New Clothing Guide

Sue Sampson has produced a very good guide to civilian clothes of the 1640s for her reenactment group. It's highly recommended and there are some nice illustrations included. There is a link to it on her blog ECW Living History Resources (link on the right hand menu), though you can go straight there by clicking on this link

Pointy Hats

I've noticed that some 1640s wood cuts show an odd shaped coif worn by women. The linen headcovering is normal at the front, but very pointy at the back, as is being modelled by the woman here. This picture is obviously a cartoon, the pamphlet from 1642 is basically about the guy on the right with the horns who has been cuckolded by his wife on the left. Perhaps the pointy coif is an echo of the rams horns which is the mark of the cuckold?

This seems to be borne out in this detail from The Coaches Overthrow, a broadside published by John Taylor in 1636. The man in the doorway is being menaced in a similar fashion to the first guy by a strange looking female in a pointed coif, although the person in the first floor window might have something to do with it!

Perhaps it was the badge of an old crone? This woodcut of the prophetess Mother Shipton from 1642 shows another pointy cap, though remember Mother Shipton was contemporary with Henry VIII. This could just be the origin of the pointed witches' hat.

However, this image from 1641, detail from The Sisters of the Scabard's Holiday also shows some "working girls" wearing pointed coifs, so it wasn't the preserve of old women presumably. Whilst this is not obviously a satirical cartoon, the publication was pointing fun at two "Reverent and vertuous matrons" and their views on the new laws that governed their profession. The rest of their clothes look quite authentic in their detail, so it may be reasonably assumed that the shape of these coifs are not exaggerated.

This one, also slightly satirical shows two more coifs with points being worn in reasonable detail.
1646, The Parliament of Women with the Merry Laws by them Newly Enacted.

The real meaning of this style is probably now lost in the mists of time but this image that appeared on a website last year of an embroidered example may probably provide a clue of how these caps were constructed. This came up for sale in late 2011 in H&H auction houses in Carlisle. It is actually a standard shaped coif, but ungathered at the back so that the back of the headdress stands proud in a rear facing point. It does look like one of the coifs in the woodcuts, but who knows? Possibly the ones in the pictures are exaggerated for comedic effect.

How To Make Wool Buttons

There are several schools of thought as to whether cloth buttons were used for soldier’s coats in the Civil War, as none have ever been found, there is no way to know for sure. We know that inventories show that buttons were bought as part of the makings for issue coats, though presumably these were metal ones as cloth buttons can be made as I will demonstrate from the waste fabric left from cutting the coats. There are lists that make plain that there were not enough buttons were bought for a coat and breeches, so maybe the extras were wool, there's no way to tell for sure. 

There is however a long lineage of fabric being used as a cheap easy source of buttons. Buttons made in a similar way to the my personal method have been found in medieval London, on a woollen jerkin found on the Mary Rose and in several finds from after our period. The Gunnister Man from Shetland, late 17^th century had these cloth made buttons on his waistcoat. As you can see (above), they conform to the period type, spherical and attached to the garment with a single shank. Although later than this period, the Gunnister finds are worth investigating.

If you follow this method, you will easily be able to make your own serviceable fastenings that match your coat. There are other ways I'm sure to make a button from wool fabric, but this is the one I like and it seems to work well.

Start with a square of woollen cloth and a nice long piece of well-waxed linen thread. You will need to experiment with the size of the square as the thicker the wool, the larger the piece needed to make a nice solid button. The wool I’m using makes a good one with 2” square, although I could have made them even smaller, these spaced out to 12 down the front of the coat I was making.

 

Sew a circle of running stitch within the square. Don’t make the stitches too small or the next step will be quite tricky.

Pull the end of the thread to make a loose bag.

Tuck in the corners and pull the whole thing together more tightly with the thread. Tucking in the edges in this way means you don’t need to stuff it with anything else as the corners provide the stuffing. Flatten it out with your fingers so you have a “mini bonnet”

Put another line of running stitches around the edge of the “bonnet” and use these stitches to pull the button tight a second time.

Sew across the gathering, crosswise, paying close attention to any lumps sticking out and taking a little more fabric every time.

Each time you put in a stitch, pinch the button tightly and pull the thread taut.

When you have a nice tight ball, use the remaining thread to make  2 or 3 small loops. Don’t make the loops too large or the resulting shank that holds the button to the garment will be too long. Go around the loops with buttonhole stitch to reinforce them, finishing up in the centre of the loop.

Use the end of thread to sew the button to the garment. When you’ve done that, reinforce the loops with buttonhole stitch to create a shank. As you move up the shank, the knots will pull the button tighter, although it should be pretty firm by this point. The button on the left is the finished one, the one on the right newly sewn on.

The Open Fly (or Codpiece)

I was recently asked to comment on the clothes worn by a cartoon character in a 1640s satirical broadsheet. It was obvious when I looked closely that the breeches fly was open (see above) and I remembered seeing the same thing in a painting of Charles II. This got me thinking and wondering whether this was ridicule or a fashion statement. Often it is easy to apply modern standards where they don’t belong and when I looked into it, I found out some things I didn’t expect and ended up with more questions than answers.

The codpiece evolved as a flap to cover the front opening in a pair of breeches and during Tudor times turned into a quite exaggerated pouch that drew attention to the genital area. By the 1640s however the codpiece as an accessory had all but disappeared whilst it seems to have remained in the language to describe the buttoned flap that closed the opening; what we would now call a trouser fly, a term unrecorded before Victorian times.

In “Hocus Pocus, The Anatomy of Ledgerdemain” from 1638, the author puts this comment in the margin as part of a piece about the cup and ball. This is still familiar now as a confidence trick:

“ Some I have seen with their codpieces open, others play with a budget hanging before them"

A budget is a wallet or bag, and the quote relates to finding a place to hide a ball and make it disappear.

In Robert Herrick’s poem Hesperides from 1648, there is this entry:

“ If the servants search, they may descry In his wide Codpeece, (dinner being done) Two Napkins cram'd up, and a silver Spoone.”

Another example of the codpiece being used as a receptacle, though  neither reference make plain whether it is a pouch or just the breeches opening that is being referred to, they do show that the term was still current.

Several images from the 1640s show the codpiece being worn in a fashion that we would describe as “half mast”. In The English Antick, a satirical cartoon from 1646, amongst the list of his “anticks” number 17 says:

“His codpeece open and tied at the top with riband”

Here's the close up. He's obviously "flying low".

The Wolfe with Eagles Clawes,  a parliament scandal sheet aimed against Prince Rupert from 1647 shows a similar character, though this time obviously a fantasy figure, with his codpiece unbuttoned. The close up is at the top of this piece.

Isaac Fuller painted five pictures that detailed Charles II’s adventures after the royalist loss at the Battle of Worcester. The paintings were made after the Restoration and show Charles in disguise.

In the first painting Charles is putting on his disguise and his companion Richard Penderel has his breeches open, whilst in one of the later illustrations, Penderel’s codpiece is buttoned and Charles displays the lower part of his shirt linen through an open codpiece.

There are several possibilities why a codpiece might be illustrated as open, but as a custom, the reasons are lost in the mists of time.

Maybe it was a hangover from the codpiece as an extra pouch in front of the breech opening, once the pouch disappeared men continued with not fastening the opening. Perhaps it evolved as a fashion that aped the uncouth commoner for whom the need to close the vent was either unimportant or a sign of  laziness? Or was the codpiece just used as an extra pocket as described in the references above and as such left open for easy access?

Answers please!!

Embroidered Shirt in the Fashion Museum, Bath

This man’s shirt is made from finely woven white linen and embroidered in black silk. It has been dated from between 1585 and 1620.  The embroidery style is a little early for our period, but the construction and pattern of the shirt is still correct for the 1640s. This photo courtesy of Fashion Museum, Bath and North East Somerset Council. The reason I’ve decided to post these really nice images from Caroline Vincent is that they show all those small details that make the difference between a seventeenth century shirt and a fancy dress one.

A lot of these details are also shown in Janet Arnold Patterns of Fashion 4, together with a detailed pattern. This is a recommended book for anyone interested in linens from our period. 

The body of the shirt is made from a single length of linen 38” wide, and about 8 feet in length, folded and gathered into a neck band at the top. The length of the shirt is the first point that makes it right for the period. The linen is finely woven, but on closer inspection, the threads aren’t exactly even and an obvious texture is visible in the surface of the fabric. For a lower quality, soldier’s shirt maybe, you might want to look at a more coarsely woven fabric. The two sleeves are cut from the same width of linen, 24 inches long, sewn to the body of the shirt and pleated into embroidered cuffs at the ends. The work on the shirt is nice, but not top quality for the period and should be reproducible by any modern sewer who takes care and time. It’s the embroidery that is probably the reason why this shirt remains to be seen now.

For instructions on how to make a shirt, refer to my blog post. These pictures should be seen as a companion piece. This kind of sewing will take time and effort to copy, but having something nicely made will be the reward.

 First of all, flat seams. There are instructions online how to do this, but here’s a photo that shows how a finished looks on the shirt, with the fabric laying flat and no raw edges inside or out. This seam was counter-hemmed, where one edge is folded and whip stitched to the other piece. Then the piece is turned over, the raw edge folded under and the folded edge whipped (or felled) down.

If you follow my instructions, the first construction point, having cut out your pattern pieces is to insert the shoulder gussets. This picture shows one in place on the Bath shirt. The edges of the gusset are gathered into small pleats and sewn into the collar.

This is a view of the neck opening. The edges are rolled back and hemmed as instructed in How To Make Your Own Shirt. Note the single tie sewn to the collar (there should be two ties but only one remains) and the gathers of the shirt into the standing collar band.

Next part is to insert the sleeve gusset. This is what one of the gussets looks like. Measuring tape gives you the scale in centimetres.

This photo shows the side seam where the opening begins. The shirt has two small squares of linen inserted to provide strength. This is a weak point and many reproduction shirts rip at this point. The edges are not hemmed as they correspond to the selvedge of the fabric. This is the advantage of using period width linen.

The sleeve is gathered in tiny cartridge pleats and sewn into the cuffs, which are also  embroidered. Sleeves were becoming wider and more gathered even than this one by our period.

And to finish off, a few details of the embroidery which is mostly formed in vertical panels, possibly to line up with slashes in a doublet body that would have been worn on top. Some of the black thread has disintegrated but most of it is still there, and where it isn’t, you can still see the stitch marks. All detail photos reproduced with permission from Caroline Vincent.

King Charles' Buffcoat?

The jerkin is on loan to the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection at Kensington Palace, along with a sleeved buff coat.  The two items belong to Lord Acton, and grateful thanks go to his Lordship for permission to photograph the coat.  The pieces are, by long family tradition associated with King Charles I, although the coat is clearly of a larger size than the jerkin and different in style.  It is a substantial item of thick oiled buff leather, designed for protection on the battlefield and although well made, and lined throughout the body and sleeves with linen; it has fewer adornments and the feel of a basic trooper's coat.

The jerkin however was made to fit a much smaller man than the sleeved coat. The jerkin has a waist measurement of approximately 89cm, whilst the coat reaches to 100cm. The smaller size is consistent with the story that it was made for Charles I. It is a short, sleeveless oiled buff leather coat, lined in places with finer leather and decorated externally with false butt seam stitching in several places. The coat was presumably made for protection as the two front tabs are twice as thick as the rear ones, the thickness being added to by the lining. This would possibly suggest use on the battlefield as the fleshy part of the legs covered by the tabs are more vulnerable when on horse back than anything covered by the rear tabs, which would also need to be flexible for comfort. The overall impression is of a fine, well-made, serviceable garment, though arguably not of “Royal” quality. It is however obviously of a style that places its manufacture and use in the English Civil War.

The garment is made from 8 basic pieces, a back, two front sections, collar and four tabs. The waistline is pointed down towards the centre front more in the manner of a pre Civil War fashionable doublet than the horizontal line common in most military buffcoats. The tabs flare out and overlap front to back. At the centre back just below the waist, a large irregular shape has been cut out at some time, possibly by a souvenir hunter. The edges of the cuts are quite clean which suggests a recent action, though this would be tricky to prove.

 There is no evidence visible to suggest that sleeves were ever an integral part of the coat, or that it had fabric ones attached.  There are two holes punched in the right shoulder, but it is difficult to think that these had anything to do with a sleeve. There are no corresponding holes in the left shoulder, and no sleeve capping wings which were common on doublets of the period

The inner lining extends to line the 

tabs, the waist and a few inches in from the centre front on the left hand side. It is sewn to the inside surface of the jerkin with stitches that are wholly within the thickness of the outer leather. 

Each of the tabs is lined with one matching piece of finer leather apart from the left front tab which has a join close to the outer edge. This is the front right tab viewed  edge on.

Across the waistline, two pieces of the lining leather, about three inches wide are joined at the centre back and fixed to the jerkin. The right hand side section stops two inches from the centre front, presumably to join with the original front lining, which is now missing. On the left hand side it does not quite extend to the centre front lining as an irregular shaped piece is now missing here.

 Also on the left hand side, the lining piece extends from the waist to the collar, though a small section is missing from the top. Some of this lining has worn away from the edge, revealing rust patches where presumably hooks and eyes were attached to the lining to close the coat. This was a standard fixing for leather coats in this period.

On both centre fronts, sixteen holes have been punched down to the waistline and it is probable that cord laces were also used to fasten the front of the jerkin as indentations are obvious in the leather, running diagonally down from the holes to the edge. The edge has been slightly scalloped by the tension of the laces. This is consistent with laces as closing rather than decoration, perhaps as a belt and braces system with the hooks and eyes. This image is a close up inside the jerkin.

The construction of the is relatively simple though at first sight it looks as though it is made from more pieces than it actually is. On closer inspection it becomes evident that some of the apparent seams are false, made by forming stitches within the thickness of the leather giving the appearance of butt stitching.

  The constructional seams are identified by a join which is apparent between the rows of stitches, see right. This is missing in the blind seams. 

One seam, below the collar has been unpicked but the holes are still visible. This line of stitching extends from the centre front, all around the collar of the garment. The reason for removal of the sewing, which must have been tricky, is unclear. This sewing is more uneven than the rest of the work and moves away from a parallel line to the collar in a few places. Maybe it is a later addition?

 Each tab of the four lower skirts of the jerkin has a central blind seam and three seams that follow the outside edges. The central vertical seam of each tab is picked up above the waist leading to the armholes, the two front ones being decoration and the rear ones actual joins between the back and front panels. There is also a central rear blind seam which suggests a two-piece construction for the back section which is an illusion.