Thirteenth Century Gowns - Starting the Investigation

[sbuchler]

I've slowly been working on 13th century styles -- initially to experiment with different ways to cut the Maciejowski women's dresses (France, circa 1250) since my normal way of cutting a T-tunic (basically what Robin Netherton describes in her Tournaments Illuminated, Issue #141, Winter 2002 article "Where Did the Normans Get Their Sleeves?") looks nothing like the illustrations when they're belted. The folds at the waist are all wrong.




Left: circa 1250 FRANCE, Maciejowski Bible, Folio 33v "David setting out to slay Nabal, who has refused him supplies, is met by Nabal's wife Abigail with much food and is appeased".
Right: my standard T-tunic, belted

I started my investigation by scrolling though Marc Carlson's website, Some Clothing of the Middle Ages and found that there are three extant (non-spanish, since Spain is weird ;-) ) women's dresses from roughly the right time period that make sense to experiment with for the Maciejowski dress:

• The Gown of St. Elizabeth of Thuringia (before 1230)
• The Gown of St. Clare of Assisi (before 1253)
• St. Birgitta's Gown (circa 1330s)

There are also two others that fit into the time-period but I'm not sure are women's garments:

• Soderkoping Kyrtle (before 1242)
• Ronbjerg Kyrtle (circa 1280)

So, I'm going to start with the first three, which are very interesting imo. They are cut very similarly: all three have side gores that go all the way up to the armhole, which from my experiments with chemises a couple years ago, noticeably changes the drape of the garment. Plus, the two gowns that still have sleeves (since St. Birgitta's Gown was made into a cloak, it's not clear if it once had sleeves or was a sleeveless overgown originally...) the sleeves aren't T-tunic sleeves -- they have curved armholes and shaped sleeve-heads (St. Birgitta's Gown has the curved armholes too, although in all cases the curve is not quite what a modern armseye looks like). Making the garments an interesting transition between absolute fabric-efficient T-tunic cutting and the body-fitting styles of the 14th century gothic fitted dresses.

Of course the Maciejowski dresses have the further complication of the odd sleeve slit to allow the arm to disengage from the sleeve:


circa 1250 FRANCE Maciejowski Bible, Folio 41v, "David sees Bathsheba bathing"

But I don't want to tackle that in my initial tests of extant patterns, 'cause I mainly want to investigate the drape of the body of the dress, and try to stick fairly closely to the extant pattern... Plus, the fabric I have for my Maciejowski dress is cashmere... not something I want to use in test runs... I do, on the other hand, have a reasonable supply of white linen, and a length of royal blue linen in my stash that is currently un-allocated. Those may not be really appropriate period dress fabrics, but linen makes really useful Pennsic clothing! Plus, white and blue are Cleftlands' colors. So, I'm going to make test garb in the style of the Codex Manesse (German, 1300-1340): three different white linen undergowns using the three cutting patterns from the St. Elizabeth of Thuringia dress, St. Clare of Assisi dress and the St. Birgitta Gown. Plus a blue surcote with embroidered nebuly around the collar as a stand-in for the goldwork in the illumination 'cause I can always use more heraldic garb as baroness! (Someday I will make a proper wool Codex Manesse dress with goldwork... but first, the experiments! ;-) )

Here's an example of the Codex Manesse gown and surcote pairing -- so you see how the surcote will cover the experiments with the gown cutting. I'll adjust both to make them floor length for ease-of-wear at Pennsic.



1300-1340 GERMAN Codex Manesse, 64r Herr Dietmar von Ast