Signs of Spring?

[hrj]

I was picking up some paperwork from QC this morning and noticed that one of the cherry trees had recently exploded into bloom. A couple days ago I was thinking of performing the First Lawn-mowing of Spring this weekend, but it rained again last night, so that's postponed for at least another week.

Wednesday night I had another one of those vivid and transparent anxiety dreams: for some unknown reason, I was moving to Arizona -- immediately, like, today -- and I need to contact the mortgage company to tell them to cancel the whole deal. I'll be glad when the paperwork is all done and I can move on to anxiety dreams about blocked plumbing and termites. Obviously, the mortgage didn't close this week, but we're moving steadily forward. The title company got the last of the documents they needed yesterday and forwarded it to the mortgage company. I talked to my underwriter this morning and she's harrassing the relevant department to keep things expedited. It's pretty much down to signing the actual contract and telling them how much money to send where.

Yesterday evening I went off to Thread-walker's study group to do a presentation on surviving garments of the 11-12th centuries from non-Scandinavian Europe. It's always fun to infect new people with the surviving garments bug. And now I'm getting excited about doing my in-depth look at surviving albs of the 12-13th centuries and how/whether the ecclesiastical material can be used in to illuminate secular garments of the time. I really want to get back to working out how to do the pattern-gathered gores that several of these garments have. And I'd love to track down better information on dress attributed to Saint Clare, which appears to have the same basic construction and -- if the traditional description of it is accurate -- is a secular garment as well as being the only woman's garment of the type that I've found. Hmm, the original page I found it on is gone, but the wayback machine has it here.

Comments

[aastg.livejournal.com]

...how to do the pattern-gathered gores that several of these garments have

Indeed. I like your term, "pattern-gathered" - it's far more descriptive of what you're looking at. Every time I hear someone refer to one of those gores as "smocking" I get twitchy.

I would like to talk to you about St. Clare's wedding dress - do you have any details about it, or know where I could access them?

Yup, you're nearing close of escrow all right...it can nerve-wracking. Hope everything goes smoothly!

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I like your term, "pattern-gathered" - it's far more descriptive of what you're looking at. Every time I hear someone refer to one of those gores as "smocking" I get twitchy.

When I got a good close look at the technique on St. Thomas Becket's alb at Sens Cathedral, I sketched out what I thought was going on, and then years later I saw the exact technique that I'd hypothesized in Colette Wolff's "The Art of Manipulating Fabric", labeled "Italian Smocking". But I agree that the term "smocking" gives the wrong impression.

The St. Clare dress I have only found one picture of -- the one I gave the wayback url for. (I have the original site saved off on my computer.) I've been doing a lot of on-line searching trying to find other mentions and/or pictures, but to no avail at this point. At some point I may write to the Abegg Foundation and ask if it was among the garments from Assisi that they did conservation work on -- there are a couple of Assisi items published in "Textile Conservation", but not this one. So right now I'm working off a relatively low-resolution graphic of a garment hanging in folds in a case ....

It looks very similar to the male ecclesiastical albs with the gathered side gussets: a rectangular panel for the main body, side skirt gussets that are gathered at the top with a textured pattern, tapered sleeves that appear to have an unshaped armscye, and a wide decorative (embroidered) panel at the hem that matches the width of the main panel. There's also an embroidered band (maybe 3" wide?) running vertically down the center front, and possibly narrower bands on the wrists. The embroidery is some sort of white-work.

The web site said of it, "The Basilica of St. Clare displays this white wedding dress which St. Clare herself embroidered. She wore this dress on March 18, 1212 when she left her father's house and went to the Portiuncula to be accepted into the Order by St. Francis. He cut her hair, and a relic of St. Clare's hair is in the reliquary at the foot of the white gown. " which I take with a slight grain of salt. On the other hand, the various clothing relics held at Assisi seem, in general, to be well provenanced and properly attributed. And in contrast to the other two items identified there as Clare's garments, the alb looks in very good condition -- as if it had been worn very little.

surviving garments

[dame-cordelia.livejournal.com]

That's really sweet. As someone who refuses to do very late period clothing, I just wish more of the pictures had loaded for me.

Good luck on the mortgage closing soon. I know how frustrating it is after they have all the documents and then they seem to take forever completing the deal.