Netherlandish Working Women Part 4 -- The Accessories

Let's start from the inside and work our way out. The first element we have to examine is the smock worn under the dress. In a few paintings, (like Aersten's "Christ and the Adultress" from 1559, detail shown at left) the partlets are missing and a round neck can plainly be seen. Sometimes we can even make out a medium to low round neck showing through the partlet opening.

When women aren't wearing pin-on sleeves, their smock sleeves are apparent. They are often pushed up or rolled to above the elbows, but no cuffs are in evidence. They appear to be constructed of simple rectangles as were most smock sleeves. The ends appear simply finished.
By virtue of the stress wrinkles and tightness observed in the partlets, we can assume they are tied rather than pinned on. Pinned partlets show stress at the pinning point. These show stress more evenly distributed across the garment. Although we have no glimpses of ties, we also have no evidence of pins and ties seems a more functional option for a woman involved in physical labour.

Next is hairdressing and headdresses. The women in the top two paintings on this page appear to have ribbons wrapped around rolls of hair and those rolls wrapped around the back of the head in a configuration normally termed "hair taping". The bulk of the hair is concentrated at the back of the head where it can easily be covered by a cap of the type shown in Beuckelaer's "Market Woman with Fruit", detail from which is shown at left.

This cap does not appear to be the entire headdress of the market women. A structured veil, sometimes called a Flemish [sic] Hood, is worn over it as in the detail at right from one of Beuckelaer's Market Scenes.

In addition to smocks, partlets and headdresses, the Netherlandish working women appear to be wearing pin-on sleeves, soft fabric stomachers, and aprons. The aprons are not gathered or pleated to a band like other aprons in this time period but rather appear to be simple rectangles of cloth, more often coloured than white, tucked into a string around to waist.

---

© 2007 Kass McGann. All Rights Reserved. The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial private research or educational purposes provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

I Like Big Butts and I Cannot Lie -- Netherlandish Working Women Part 3

Detail from Joachim Beuckelaer's "Making Waffles"

One of the most notable features of Netherlandish Working Women's clothing as seen in the works of Aertsen and Beuckelaer is big butts. Actually, I never thought of it until a friend pointed out that they all have prodigious asses. It's been suggested that these women were wearing bum rolls or something similar under their skirts, but this is an unlikely accessory for a woman engaged in manual labour. Having made many dresses out of coat-weight wool, I feel confident that it's all in the pleating method and the materials used. Of course having a sizable bum to go under it doesn't hurt. =)

All the pictures of Netherlandish Working Women don't show the attachment of their skirts terribly well, but from the few paintings that show the backs and sides of the skirts, we can see that the majority of pleats are concentrated at center back. The sides and front of the skirts appear to be almost smooth. Since I cut the 25" width of fabric used for the bodice from one of my skirt widths, this pleases me. It means I really can get away with making an entire dress with only a little over two yards of fabric.

In this detail from Joachim Beuckelaer's "Flight to Egypt" shown at left, we can see on two dresses how the pleats at center back do not carry around the sides of the skirts. The pleats appear to be rolled or stacked pleats, and indeed this method of pleating yields pleats that prop up and stick out as seen in the paintings.

Detail from another of Aertsen's paintings entitled simply "Market Scene"

Detail of the Cook's torso from Pieter Aertsen's 1559 painting "The Cook in Front of the Stove"

Rolled pleats compressed to fill the center back and leave the sides of the skirts smooth. This pleat arrangement gives an effect similar to that seen in the artwork.

You might be asking yourself why, since I used so much information from the Shinrone Gown to construct the bodice, I didn't use that information to construct the skirts. The reason is simple -- the skirts shown in the paintings do not resemble the skirts of the Shinrone Gown. The skirts of the Shinrone Gown are running stitched from waist to hem at intervals that produce organ pipe pleats all around the gown skirts. This type of pleats are not apparent in the pictures of the Netherlandish gowns which appear to be pleated heavily at the center back and gathered or lightly pleated elsewhere.

A different detail from the same Aertsen's "Market Scene"

Because of the use of aprons by these working women, we never see the full front of the garment. We don't know where the pleats are, how heavily they're arranged. All we know is that in the few pictures we have that show the skirts below the aprons, the front does not appear to be as heavily-pleated as the backs.

There is one thing of which we can be certain: the skirts directly below the laced section of the bodice must be pulled taut so it does not gap. Therefore there can be no pleating in that area. In my reconstruction, the piece I have left for the skirt front is only 35" wide, so it is easy to gather from the edge of the bodice to the side seams without the bulk becoming overwhelming.

If you have a full width of fabric, it is also possible to cut the front skirts as a trapezoid with the top measurement equalling the front waist measurement and the bottom the full width. This would then require no pleating at all in front.

There must also be a opening at the center front of the skirts to allow the dress to slip over the shoulders. This can be accomplished by a 6" slit closed by hooks or by adding a center front seam.

Detail of the Cook's skirt hem from Pieter Aertsen's 1550 painting "The Cook"
For months, I've been wracking my brain, trying to figure out the reasoning behind cutting a skirt higher in the front than in the back. Since this is a working woman's garment, it doesn't make sense that it's just a fashionable element. So there must be a functional reason. One explanation that occured to me is that the hem that most often get dirty on a person who bends forward in her work is the front hem. This seemed reasonable. However I couldn't wrap my brain around how to cut the hem to accomplish this effect. I'm trying to construct this dress using nothing but rectangles. Cutting a curved hem flew in face of this. Would a working woman really sacrifice that fabric and cut her hem in a way that made it more likely to ravel? Perhaps the top of the skirts were cut on the curve and the hem was really straight but only appeared curved because the top was.

I couldn't make up my mind about any of these ideas, so I began my reconstruction. And guess what -- it worked itself out. Tightly lacing the rectangular bodice makes the front tip upward at about the same angle that the skirts tip up in the pictures. Therefore rectangular skirts attached to this bodice will also tip up in front. Problem solved!

Please take notice of how the bodice tilts from front to back. The bottom was parallel with the floor until I began lacing. Then it settled upward. I was about to try to correct this when I remembered the uneven skirts phenomenon.


Detail of one of the female crowdmembers from the Braunschweig Monogrammist's 1545 painting "Ecce Homo"
Detail of the background figures from Pieter Aertsen's 1560 painting "The Peasants by the Hearth"

The bodice completely sewn and laced up. The skirts pinned into place.


Next: The Accessories

---

© 2007 Kass McGann. All Rights Reserved. The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial private research or educational purposes provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Netherlandish Working Women Part 2 -- The Reconstruction of the Bodice

I have some ideas about this reconstruction that may clash wildly with anything you have ever seen in period clothing. However, my construction is based on extant garments I have personally examined, most notably the 16th century Irish common woman's dress known as the Shinrone Gown, a dress roughly contemporary with the pictures painted by Aertsen and Beuckalaer.

As you've read in previous posts on this blog, I have noticed a decided difference in construction and pattern shapes between the clothing of the wealthy and that of the working classes. The extant garments that have survived in burials and bog finds do resemble fashionable clothing (although 20-50 years out of date) but are different in more than just the expense of materials. They are almost entirely composed of rectangles and derivatives thereof (triangles, squares, et cetera).

Most discussions of the evolution of clothing construction mention this phenomenon but the discussion ends at the beginning of the Renaissance when shaped armscyes, set-in sleeves, and other curved pattern shapes enter the archeological record. Clothing historians seem to neglect the fact that all level of society (and indeed all countries and cultures) didn't become wealthy and blessed with vast yardages of fabric at the same time the Venetians did. Even in properous cities, the clothing of common people remained functional, utilitarian, and conservative in cut and fabric use.

That's not to say that common people didn't try to emulate their betters. This phenomenon is too well-established throughout time to dispute. However, a certain look can be achieved without breaking the bank. Indeed, the construction I am going to show you today takes only two yards and 8" of 60" wide wool.

When looking at Aertsen and Beuckalaer's paintings, there are two things I do not see: a side seam or a back seam. The truth is that paintings are not photographs and painters are not tailors -- missing a seam isn't that important. We also cannot see the backs or sides of many of the dresses. But in those paintings where the back and sides are plain, there are no seams.

So the first step is to construct a bodice without side or back seams.

This construction is not without substantiation. The Shinrone Gown, while possessing side seams that slant backwards from the armscyes, has a back piece that is nothing more than a 18" x 18" square. The armscyes aren't shaped -- they are simply the place where the front stops being attached to the back.

The front of the Shinrone Gown bodice is also a square. The straps are integral and their backing is created by slicing horizontally at the base of the strap and folding an equal width under, doubling the fabric of the straps. The bottom of the bodice is folded up and under, providing a self lining, and these two elements meet at the bottom of the shoulder strap inside and are whipstitched to each other.

I would like to clarify at this point that I am not insinuating that Netherlandish Working Women's dress is identical to the Shinrone Gown. However, both dresses are under-bust, lace up the front yet don't close, and were worn by working women during the same time period. It would be less than wise to disregard the breadth of evidence and construction techniques that the Shinrone Gown can teach us about common people's clothing.

So let us assume that the bodice of the Netherlandish Working Woman's dress is a simple rectangle. If you take a piece of fabric as long as your back waist (plus a couple of inches) and as wide as your waist minus four or five and lace it up with 12-stand embroidery floss, this is what you get:

Close up of the lacing:
Notice how the edges of the fabric tilt in the same way the edges do in the pictures. This demonstrates to me that the bodice of this gown is a rectangle. A straight warp edge will also take the straight of lacing far better than any other type of edge.

The same from the side:

But the fabric is disappearing as we travel up the body. And we need a shoulder strap.

So with the intention of making the shoulder strap like that of the Shinrone gown, I snipped down from the top and over a distance equal to my intended shoulder strap width times two.

The same from the side:

And if you weren't convinced it was working, here it is on a real body:

Next, I made a horizontal cut at the base of the slit shown above and folded under the excess, forming the shoulder strap. I cut off the excess fabric on the underside of the bodice from above the bottom of this slit. The pictures below show the bodice self-lined by folding up the fabric from the bottom and folding over the fabric from the shoulder strap. The back above slit level is unlined, exactly like the Shinrone Gown.
Although a piece has been cut away from underneath, the bodice remains a rectangle. It is 27" long by 25" wide with 7" of the length tuck up inside the body. The top of the back is folded over as well. I have not yet decided if I will cut off that excess. Nothing has been sewn yet, but you can see from the pictures at left that the bodice fits my mannequin quite well and conforms to its curves.


Next: The Reconstruction of the Skirts

---

© 2007 Kass McGann. All Rights Reserved. The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial private research or educational purposes provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

I See Tits! Netherlandish Working Women Part 1

So I've been staring at the pictures of mid-16th century Netherlandish working women by Pieter Aersten and Joachim Bueckelaer for some time now and I'm finally ready to share some of my thoughts and begin my reconstruction of an outfit of this type.

First I have to tell you the first thing I see when I look at these paintings. Tits! Now, don't get me wrong -- I am not a woman obsessed by breasts. But the prevailing method of contructing these market women dresses produces a flat and conical torso. Matter of fact, one of the proponents of this construction actually calls it "the flat and slightly elevated bosom".

Friends, does this (left) look flat and slightly elevated to you? 'Cuz to my eye, that's big, round, and slightly droopy being barely contained from bursting forth by the strength of her partlet alone. As my darling Partner in Life would say: "Dem's some bosoms!"

And this isn't the only picture showing this silhouette. Matter of fact, in all of my flipping through books and websites and seeing photographs friends took in the museums, there is only one single painting where the bosom could be described as "flat and slightly elevated". Indeed, in that particular paining ("Fire" from Joachim Beuckalaer's "Four Elements" series), the woman standing in the left foreground with a chicken in one hand and a rotisserie in the other looks so conical and flat that it could be argued she's wearing boned stays.

But I fear I'm straying from the point. Here are a few more pictures of women who appear to have round and non-lifted bosoms:

If those are flat and slightly lifted, friends, I'm a monkey's uncle!

What I believe we're seeing here is a dress of the kirtle type laced over a soft unstiffened stomacher. In some of the paintings above, you can see the stomacher wrinkling and gapping as a boned stomacher or fitted underdress will not. In some the stomacher does not come up high enough to cover the breasts; it is merely located under the lacing and stops where it does. This varies from painting to painting. In the picture above ("Water" from Joachim Beuckalaer's "Four Elements" series) in particular you can see the edges of the stomacher sticking out past the edges of the kirtle, proving it is not an underdress. Look up!

Another breast-related phenomenon I've noticed in the paintings is that the front of the gown doesn't appear to cover the breasts at all. In almost every painting, the edge of the laced section is aligned with the edge of the shoulder strap, indicating that they are cut apiece and not cut separately and sewn together. The shoulder straps skirt the outside of the bosom and continue into the laced area where they draw a little closer because of the lacing. This indicates a completely different construction technique to that being purported thusfar.

In our next installment, I will show you what my experience studying extant common women's garments from the 16th century has taught me and how I think the Netherlandish Working Woman's outfit was made.

Next: The Reconstruction of the Bodice

---

© 2007 Kass McGann. All Rights Reserved. The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial private research or educational purposes provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Okay... maybe not "next week"...

I'd like to announce two of the newest patterns COMING SOON from Reconstructing History: Elizabethan Sea Dogs and the Netherlandish Working Woman's Outfit.



The Elizabethan Sea Dogs pattern includes doublet, jerkin, smock, breeches, and instructions for a thrum cap suitable for 16th century English sailors. Think "Drake"!


The Netherlandish Working Women's pattern is based on the Market Scene paintings of Netherlandish artists Aertsen and Beuckalaer in the 1570s. These patterns represent a brand new interpretation of the "Flemish kirtle" based on extant garments and common (not noble) construction techniques. Included in the pattern is a smock, two partlets, kirtle, jacket, stomacher, sleeves, apron and a variety of caps as seen in the paintings. Hairstyle instructions will also be included.
Go Netherlandish!

NOTE: These patterns are not yet in print. They will be printed and ship after Labour Day. If you order now, you're helping me decide how large a print run to do and I appreciate it.

The mid-18th century frock coats are now in print and will ship immediately.


(Wholesaler partners, please contact me privately.)
Kass
Reconstructing History
http://reconstructinghistory.com
http://community.livejournal.com/rh_community/
http://kass-rants.livejournal.com

Thoughts over the weekend

As is typical for me, while I was finishing up production on the first patterns in the new 800-series (1740s-1790s), I began to think about something completely unrelated -- common people's clothing in the 15th through 17th centuries.

The truth is that I've been working on a new pattern that I haven't talked about to many people yet because I think it might be highly controversial -- the Netherlandish Working Woman's Outfit. "How is that different from 'The Flemish Peasant'?" you may ask. Well, this version is more vigourously researched. I don't mean to sound arrogant, but my research has shown that (#1) the market women in the paintings of Beuckalaer and Aertsen aren't peasants. Peasants are agricultural workers (see the works of Brueggel -- he painted lots of them). These women are working in market stalls in urban centers and their clothing is vastly different. Secondly, they're not "Flemish". The paintings are made by two men who may have been of Flemish origin, but they spent their careers in Netherlandish cities. At this time, the Netherlands encompassed Flanders -- that is true. But to say that Flemish = Netherlandish or vice versa is the same mistake as saying Holland = Netherlands (or indeed that all Americans are Pennsylvanians). So they're not Flemish (necessarily) and they're not peasants. But I digress...

Anyway, I've been playing around with construction of the Netherlandish Working Woman's Outfit when something occured to me. I have studied many extant garments. But the ones that I have actually held in my hands have been common people's clothing. Oftentimes the commoners' clothing seeks to ape the clothing of the noble classes, but the cut and construction of the common garments is always vastly different.

For example, the Dungiven Jacket is meant to be a pinked doublet in the late 16th century style. Yet it is constructed by wrapping a single width of wool around the body, eliminating the need for side seams and the waste they cause. The body is shaped through the additional of a small triangular gore at center back.

Another example is the Dungiven Trews. Although of exquisitely fine wool, these trews were cut without a single thread of waste. This makes the fitting very difficult, but it conserves every last scrap of fabric.

The sailors' clothing excavated from the wreck of the Mary Rose isn't a bunch of jerkins and hosen with elaborate codpieces like we'd expect to find on Henry VIII's flagship. They are wrap tops whose fronts overlap like kimono that can be made by non-tailors and fit a variety of sizes of men. They are cloth hose that only come to the knee. These garments lend themselves to the work of sailors and only vaguely resemble clothing worn by the nobility of the time.

As late as the 1690s, the Gunnister and Tawnamore coats were frock coats in shape and form, but were constructed with gussets and gores like a medieval tunic.

The Lesson: common people don't waste anything. They can't afford to.

As historical costumers, we tend to base common people's clothing on the clothing of their betters but instead make it out of less opulent materials. But my research is demonstrating that this approach is a mistake. The difference between upper class and common clothing isn't simply one of materials. It's one of cut and construction techniques. Except in the case of second-hand clothing, common people weren't having their clothing made by a professional tailor. They were making their own or having a local person do it. These people were not in the tailors' guild and didn't have access to the patterns tailors used. So they would look at an outfit and "figure it out". We see this over and over again in Irish extant clothing. The outfit looks like something worn in England at the same time (or 50 years earlier), but the way the Irish example is cut belies the tailor's familiarity with English styles. He knows how to cut clothes. He doesn't know how to cut those styles, so he makes something that "looks right".

Relevant to this study, the Shinrone Gown is a common woman's gown from the 16th century. Like those of the women in Aersten and Beuckalaer's paintings, it laces closed in the front and the lacing usually stops under the bust. Also like Aertsen and Beuckalaer's working women's clothing, the skirts are voluminous but short (just covering the knees). The Shinrone Gown was not found on a body or with any other garments, so we don't know with what other garments the gown was worn. But if we look at some of the works of Aertsen, we can imagine the Shinrone gown being worn with a modest partlet and pin-on sleeves, or even with a jacket.

When I work on a garment or outfit for which there are no extant garments, I look around at what is extant and make educated guesses based on that. The Lansknecht Wams und Hosen look more like the woodcuts if you construct them of squares and rectangles like a soldier on campaign would rather than how a city tailor would. The Golden Age of Piracy Sailor's Jacket and Slops are constructed simply, like the finds at Gunnister and Tawnamore and Lewis, instead of elaborately like the upper class garments of the same period in museums. When you follow these construction techniques, the clothing not only looks more like the pictures, they allow you to do real work in them. There is one test of common people's clothing -- work. If you can climb a rigging in reconstructed sailor's slops and they're comfortable, you've got something right. If you can milk a cow in a mildmaid's outfit without worry, you're okay.

In any case, if you want to hear more about the Netherlandish Working Woman's Outfit, the pattern with complete historical notes will be available in about a week.

---

© 2007 Kass McGann. All Rights Reserved. The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial private research or educational purposes provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.