Pewter excellences

I ordered spoons and a pewter cast needlecase from The Lionheart Replicas. Those things are georgious!

And my precioussss...

Early 17th century underwear

Slowly I collect my new set of early 17th century clothes for the upper middle class women from Prussia. I have two linen shirts with little ruffles on neck and wristbands, made from fine of-white linnen cloth. Yesterday I started to work on drawers (women underpants). It's perfect for winter time.

My inspiration was an example from Metropolitan Museum of Art, dated c. 1600:

The pattern and all necessary information which I needed for reconstruction I found in "Patterns of fashion 4" by Janet Arnold. I used this pattern but I decided not to decorate the drawers :

Orginally this drawers had two worked eyelet holes and string to tie the waistband but I made button (wooden base worked in heavy linen white threads) and buttonhole fastening on the waistband:

Torlop pictures

First is scene from the altar with 12 scenes from life of Christ, from Koeln, dated 1450/1460 (source: Bildindex web page).

Second example: Passion of Christ by Conrad von Soest, 1401/1415, Rauschenberg.

Next is my beloved "Altar of the ten commandments" from Church of the Holy Virgin in Gdansk (Danzig). It's dated about 1488 and was painted by Unknown Master from South Germany. The man in torlop also wear black hood and have axe so maybe it's a sailor.
The last you can see here: Web Gallery of Art (very short jacket worn by kneeling man).

Tarte of chese

My diner today was inspired by recipes from "A Propre new booke of Cokery", England, 1545

To make a Tarte of Chese
Take harde chese and cut it in slyces / and pare it / than laye it in fayre water or in swete milke the space of thre houres / than take it vp and breake it in a morter tyll it be small / than draw it vp thorow a strainer with the yelkes of vi egges and ceason it vp with suger and swete butter / and so bake it.

Last friday we bought delicious local made styrian hard cheese from sweet milk with black pepper so I used it instead of tudor "harde chese". I soaked cheese in milk and this method really works! After 2 hours cheese became much softer and it was easier to mix together with yolks and butter.

The pastry dough for this tart I prepared using the recipe from the same book:

To make shorte paest for tart.
Take fine floure and a curtesy of faire water and a disshe of swete butter and a litle saffron and the yolkes of two egges and make it thin and tender as ye maie.

(Both recipes from Gode Cookery web page).

Update

I started to sewing together all pieces of sheepskin gown for my son. I'm using the felled (overlapped) seam which is a combination of running and oversewing stitches. I hope it's strong enough to survive.

Something new, something old...

Last week I started to work on sheepskin gown known in medieval times as a "pellicea" (in Central Europe named "torlop" or "kozukhy"). The most characteristic for this kind of clothes is that they haven't outer layer of cloth, just one layer of fur (the visible side of garment is leather not hairs). In polish medieval chronicles "torlop" is mentioned from the end of 14th century as a garment of court and nobility members. The "torlop" made from sheepskin was favorite gown of polish king Vladislavus Jagiello at the beginning od 15th century and the same type of garment was also worn by sons of king Casimir at the second half of 15th century.

I found just 4 fine pictural evidences of this type of clothes from Koeln/Cologne, Darmstadt and Danzig/Gdansk. All of them are from years 1430-1490. The most interesting for me was example from Darmstadt because it's example of children garment:

Of course I know that it's just a symbolic picture of Apostel Jacob the Minor but with written evidence of shippskin clothes worn by sons of king Casimirus it's quite possible that this garment was worn by children also in real life.

I also finnish my first embroidered woolen cushion:

Toy horse

I made this horse puppet for my son because he loves a soft toys. He has his the most beloved rat from Ikea but unfortunatelly it's modern toy not suitable for our medieval reenactment activites.
The shape of horse body is based on clay horses found in a Carmelite friary in Esslingen, Germany and Toy horse from Nuernberg/Nuremburg. In my research I used fabulous web base made by Karen Larsdatter.
The horse is made from strong but light weight unblanched linen, stuffed by linen thread and embroidery decorated. To make a horse mane I used couched stitch-main thread is hemp and couching thread is linen.
Of course the horse is not finished jet, I must decided how to make a tail and other decorations.

2008.12.21
I made a tail-it's a simple tassel. My son loves this horse.