Yes I have managed to get a really nice work flow going. Except my North Rhine specific files.

Fortunately it’s looking like I can go straight into sorting by administrative region given the overlapping cultural expression. It’s still a bit of a kicker when I also have found my cut fabric for my Anne of Cleves dress is probably about 20cm too small each quarter. Maybe not if I take a heavily Empirical approach, but I think the Saxon and Swabian influence is much greater than might be expected.

So I’ve got enough calico to flat/underline a new cut skirt CF front set. I have the fabric for the sleeves set aside so hopefully….

The extra velveteen I have is to trim my other Juelich and Saxon frocks in vibrant fuchsia. If I really mess up it’s possible to buy some more velveteen and tint the entire lot with dye. It is so much work to stabilise home dye that I have avoided it as much as possible.

That I have done so much custom dyeing is a reflection on how hard it is to get a specific shade at all.

I have finally, finally, got through my 20 years of digital photos sorted. Massive task as not all had “date taken” data. But these include my costume and research photos so now I feel like yes, yes I can use some of my short window of Able to get my pearl hat actually worked on, as I have also finally got enough research to be sure I won’t need to take it apart ever again to be more accurate.

The design is mine, but the techniques have historic analogs.

My hands are not very happy today, not sure how well I’ll be able to cut the pieces off to re stitch them, but I’m finally satisfied with what I have.

So it’s time to gather those pieces.

I’ve decided my version of Dry July has got to be about finding joy again in my projects. I used to make costumes even when I had no where to wear them. It’s working. So far I’ve found in my mix of resources some patterns for mum and I to make clothes for my childhood dolls (and baby Morden) and I found all the historic doll costuming books I used in my teens and so they are all tidy.

I found the designer of a gorgeous soft bodied “wooden” doll. I make my own patterns generally but I wanted to support her as I think she deserves credit for inspiration which led me to new solutions.

Hmm. I could also make a 3D model now. But I like this doll so much so I’ll probably maker her in the meantime as I only need a few supplies.

I learned how to pattern from several dollmaking books, I learned how to make fabric bodies which helped me understand how historic garments fit, the fashion dolls also offered simplified patterns of highly complex fashion styles, so I got very familiar with construction of the 19thC too.

This is probably my favourite. Seriously beautiful dolls and recreated gowns.

But if I want to make frocks for this Regency-Romantic shaped doll then I need to extend into the past and the dresses for these dolls can be remarkably closer to the shapes of full scale gowns.

But I also want to look at the old dolls as there were so very many attempts to both create a doll of idealised proportions, but also durability, and ways to allow them to move so lots of options to mix in.

It appears I’ve definitely rea this book in a local library as these dolls influenced my polymer clay doll in terms of features:

It’s why I want to mould her so I can cast her to make a ball jointed body for her. And that’s where you can get some amazing variations of body materials, leading back to this cloth doll.

These three fashion dolls have bisque heads, the middle and right hand dolls have wooden bodies, but the doll to the left is made of pressed leather! The joints are beautiful. I might try for something similar for my polymer doll.

And then you have twill over papier mache!

And finally yes, ball jointed dolls have been around for a long time, peg jointed even longer.

Ancient roman peg jointed figures.

The 16thC figures are very anatomically detailed, too detailed for a safe for work style blog, but they have some incredible range of movement, and are mostly for artists to use as models.

Gliederpuppenpaar, salzburgisch, Umkreis des Meisters I.P.(?), um 1525. Buchsbaumholz, H. 23 cm, Innsbruck, Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Inv. Nr. P415, P416.

Weibliche Gliederpuppe, Nürnberg um 1520, Buchsbaumholz, Bodemuseum Berlin (Inv. 2167)

There are so many more, if you can get hold of this book it’s incredible:

Die Gliederpuppe: Kult – Kunst – Konzept
Markus Rath
Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 19/02/2018 – Art

So now I know my doll approach.

My multiple sources are giving me some amazing clues the biggest step next is to make sure I have the dates correct. Especially to trace influences.

To be honest I’m exhausted by it.

I’m not sure how to sort out anymore.

I’ve got written evidence from multiple countries and eras.

I’ve got not just art but artists crossing countries.

And nearly every Power Woman lived in two countries. There are a lot fewer who stayed even in their own country.

So I can’t sort by any current method.

I might have a way. If I can find some older attempts I might have it.

But all of this is of course leading to an expansion of my pattern book. Just far too many images of construction.

The figure to the left appears in a number of tapestries, different textile colours and patterns, but I think I have finally found a handful of images supporting this really nifty sleeve insertion. It’s a matter now though of pulling out the most important works from the huge number of them.

A handful loop back into what I’m looking at in manuscripts so that’s really cool.

There are a few links to stained glass window images.

But each medium uses different shorthand for different elements, some help understand contemporary dress some are really from carved elements.

I’m partly in distraction mode, but I really do need all my sources carefully sorted so that I can finally start cropping images for my thesis. I’m calling it this to help my focus, and how to present it all.

A thesis is an idea or theory that is expressed as a statement and is discussed in a logical way.
A thesis is a long piece of writing based on your own ideas and research that you do as part of a university degree, especially a higher degree such as a PhD.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/thesis

I’m using dissertations as well as using them for formatting.

But I’ve now got a really good way to explain the engineering evolution which also helps explain why the language is so difficult to unpick.

There is a solid 50 year gap in almost every artform and every archive that covers my thesis. So that is why I’m being extra careful about applying that a few documents/images suggest.

And there is also caution when using transcriptions that formalise spelling- it has already led me stray several times.

My hair is doing A Thing that I don’t understand but am having fun playing with right now. I’m able to replicate the “Pheasant” do which appears in a number of manuscripts and tapestries of the early 16thC Lowlands. It’s very cute.

That was from before my hair fell out due to chemo (low dose but permanent, not many people know about how that works) but my hair is long enough to do a single pass each side (this was done where I crossed the braids at the back of my head.) So I’ve dyed my hair to a vibrant burgundy/pink again so I can play with my crimping iron (oh yes) to see if I can really reproduce some styles before enough hair falls out again to cut my hair short and use my braid for supplementary pieces.

I want to try the Hapsburg Puffs which have bit of an interesting evolutionary history.

I suspect the Titian portrait is wrong. I KNOW! But all the rest suggest hair wrapping from the back of the head to the front. It makes it easier, tbf. I tried both ways and that works best. I want to get crimping to really be able to sculpt my hair.

But my manuscript research is paying off dividends! A lot is French rather than Lowlands but I found a donor portrait in an Mss commissioned (calligraphy) in Cologne, miniatures from Bruges, but the two figures are in readily identified NR dress.

It’s taken a log time to find this single image that most readily follows the art style of stained glass.

But my hat research really has taken a wonderful turn 🙂

Yesterday I braved my own writing files. My Will The Real Stickelchen Please Stand up paper is already extremely well cited. All my image placeholders look good too. It’s 35 pages so far! I keep winding up expanding it even more as it is very important to know the rest of the context.

So I’m back in the manuscript folders as I’m starting to recognise the work of different illuminators. Robinet Testard is probably my favourite. And I’m quite keen to practice his style.

It’s so modern in many ways, but so very much an expression of the time and place.

Also, this instrument could be possible now that my nerves seem to be repairing. I couldn’t play other strings instruments but it’s possible my hands could do this, and my memory could retain how to do so.

I know I’m mostly writing about writing rather than writing, but I finally found an image that opened up the information gap I have but in a way that’s going to let me actually search records. And fortunately works with my current organising of information by type. So if something winds up in a mumeum, or in an archive, or in a library is the difference.

There is cross over. But it’s helping me as different art forms use different techniques and that includes just what is included such as seam lines. The same is true for hats. I’m using hat as a catchall for a lot of disparate items and that’s part of the problem. I don’t want to put the wrong terms out there while trying to get a more accurate term.

Because it’s not just a word.

A bathing cap is made of different materials and techniques to a knitted and felted flat hat, each also has a centuries long evolution. Who taught whom, and how, and under what regulations all plays a part.

I want to do justice to the past and help us right now.

I feel vindicated! For many reasons but they basically come back to my “focus” on frocks giving me a vantage few art historians have let alone regular historians.

It’s not just that I can recognise a frock, but when it’s painted/drawn by someone unfamiliar with the style. Or includes details that artists of the region ignore as they are the imperfections of wear rather than intended consequences. Locals know what is meant so tend to capture that over flaws.

Or I can recognise the effects of a local set of sumptuary laws designed to promote local business in the entire process of manufacture from raw materials in some cases (gold and silver mines.)

I was starting to feel that maybe this was all a bit OTT to prove what a hat was made of. But no!

In sorting my files I found a fabulous dissertation that feels very much like it started out as finding a near complete set of court records of a decade and they made each chapter and sub chapter in a way that was like mine (in part because I have read a lot of dissertations from Germany so I have tried to follow that format.)

So yes, it’s all important context if I’m arguing that you can spot all of these in a portrait.

I’ve found myself disagreeing with a lot of attributions including the reversal of some recently, because if there is one thing artists cannot change, no matter where they travel to work to and learn from? It’s faces.

A lot of how we learn to draw faces has got to be from a mirror. We ask a lot of our family or friends to get them to sit for several hours practice. And you need that time to develop your hand to make accurate sweeps with different materials and surfaces.

By the time an artist is a master they have learned that as muscle memory and is used for the most rapid ink lines to the finished project.

This is always inspired by the art and people around you so this is also why it tends to be pretty easy to spot 15thC art even by non art historians.

So I’ve been trying to get my hand back, while fitting in with the art of the time in part because it helps spot not just an artistic movement and artist but also the fakes or the wrong names.

I got a bit mixed up recently and it lead to me having to group siblings together, which breaks up my naming convention of files, but it’s lead to a really nifty discovery and if I’m lucky I may even find out why- I might be able to find out that only the fabric existed and it was used for multiple portraits.

I might find out those garments did exist which would be both remarkable and limit the possible dating of portraits, but not as limited as I expected based on the ages of the sitters.

I’m still going to have to find the highest resolution of the most natural depiction and use that as a frame of reference.