Dressing the Part

So, as I mentioned in my last post, I am being elevated to the Order of the Laurel (the SCA’s highest award for Arts and Sciences).  My elevation is happening in December.

Traditionally, one makes or has made new clothes when one gets elevated.  Currently, Duchess Aislinn, the most recent member of the Laurel before my announcement, is working on a dress for me.  It’s based off this late 14th century style:

From a Tacuinim Sanitatis manuscript from Lombardy, late 14th c.

Right now, I think we are just dagging the sleeves, not the bottom.  The gown will be a a soft, sage tone green fulled wool, with a vivid blue silk lining in the sleeves.

I have an sleeveless undergown that I am going to make some pinner sleeves for that is supportive, and an shift.

I am also working on making new stockings and shoes.

Not sure yet what I am doing with my hair.

P is for Persona Development

I currently have a lot of projects on a lot of burners (ha ha, cook humor).  But one thing I found myself thinking about lately was medieval mindset, particularly Aline’s medieval mindset.  Bear with me, I am going to get a wee bit philosophical here.

Rebecca, modern, every day Rebecca, has some pretty specific values, goals, and mores.  I wasn’t raised into a specific religious tradition beyond vaguely Judeo-Christian “Do unto others” (my parents are a lapsed Catholic and a Humanistic atheist), and I admit to not having the best exposure to a culture of organized religion.  I generally classify myself as a Deist with Christian leanings.

Aline, however, would have been very tied to her faith and its cultural effects on daily life.  She would have been raised within the church.  If she was educated, it likely would have been at a convent.  The rituals and expectations would have been a living, breathing thing for her.

All of that came home a little last year when the husband and I were gallivanting around Italy, visiting gorgeous period churches and seeing relics as venerated today as they were in the Middle Ages.  For example, this lovely lady is Santa Zita, the patron saint of domestic servants and maids.  Don’t let her dress fool you, she’s had some wardrobe updates.  Zita died in 1272 in Lucca and was canonized formally four centuries later.  In that four hundred year gap, she became part of a popular cult that spread through Europe.  English born Aline would have known her as Saint Sitha.

So, how to remedy this disconnect between what I know and what Aline should?  Time to read more about it.  So for the next few months, I am going to work on reading one book a month on religion in period, and as much as possible, the 14th century.  I am a little flexible on exact dates and locations, since Aline was married off by the Black Prince to one of his favorite German mercenaries, so she is perhaps wider traveled than your standard lady.

First up, I am taking a crack at Robert Bartlett’s Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshipers from the Martyrs to Reformation.  I am also looking at the period Saint’s Calendar here and here and will be reading up on the lives of the saints celebrated that day.

If you have a book you think I should read, please feel free to drop me a note in the comments, or at alineswynbrook@yahoo.com

KAS Project 2: 14th Century Lenten Meal Boogaloo

Sorry, I really couldn’t help myself.

So, for project number two in our 14th century Italian odyssey, I will be doing a food entry, since cooking is my primary emphasis area.  Since it appear Kingdom A&S is going to stay on it’s current calendar date, and it falls in the middle of Lent, I am going to tackle a course for a lenten meal from 14th century Italian cooking texts.

There are currently two English language translations of works, here and here.  I am comparing both, and will be poking at the original Italian as well.

 

So far, I am looking at the following dishes:

A dish of chickpeas for lent.

Lasagne with Walnuts

Cisame, a sweet and sour fish dish

Leeks in Lent

Lenten Apple Fritters

I will be working on redactions in the next month or so, moving forward. 

 

Clothes fit for a Hound…

So project the first that I am working on for this coming 2014 Calontir Kingdom A&S competition is the burial garments of Cangrande I della Scala, the lord Imperial Vicar of Verona and much of the surrounding countryside.  Cangrande is an interesting figure for a number of reasons.

• His birth name was Francesco, but he became as Cangrande, or Big Dog, both in homage to his uncle who was known as Mastino, and due to his being a pretty serious badass.
  

  By WikiCommons user Eggbread.

• He is one of the few people in the Italian Middle Ages and Renaissance whose legends tell of their tragic deaths by poison to have actually, honest to Jesus been poisoned.  At the time, Cangrande had just finally captured the city of Treviso, long the hold out in his conquest of northern Italy.  It is reported that he had drunk from a polluted spring, and sickened on entering the city.  He died a few days later in July of 1328.  At the time, his successor, and nephew, Mastino II, had the physician who attended him hung, though out of actual suspicion of the physician’s guilt or from his own duplicity, no one knows.  What we do know is that upon an autopsy done in 2004 by Italian scientists, they found he suffered from mild psoriasis of the liver (common due to a high fat and wine based diet of that age), miner’s lung (common in a time before chimneys were common and charcoal was burned in braziers for heat and light) and a ridiculously large dose of belladonna, also known as digitalis, which would be indicative of nothing other than poisoning.
  

  Gino Fornaciari from WikiCommons.

• When he died, he was buried in a magnificent tomb, which in addition to being an architectural and artistic marvel, kept his body preserved in such a way that most of his grave garments survived.

Photo by Lo Scaligero from WikiCommons, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tomba_Cangrande_VR.jpg

So what I will be doing is his over tunic (and possibly an under tunic) and definitely his hat.  He also had an awesome mantle, but we are on a budget, so that will have to be a wait and see.

If you want to know more about Cangrande, wikipedia has a nice article on him here.

I also recommend the fiction series starting with The Master of Verona, by David Blixt.  Its well research, and well written, and weaves history and fiction gloriously.

Stay tuned for our next installment, when we will talk about patterns, and look at some period art that gives a visual to garments that appear to be similar in style to the patterns developed based on the existent pieces.

143 Days until Kingdom A&S

Ciao, Bellas!