Ruslan's Alan Riding Coat, An adventure into Southern Russian garb
If any of you know Master Ruslan Novgorodcev, you know he holds quite a few of the nobler Viking qualities, and he's both a good person and a good friend. So when he mentioned, after I handed back the second outfit on which I'd done some alterations for him, that he would really appreciate some Russian Viking clothing from me, of course I said I'd stretch my boundaries and try to come up with something, even though I knew blessed little about period Russian clothing. The first item was a rubakha, which was no great shakes at research on my part, but he was squeeing over the coats mentioned here, especially the long, red, asymmetrical Alan riding coat, so that created the project detailed here.
The Alani, being a Sarmatian tribe from the northeast of the Black Sea, were living in an area near to where the Kievan Rus' settled, though not direct neighbours. I think their kaftans are used as models for Rus' kaftans because of the paucity of extant Rus' clothing (whereas there are at least a few good Alannic excavations that have produced clothing) especially as ibn Fadlan mentions that the Rus' wore kaftans and I have yet to see someone point to a definitely-Rus' model for one. I took a basic Alan-style model kaftan, and added a couple more Scandinavian details to create the finished garment.
As described in the page about the coats, Alan kaftans "all feature asymmetrical openings on the left, single lapels (on the outer panel), no standing collars and cloth frogs. They are cut with large underarm gussets- sometimes really obscenely large underarm gussets. They also have two slits down the back, from waist height to the bottom, allowing plenty of movement. The 'skirt' is cut separately from the 'shirt' and then attached. They are normally lined (often with fur), and feature bands of decoration down all exposed edges. Frogging (cloth buttons and loops) seems to have spread from cultures in contact with the Khazars- such as the Bulgars, Alans and presumably also the Rus."
This is well and good, but I wanted to check extant examples, just to be sure. So I looked at the Hermitage's senmurv kaftan and the Met's Alan coat. I couldn't get a good look at the skirts on the senmurv kaftan, but those on the coat at the Met were very clear in their construction (there's a reconstructed cutting diagram in this .pdf). I didn't like the "butterfly" look of the torso of the Met coat, however, so I opted for a long-sleeve take on the senmurv kaftan, effectively hybridizing the two with what I was able to learn about more coats from the Moščevaja Balka site.
This gave me all the characteristics mentioned above, so I'd say the above-quoted analysis was reasonably accurate even if the author didn't specifically cite sources. Thor Ewing in his Viking Clothing, Ierusalimskaja in Die Gräber der Moščevaja Balka and Ierusalimskaja and Borkopp in Von China nach Byzanz contain more information, for the interested (und deutchsprachiger, allerdings. Entschuldigung!).
Here you can see the single-breast opening on the left of the body as it hangs open, without a standing collar, which turns so you can see the lining. I'd asked Ruslan about lining, and while he did want his coat to be lined, he was dubious about doing it with squirrel fur. In the interests of having this coat be wearable in Pennsic heat, I opted for a linen lining which would wick away sweat nicely, even if it wouldn't be the highest-status choice I could have made. I finished and lined the jacket torso and the skirts separately, then joined all the constituent pieces at the waist.
The sides are attached first, so that the centre skirt panel is to the outside. The skirt panels aren't sewn to each other, but have triangular gussets that give them a trapezoidal shape, so the panels do still mostly overlap when the wearer walks, and gives the wearer a good range of mobility on horseback.
Even if Ruslan didn't want the lining to be made from fur, he did want to incorporate fur into the coat in some way, so we opted to go for the same sort of fur trimming as was found on the Hedeby jacket, and he volunteered a secondhand fur garment (species unidentified) from his stash for the trimming. I had a great deal of difficulty finding good detail on how historical fur trim was built from skins and sewn into garments, so I used a modern treatment from a book I own, How to Sew Leather, Suede and Fur. I dismantled the donor garment, removed pelt sections damaged beyond reuse, and reinforced torn seams on the skin side where the recycled fur was only lightly damaged. I then sewed twill and tabby tape (the latter being woollen selvedges another seamstress had removed from fabric that I've been slowly using from my stash to reinforce rows of eyelets and buttonholes) to the fur side, and then turned the twill type to the skin side and sewed it to the garment itself. As much as possible, I tried to use the stitching holes already punched through the skin, so that I wouldn't weaken the fur any more than necessary.
While I had enough pieces of fur in good repair to make it the whole way around the front opening, I didn't have enough to do both the cuffs with similarly robust trimming, so I went with a treatment from another Scandinavian site.
Välsgarde grave 12 featured silk cuffs finished with wire weaving worked through the edge of the fabric. While I didn't have
smarriveurr around to do new wire weaving (this is his craft, and I will not touch), I did have some pre-worked pieces from his stash of trichinopoly he was willing to donate to the project, so I cut appropriate lengths and sewed them to the edge of the cuffs. Ruslan mentioned in the final fitting that the weight of the wire weaving keeps the sleeves from falling back down his arms when he raises his hands. I can't be sure whether this was an intended feature in the historical example, but it's an interesting observation.
The closures from Moščevaja Balka were all made from fabric and loops, so I opted to make some similar closures in fabric I trimmed off the sleeves in the second fitting. In the photo they're not attached to the garment (I placed them and sewed them on in the final fitting, just to be sure the fur trim wouldn't alter their placement) but that's about how they look now.
Ruslan has pronounced the coat "awesome", so I'm very pleased that he's pleased. I didn't get any photos of him wearing it because he came over directly from fighter practice for the final fitting, but I'll see if I can't get him to put together the rest of the pieces I have/will make for him at Pennsic and look epic for a quick photo shoot, so you can see how it fits him.
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The Alani, being a Sarmatian tribe from the northeast of the Black Sea, were living in an area near to where the Kievan Rus' settled, though not direct neighbours. I think their kaftans are used as models for Rus' kaftans because of the paucity of extant Rus' clothing (whereas there are at least a few good Alannic excavations that have produced clothing) especially as ibn Fadlan mentions that the Rus' wore kaftans and I have yet to see someone point to a definitely-Rus' model for one. I took a basic Alan-style model kaftan, and added a couple more Scandinavian details to create the finished garment.
As described in the page about the coats, Alan kaftans "all feature asymmetrical openings on the left, single lapels (on the outer panel), no standing collars and cloth frogs. They are cut with large underarm gussets- sometimes really obscenely large underarm gussets. They also have two slits down the back, from waist height to the bottom, allowing plenty of movement. The 'skirt' is cut separately from the 'shirt' and then attached. They are normally lined (often with fur), and feature bands of decoration down all exposed edges. Frogging (cloth buttons and loops) seems to have spread from cultures in contact with the Khazars- such as the Bulgars, Alans and presumably also the Rus."
This is well and good, but I wanted to check extant examples, just to be sure. So I looked at the Hermitage's senmurv kaftan and the Met's Alan coat. I couldn't get a good look at the skirts on the senmurv kaftan, but those on the coat at the Met were very clear in their construction (there's a reconstructed cutting diagram in this .pdf). I didn't like the "butterfly" look of the torso of the Met coat, however, so I opted for a long-sleeve take on the senmurv kaftan, effectively hybridizing the two with what I was able to learn about more coats from the Moščevaja Balka site.
This gave me all the characteristics mentioned above, so I'd say the above-quoted analysis was reasonably accurate even if the author didn't specifically cite sources. Thor Ewing in his Viking Clothing, Ierusalimskaja in Die Gräber der Moščevaja Balka and Ierusalimskaja and Borkopp in Von China nach Byzanz contain more information, for the interested (und deutchsprachiger, allerdings. Entschuldigung!).
Here you can see the single-breast opening on the left of the body as it hangs open, without a standing collar, which turns so you can see the lining. I'd asked Ruslan about lining, and while he did want his coat to be lined, he was dubious about doing it with squirrel fur. In the interests of having this coat be wearable in Pennsic heat, I opted for a linen lining which would wick away sweat nicely, even if it wouldn't be the highest-status choice I could have made. I finished and lined the jacket torso and the skirts separately, then joined all the constituent pieces at the waist.
The sides are attached first, so that the centre skirt panel is to the outside. The skirt panels aren't sewn to each other, but have triangular gussets that give them a trapezoidal shape, so the panels do still mostly overlap when the wearer walks, and gives the wearer a good range of mobility on horseback.
Even if Ruslan didn't want the lining to be made from fur, he did want to incorporate fur into the coat in some way, so we opted to go for the same sort of fur trimming as was found on the Hedeby jacket, and he volunteered a secondhand fur garment (species unidentified) from his stash for the trimming. I had a great deal of difficulty finding good detail on how historical fur trim was built from skins and sewn into garments, so I used a modern treatment from a book I own, How to Sew Leather, Suede and Fur. I dismantled the donor garment, removed pelt sections damaged beyond reuse, and reinforced torn seams on the skin side where the recycled fur was only lightly damaged. I then sewed twill and tabby tape (the latter being woollen selvedges another seamstress had removed from fabric that I've been slowly using from my stash to reinforce rows of eyelets and buttonholes) to the fur side, and then turned the twill type to the skin side and sewed it to the garment itself. As much as possible, I tried to use the stitching holes already punched through the skin, so that I wouldn't weaken the fur any more than necessary.
While I had enough pieces of fur in good repair to make it the whole way around the front opening, I didn't have enough to do both the cuffs with similarly robust trimming, so I went with a treatment from another Scandinavian site.
Välsgarde grave 12 featured silk cuffs finished with wire weaving worked through the edge of the fabric. While I didn't have
smarriveurr around to do new wire weaving (this is his craft, and I will not touch), I did have some pre-worked pieces from his stash of trichinopoly he was willing to donate to the project, so I cut appropriate lengths and sewed them to the edge of the cuffs. Ruslan mentioned in the final fitting that the weight of the wire weaving keeps the sleeves from falling back down his arms when he raises his hands. I can't be sure whether this was an intended feature in the historical example, but it's an interesting observation.
The closures from Moščevaja Balka were all made from fabric and loops, so I opted to make some similar closures in fabric I trimmed off the sleeves in the second fitting. In the photo they're not attached to the garment (I placed them and sewed them on in the final fitting, just to be sure the fur trim wouldn't alter their placement) but that's about how they look now.
Ruslan has pronounced the coat "awesome", so I'm very pleased that he's pleased. I didn't get any photos of him wearing it because he came over directly from fighter practice for the final fitting, but I'll see if I can't get him to put together the rest of the pieces I have/will make for him at Pennsic and look epic for a quick photo shoot, so you can see how it fits him.
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth. Please comment there using OpenID.
comments currently posted.