talbot hipped you to the fact that he was executed for a civic crime (perhaps embezzlement). My father-in-law (who has a PhD in German) hipped us to the vocabulary word that was tripping us up on the captions -- Nachlaß -- which sort of means the stuff left behind by a dead person. The closest English concept he could think of was an "estate," though it doesn't have quite the right nuance; "A writer's Nachlass consists of the unpublished manuscripts and notebooks and whatever left at the time of death," he said by way of clarification.

So apparently, Hermann von Goch did something quite naughty in late medieval Cologne, and then he got strung up for it, and the museums have preserved the goods relating to his office (seals, money-bags, cases, etc.)

That's a charming object, Tasha. Lucky recipient! I've been curious about how things work under the aumonière flap-- thanks for the pictures, and thank you Karen for digging those up. What was the brand of floss you use for the edging? I've been working on some wool-on-wool appliqué but the wool I chose for the edging was unsatisfactory. I was considering Kreinik Serica but I've never seen it in the flesh so I have no idea if it's the right diameter.

The picture of the purse with the dog solve a minor mystery for me. On f. 43 of the Paris Tacuinum the woman is holding a purse with what looks like a conical protective cover-- just like the dog purse. (That illumination is on plate XXIII of The Medieval Health Handbook or f. 43 of Nouvelle acquisition latine 1673, available through Mandragore.) Thanks for posting those pictures, Karen. (Bet you hear that a lot! )

Clare

Ooh, the Tacuinum Sanitatis! (My new summer dress last year was kinda inspired by an illo in the BNF's other Tacuinum Sanitatis manuscript, but it's kind of like the ones in 1673 too.) I prolly oughtta add some links to 1673 to the purses linkspage -- some of these dudes have some interesting purses on their belts, which I don't remember seeing as much in the 9333 manuscript (the purses there seem to all be pretty generic and similar). And I oughtta add the celery lady to the hoods linkspage, too.

But anyway -- on the illo you'd referenced -- this one, right? -- yah, it does look like that's what's going on with her purse. Like a lot of women of her century -- St. Elizabeth's maid, Ercolano's wife, Mylon, etc. -- it's worn under the gown, but over the kirtle. Michael Camille (in The Medieval Art of Love) goes all Freudian in his interpretation of illustrations of women wearing purses, and in the giving and receiving of purses as gifts, and in some cases (especially Ercolano's wife and Mylon cited above) I suppose the appearance of the purse is actually meant in that context ... but I suspect that in most instances it is probably far more benign.

To bring this tangent it back to the illustration in question, though -- one might wonder if the lady in your illo means to buy a turnip ... shaped like ... a thingie?

Alcyoneus wrote:

Tasha McG wrote:Anyway, that particular little purse is truly gorgeous -- I LOVE the padding of the doggie!
-Tasha

That technique is called trapunto, I believe.

While "trapunto" is a good Italian term for embroidery over padding used for quilts and other larger fields of such work, it probably doesn't apply to the little purse we were talking about -- that purse is covered in metal thread couching and it appears the dog is separately raised/padded, and that's a rather different "animal" than what is typically referred to as trapunto from my understanding of it. Most embroidery geeks I know (including me) tend to use a more generic term for this other type of needle art -- "padded/raised work".

-Tasha

Tracy Justus wrote:What was the brand of floss you use for the edging? I've been working on some wool-on-wool appliqué but the wool I chose for the edging was unsatisfactory. I was considering Kreinik Serica but I've never seen it in the flesh so I have no idea if it's the right diameter.

I used a highly-twisted silk floss -- Elegance. (Or was it Grandeur, which is a bit thicker? I can't remember). In any event, I found it easy to control. The couching thread is Au Ver a Soie, 100/3. I haven't worked with Kreinik Serica, but after looking at it up close, I'd imagine it would be harder to control than a more spun and twisted floss like Elegance/Grandeur, mostly because it's so glossy and filiment-like. Just a guess, though. It would provide a lot more shine though, that's for sure.

Thanks for tipping us to the image of the mushroom-capped purse in the TS. Very nifty little detail!

-Tasha

I can't imagine a practical purpose for a netted cap on a purse... unless it was to discourage pickpockets? (But it wouldn't work on cutpurses.) Having the purse under your skirts would be pretty effective too, I'd think. Perhaps it is a belt-and-suspenders kind of thing, and the painter's commentary on the turnip-buying housewife who's frugal with her money. Anyway, I can't claim to have first spotted that detail, it was pointed out to me by Mac a couple of years ago and has puzzled me since then.

Thanks for the commentary on Serica, I was considering it because it is a filament silk. A lot of the 14th/15th c embroidery I've looked at seems to be done with silk that has next to no twist- I guess they liked the flattness and the sheen. The Tristam hanging used a narrow strip of gilded leather for the outline, and I read somewhere that the leather was actually tanned and gilded intestine. That makes sense because intestine would yield a very thin and narrow strip with an even width but I have no idea if it's true, and of course I can't remember where I read it. The child's armor from Chartres has a narrow strip of gilded leather stitched around the armhole, shoulder seam, neckline and down the front opening. It is only 2-3mm wide, and very thin. If it was cut from a hide the craftsman did an exceptional job.

And I shall now think of my uncompleted projects lying around the house as 'nachlass' rather than as UFOs (unfinished objects).


Clare

hehe nice but is that an alien proob out the rear of the guy? haha jkjk

Tracy Justus wrote:I can't imagine a practical purpose for a netted cap on a purse... unless it was to discourage pickpockets?

It's possible. Without the cap (netted or otherwise), it's just a big ol' open-mouth purse -- saying "Steal From Meeee!" There is a style of medieval falconer's purse that's constructed this way (that is, without a cappie-bit), but it's one thing have a bag for the collected bits of dead things with which to feed hungry birdies, and another thing entirely for such a bag to hold money or goods.

Btw, noticed another lady wearing a purse under her gown and over her kirtle (though the actual shape of the purse is unclear and may be a simple drawstring purse) in the Tacuinum Sanitatis illo of a leek-merchant (fol. 24).

Wow thats nice Tasha. Thanks for sharing those pictures, gives me a better idea on making one for myself.

Tracy Justus wrote:Thanks for the commentary on Serica, I was considering it because it is a filament silk. A lot of the 14th/15th c embroidery I've looked at seems to be done with silk that has next to no twist- I guess they liked the flattness and the sheen.

Oh absolutely -- we modern re-creationists don't seem to do enough with true filament silk when going for the 14thc look and feel. I've noticed that a lot of the split stitch embroidery is indeed filament/high shine, but I'm less certain about how useful it would be to use as a thick couching material. The nature of filament silk is such that it frays and fuzzes very easily, so I can see why the fat couching cord on that tapestry was gilded leather -- something likely to stay put and whole over time.

The Tristam hanging used a narrow strip of gilded leather for the outline, and I read somewhere that the leather was actually tanned and gilded intestine. That makes sense because intestine would yield a very thin and narrow strip with an even width but I have no idea if it's true, and of course I can't remember where I read it.

You're probably recalling it from Staniland's Embroiderers book. But, any other sources you can throw in for further investigation would be much appreciated, as usual. (Side note: Pictorial History only mentions "gilt leather cord", but not that it's the actual couched portion.)

-Tasha

Actually, I might be wrong about it being from Staniland's book. A cursory look-through doesn't yield more than mention that the gilded leather is couched... I didn't find detail about it being intestine, specifically.

For those who have an interest, an excellent scholarly summary of metal threads/cords in use during this time period can be read in the article called "Gold, Silver, and Precious Stones" in English Medieval Industries, edited by John Blair and Nigel Ramsey. That book is worth its weight in gold, pun intended.

-Tasha

Nice purse indeed. It looks to be very practical as well, with a lid to flap closed and ability to drawstring close the opening to boot.

I've a question about the ring: How did you manage that? Did you go out and buy a metal ring large enough? What would have been done in the 14th Century?

I can see from your sources that the originals also have a stiff ring for an opening, but I couldn't find details about that.

D'oh, I just caught this here... I also answered one of your posts elsewhere... but not on this particular detail, Lia...

I did indeed go searching for a pre-made metal ring. My local Michael's had "craft rings" with a 5" diameter, which is what I went with. It's made from some unidentified metal, but had a brassy look to it. The goal was to cover it entirely in whip stitch, to hide the metal, as per the original. As for what material the original was, I can only surmise it's some sort of bent metal rod, or possibly wood, or maybe even cuir bouillied leather (though I imagine that would weaken quickly).

-Tasha

Tasha McG wrote:As for what material the original was, I can only surmise it's some sort of bent metal rod, or possibly wood, or maybe even cuir bouillied leather (though I imagine that would weaken quickly).

I'd guess bronze for this sort of thing. (Or, more generically, a copper alloy of some sort.)

(Been doing some research for another project; there's a lot of purse-frames and similar accoutrements in the Museum of London, though I'm finding that the Ward-Perkins Catalogue published in the 1950s is more informative on this stuff than the Egan & Pritchard Dress Accessories book that's out now. Granted, I don't have the book with me here at the office, but if I see differently in the book when I get home, I'll update here.)

Ward Perkins discusses the 15th/16th c purse bar with pendant loops, and doesn't mention this sort of alms-purse at all.

I'd guess the original ring was a copper alloy- if it were an iron alloy, it would have left rust marks on the fabric, instead of a little light corrosion.

Clare

Yup! Some kind of latten, most likely.

Tasha,

Beautiful work!! I read through your overview and reconstruction papers and have an idea how this works. I would like to make a pouch and have a couple of questions. You said you used a 5" dia. ring. So the dimensions are (eyeballing it from your photo) about 5" wide at the top and about 8" wide at the base of the trapezoid with an over length of approximately 10". If you held up the bag by the ring on 2 points would the front side of the bag belonger than the backside. I know this is not the way it is worn but I am trying to peice it together in my head. You wouldn't be willing to share some more photos would you? I need a need purse for Gulf Wars and this would be perfect. It seems to be within my sewing skills as well.

I would appreciate any help/instructions you could give. My sewing skills are woefully in adequate.

Thanks

Strongly agree, more pics please especially under the flap. C'mon, you know you want to show off your hard work!

Brandr wrote:Beautiful work!!

Thank you! It is no longer in my hands, so some of this will be memory-work only...

So the dimensions are (eyeballing it from your photo) about 5" wide at the top and about 8" wide at the base of the trapezoid with an over length of approximately 10".

That sounds about right... I think that I made this one a little overly thin though, and definitely smaller than some of the extant ones. Some of those puppies were really big, like 12 to 15 inches long, and at least 10 inches wide.

If you held up the bag by the ring on 2 points would the front side of the bag belonger than the backside. I know this is not the way it is worn but I am trying to peice it together in my head.

I'm having a hard time understanding this question, I'm sorry! I'm going to guess that you mean "if instead of having the center loop it had two side-placed loops (to stabilize it better on a belt perhaps?), would the front be longer than the back?" If it's what I'm imagining, no, the front should remain rather rigid and close to the back, so there'd be no buckling or movement, making one side lopsided or longer than the other... (Have I missed your question completely? If so, please spell out what you're thinking in detail, and I'll try again...)

The finished purse was very sturdy and rigid. The nature of the ring, laying flat against the front and back layer and securely sewn down to both the front and the back meant that it was not likely to gap forward or pouch outward, or what-have-you.

You wouldn't be willing to share some more photos would you?

I'd love to, but I don't have any more... maybe I can ask the owner to take some pics. In particular, what do you want to see?

I need a need purse for Gulf Wars and this would be perfect. It seems to be within my sewing skills as well.

I found it surprisingly challenging, but really rewarding to figure out.

I would appreciate any help/instructions you could give. My sewing skills are woefully in adequate.

It would be my pleasure to help any way I can; just let me know more specifically what you're wondering about.

-Tasha

Okay, I drew up a diagram of pieces and also some written instructions for making one of these things. They're not exactly hand-holding though, so if you have questions, please ask.

You can see the diagrams here:

http://www.cottesimple.com/misc/trapezo ... iagram.JPG

You may need to use the "magnifying glass" option in your browser to see this image full-sized.

And here are the construction steps:

Constructing a round-top trapezoidal purse

1) Embroider designs for flap and front-bottom pieces. Cut out.
2) Cut out all remaining fabric pieces.
3) Sew individual lining pieces to individual external pieces. You will have three finished sections: flap, back, and front-bottom. (NOTE: you can also choose to sew the back and front-bottom pieces together and then separately sew the linings for these together; your choice.)
4) Sew strap together.
5) Finish all edges of long rectangular strip and sew eyelets along one edge.
6) Sew front-bottom piece to back piece along sides and bottom. The round-curved part should NOT be sewn to the back piece.
7) Insert rigid ring so that the bottom half of it lies just beneath the curved top of the front-bottom piece. Baste rigid ring to back piece in a few spots to anchor it temporarily.
Sew long rectangular strip down to the back piece directly under the rigid ring. Make sure eyelets are on the far edge of where you’re sewing, not on the close edge. Continue sewing the strip to the fabric of the front-bottom piece, also under the ring. When completed, this rectangular strip should overlap itself a little and sprout out from the inner edge of the rigid ring. You should be able to reach your hand through the ring and into the interior of the purse.
9) Use thick silk floss (or wool, possibly) to whipstitch the ring permanently in place. Cover it in very close stitches so the ring is no longer visible. Sew through the back layer on the top half, and through the lining layer of the front-bottom piece.
10) Fold the strap piece so that it creates a loop and lay it at the center-top of the back piece. Sew it down to the lining of the back piece, between the top edge and the secured ring.
11) Place the flap over the rigid ring and gathered strip within it. Sew the top half of the flap to the edge of the back piece along the edge of both pieces.
12) Thread a drawstring through the eyelets of the inner strip. Use this to secure the contents of the purse when finished.
13) If you wish to embellish with knot buttons or tassels, this is your choice. Consult extant examples for ideas here.
14) You can also add a central button or fastener of some sort, but I don’t have firm proof of this practice. It looks like the flap may have hung free, while the rectangular strip within was closed off with a drawstring.

Super cool.

John
Jehan de Pelham, esquire and servant of Sir Vitus
www.mron.org

Thanks, the diagram is very clear. I have one more question. What would be the upper end of the timeline for the use of purses of this type? Mid 15th cent?

Upper timeline -- good question. I think they morph into somewhat different designs by the 15thc, but I'm not exactly sure when this exact style ceases to really look like itself... Here are some samplings from a slide lecture I give from time to time...

This purse is dated to roughly 1400-1410 by the Museum that holds it, but I'm skeptical. I think it more likely dates from the heyday of these purses, the 1340s.



Here's a sampling of sleeve styles similar to those on the figure's surcotte on the left above:

[img]http://www.cottesimple.com/misc/037.jpg[/img]

Two are English, one is Italian, but they all date from the late 1330s to mid 1340s. This sleeve style would be archaic, fashion-wise, by the turn of the 15thc, but I do acknowledge the possibility that it's *possible* the designer of the embroidery could have used it to signify an historical scene. More importantly though, the entire rest of the design is also consistent with 1340s sartorial and hair style along with asthetic artistic conventions of that time.

This next image is two figures I've pasted next to each other from the Romance of Alexander, which is predominantly dated to the first half of the 1340s:



It shows further evidence of the popularity of this purse style during that time period. Later, we see a different version. Examples can be seen all over the art, but the most noticeable difference is that the top flap appears to go away or change to a circular shape. I have examples available that are not currently scanned in by me (and my $%*& scanner isn't working right now), but here's an interesting array of pewter badges from p. 314 from Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges by Brian Spencer (part of the MoL series):

[img]http://www.cottesimple.com/misc/004.jpg[/img]

Note that 313a, 314, 314a, and 314b all appear to be descendents of the style being discussed.

Anyway, the short answer is: I don't know when this exact style ceased to be common. I can assume that by the late 14thc the existing purses that had been turned out for the first half of the 14thc were beginning to wear out or be put away for posterity, given that some were rather amazing works of art.

-Tasha[/img]