hrj

More books bought at Kalamazoo last year. I really do need to rein in my purchasing.

Owen-Crocker, Gale, Elizabeth Coatsworth & Maria Hayward eds. 2012. Encyclopedia of Dress and Textiles in the British Isles c. 450-1450. Brill, Leiden. ISBN 978-90-04-124356

OK, so frankly, this is an "I have more money than sense" purchase because reference works of this sort were always intended for libraries, not for private individuals. Encyclopedic in structure, there are entries for everything from "Accessories" (actually a cross-reference to various types) to "York". Each entry lists relevant primary sources and references. It's hard to evaluation the scope of coverage without using it to try to look up a variety of specific topics. Maybe I just have odd tastes, but the first few random items I tried to look up don't seem to be covered. (For example, there's an entry for "Bologna cope" but not for "breeches".) But there's a wealth of detail and a lot of interesting trivia. (Did you know that "harlot" was a name of a type of hose?)

Gleba, Margarita & Ulla Mannering, eds. 2012. Textiles and Textile Production in Europe: From Prehistory to AD 400. Oxbow Books, Oxford. ISBN 978-1-84217-463-0

So as you already know, I'm a total sucker for textile archaeology publications. This is a massive, profusely-illustrated work surveying the state of knowledge about textile production, based largely on physical finds, organized geographically and by era. Lots of pictures of surviving textiles with figures clarifying structure or showing production methods. The book has 470 pages and most pages have one or more photos or diagrams. References to specific finds are representative rather than exhaustive, but there were any number of sites and artifacts I hadn't run across before, alongside a number of old friends. Like most of the larger reference books, this isn't aimed at the average book-buyer, but if (like me) you really get into the whole surviving textile finds thing, you might check it out.

Hayward, Maria & Philip Ward, eds. 2012. The Inventory of King Henry VIII - Volume II Textiles and Dress. Harvey Miller Publishers for The Society of Antiquaries of London. ISBN 978-1-905375-42-4

This is the second book in a massive series detailing and analyzing the inventories of Henry VIII's possessions at the time of this death. (Vol. I, the transcript, was published in 1998 and two more volumes are forthcoming, covering military equipment and "decorative args and everyday objects".) This work not only presents a thematic treatment of the textile-related objects in the inventory, but includes pictures or drawings either of the objects themselves (if they survive) or of similar ones. Chapters cover: tapestries, clothing, tents, carpets and table coverings, embroideries, table and bed linens, economics and luxury textiles, ecclesiastical items, and furs. The serious researcher will, of course, want to use this in combination with the full inventory text. I'm not that serious; I just want to look at the pretty pictures. (Ok, so that's not quite true.) This is for the serious Henrician completest or for people like me who just like buying books about historic textiles.

Postles, Dave. 2007. The North through its Names: A Phenomenology of Medieval and Early-modern Northern England. (English Surnames Society Volume 8) Oxbow Books, Oxford. ISBN 978-1-84217-176-9

Aspects of personal names that are specific to, or characteristic of, the north of England. You can tell I'm getting sleepy because the reviews are getting shorter.

Davidson, Clifford. 2001. Gesture in Medieval Drama and Art. Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University. ISBN 1-58044-029-0

OK, you're going to laugh, but once again I picked this up as background research for my fiction writing. Not because I plan to write about medieval drama, but because I pay a lot of attention to characters' body language and gestural expression. And understanding what gestures were used for what communicative purposes gives me a window into how to develop characterization through (described) gesture that situates medieval characters into their setting. (One of these days when I get back to writing actual medieval novels.) The data comes from stage directions in the medieval plays as well as artistic depictions of similar scenes/events.