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Project Diary: The 1543 Gown
Portrait of An Unknown Woman of Henry VIII's Court by Holbein, c. 1543
10-23-2001 I've decided upon my next project: Recreating the gown in the above portrait. I've never attempted to copy an outfit exactly how it is depicted, and I'm probably not going to achieve an exact copy of this one for all of my effort. That's okay, though... I just want to see how close I can get to the real thing. ;) There's several things that drew me to this portrait and ultimately fueled my desire to try and recreate the gown. First, it's her uncanny resemblence to myself. Okay, she's really prettier, IMO, and a whole lot more sedate, but you gotta admit, the resemblence is there. Secondly is that I happened to have the materials to create the gown lying around. Third, the gown is really simple stylistically, with not a whole lot of embellishment, making it realitvely simple (in theory) to reproduce without a lot of skill. Lastly, it's a Holbein which means it's pretty reliable when it comes to accuracy and realism. The Elements of The Gown: There's a few things about this gown that will make it different from the others that I've made in the past. I'll outline these elements below:
The Materials:
11-19-01
Of course, I'll be cutting it in half, down the middle of the organza portion, since it's a bit too wide for my purposes (It's about 2.5" wide and I can only make use of about an inch or so of the red/gold portion. Although, the organza might make it easier for me to attach to a coif). The ribbon has a gold border that runs along the outer and inner edges of the taffeta and it might just be a bit too much for me. I'm not sure yet what I'll do about it (maybe fold it under, since it's the part that has the wire running through it). I'm also browsing my catalog from Firemountain Gems for the right sort of embellishment in terms of agglets, billiments and the like. For the pearls on the bodice, I've decided to use 4 mm glass based pearls. For the round gold beads on the bodice, I'm leaning towards something like these, however they're a bit expensive and I know I've seen something similar to this at my local bead store for less. For the agglets, I haven't found anything I like from the catalog, but, again, I think I've seen something that will do just as well at the bead store. The billiments are harder, but I did find these beads which might work well. Ideally, I'd really like to have something that is flat on one side, to allow it to lay against the edge of the coronet. I may wind up crafting my own out of a polymer clay like Fimo or Sculpy. Seeing as how I'm a little burnt out with things at the moment, I'm contemplating just centering my focus on the French Hood at the moment. Making the gown is still on my list of priorities, but I'm a bit too overwhelmed with other things to really dig into the project. As it is, I'm waiting to see how Winter Break pans out for me. 12-30-01 Breakthrough on the French Hood! Woohoo! Yesterday I went to cash in some gift certificates I recieved for Christmas for Tower Books and came away with a great big pretty book entitled Holbein The Younger by Jeanette Zwingenberger. The book is great, even if it really only analyses a portion of Holbein's work (all the major ones, and it doesn't include the picture I'm working from). What really made this book worthwhile was the big glossy photo of what has widely been accepted as Henry VIII's 5th wife, Catherine Howard stuck in the way back of the book in the reference section (Weird place for a pic, I know). The picture is the clearest I've ever seen of this particular portrait, which many people have been quick to point out the similarities between it and the Unknown Girl portrait. Both are from 1543 and the sitters look an awful lot alike, especially in terms of clothing (the sleeves) and the french hoods.
The two portraits side by side.
Now, here's the detail from the Catherine Howard portrait of the pleated frill at the edge of the French Hood:
You can clearly see two rwos of stitching holding the accordian style pleats in place. What is even more interesting is that the outer row of stitching comes close to the edge of the pleats as it curves around her head, which might be to make the pleats "grab" better.
I'm not sure if it's very visible here, but in the hard copy of this picture, you can clearly see that the white portion of the french hood is actually two seperate parts, what appears to be an under cap (with the chin strap and the lower edge of billiments. It's possible that the pleated frill is attached to this portion) and what appears to be a paste, or coronet of the same material over the cap. Unlike my other french hood, it appears that the black hood is pulled over the top of the white paste and is secured with the upper billiments (the big barrel shaped beads on the top edge), creating a thin black edge along the top of the coronet. One of my theories is that the black hood became attached to the under cap (as my french hood is) later, once the chin strap became obsolete. This would allow the top heavy french hood to balance more securely on the head without being secured under the chin (although some suggest that it was merely tied beneath the hair. I resorted to this trick with my hood, but it is still rather tricky to balance on the head). |
I haven't had a whole lot of time to work on the outfit in the last month, but I won't bore you all with the details. :) Let me backtrack a bit: A few days after Halloween, I went and raided my local Michael's Craft store during it's after-Halloween/Fall sale. Wonderful, wonderful stuff! I'm a total craft junkie. Anyway, I scored some gorgeous wired ribbon without really knowing what I was going to do with it. Theoretically, wire-edged ribbon is not fantastic for costuming if you expect to be able to wash the costume. For non-washable items, however, it can be a nice thing to have around. As I was standing in front of the ribbon display, I remembered a conversation I had with another costumer who suggested using wired ribbon for the French Hood frill. "Hm," I thought. "Wouldn't hurt to give it a try." As luck would have it, there was the absolute perfect ribbon for the frill in the above portrait, and I bought a roll of it. It's some kind of changable taffeta, that viewed from one side appears totally red, from the other side totally gold and if viewed straight on, looks like tiny lines of alternating red and gold. (See the pic to the left)
