In the past, my argument for the use of linen for clothing was the Tacuinum Sanaitatis, where it recommends linen clothing for summer and the south, where it's hot. If that's my argument, shouldn't that also apply to overgowns? I mean, it does't specify -which- garments should be made of linen, it just says "clothing".

I know people will be asking for linen overgowns, and honestly I may want one for myself because it's so bloody hot out here in CA. I'd like to know other people's opinions before I decide one way or the other. The days when I make/sell/do things that I know are wrong (like coifs! God how I regret perpetrating that myth!! ) are over, and I won't make them if the weight of evidence is against them. However, there is this reference, so I don't know what to think.

Any considered opinion welcome!

Thanks-

The Tacuinum of Paris
The Tacuinum of Vienna
The Theatrum of the Casanatense Library
The Tacuinum of Rouen or a different one?

Does the info come from one that is decidely Italian or one from Northern Europe?

[ 06-12-2005: Message edited by: Fire Stryker ]

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I'm not going to argue for the historiocity of linnen outer garments because I don't believe it was done in the Low Countries or England which is what most of us portray. But I have two arguements for why you as a merchant should consider carrying them anyways, although you might want to put the caveat somewhere on your website.

Firstly in general the climate in the northern hemisphere is warmer today then it was 500 or so years ago. Many historians believe it was actually unusually cold compared to the warmer period of the viking era. So its warmer today in the same locations then in the time we re-enact in the same locations, so it is not surprising that we are looking for ways to be cooler. Although it would help if we wore more clothing in our regular lives like our anscestors did, as we would be more used to it.

Secondly for the American audience. We generally live further south than our European counterparts and many of us who live east of the west coast have more severe winters and sometimes summers than most places on the same lattitude in Europe. I've compared average monthly temperatures from all over the North America and Europe trying to find good comparisons and its just part of life. I did finally find someplace that had somewhat similar temps to central Texas in only one city and that was Seville. Seville has a slightly milder spring.

So as an authenticist I would say I'd want serious evidence before turning over the piles and piles of wool and other materials we can show. But as a buisness person looking at the market I would sell them in linnen with a note saying that we offer them but have not found much evidence of these garments being made in linnen.

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Let me play devil's advocate for a moment and spin this thread out a bit longer by asking this question-

How would the authenticity officers for the "Big 5" groups respond to linen overgowns? Are they going to buy your argument and allow them, or are they going to say they can't be used with the group? Would a lightweight silk be a better [more historical] alternative than linen?

Gwen

if i may add my own two bits. our "small" group is based in south FL. it gets pretty hot and very muggy here pretty much all year round. however, most of the time when we play in our clothes we tend to either be further north, i.e a couple weekends ago in Athens, GA or do so in our winter months. our men wear all woolen hose, doublet, and gowns/coats, liveries, etc. linen and fustian is allowed for jacks and arming doublets. we do w/o the gowns some of the time and you see us with our hose rolled down and our doublets tied round the waist. the women have gotten away with having their kirtles made out of linen in the past. however their gowns have been made from wool.

i had one lady buy a kirtle from you earlier this year in linen, Kimberly Bueno. she said she spoke with you for a while about sizing and body shapes and you were a great help. i never got a chance to thank you by the by. thanks anyways, we're phasinng the linen out entirely out by next year in favor of woolens aswell. she's an exception because she suffers easily from heat stroke.

as a rule of thumb, our group just dresses down when it's too hot and layers up when its wetter and colder. i wouldn't allow a linen gown just because it's too hot to wear wool in south FL.

thanks,

daniel

[ 06-13-2005: Message edited by: LHF ]

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Db

I would like to hear all sides, so thanks for your take on it. As I understand it, you completely ignore or discount the Tacuinum Sanitatis?

Since I'm now in the same room with my copy, here's what it says:

XLVII. Linen Clothing (Vestis Linea)
Nature: Cold and dry in the second degree. Optimum: The light, splendid, beautiful kind. Usefulness: It moderates the heat of the body. Dangers: It presses down on the skin and blocks transpiration. Neutralization of the dangers: By mixing it with silk. Effects: It dries up ulcerations. It is primarily good for hot temperments, for the young, in Summer, and in the Southern regions. (Vienna,f.105v)

Edited to add- You say you "dress down when it's hotter and layer up when it's colder". How does that figure into your scenarios? How do you handle it when it's 100*, 100% humidity, yet you want to have fully attired ladies and gentlemen of rank in attendance? Do you judge it better to have "ladies" walking around in their undergowns rather than having all the layers made of a lighter fabric?

Gwen

For our friends in Florida, we'd allow Linen due to heat considerations. Though we'd prefer a more [historic] for our focus.

It's been my experience, that silk can get quite warm too, but your talking about a blend yes?

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Jenn, no, I wasn't talking about a blend for any of it. I don't make silk garments because I hate the nasty stuff! *shudder*

So by your comments I take it you think linen overgarments are non-historic as well? I've had this sort of conversation with reenactors before, and it's interesting that I seem to be the only one I know who even considers what the TS says; everyone else pretty much discounts it, and I don't know why. It seems to me to be another piece to the puzzle, so I weigh it into the body of evidence.

Going back to you Brent, there are lots of references to fustian doublets in the inventories, from fancy dress doublets to "dubblets off fense", so I think that issue is pretty well covered. Thanks for bringing it up, since fustian is a linen/cotton blend.

I don't have enough info to make an informed opinion regarding whether it was done historically, but it strikes me that a lot of the documents are Eastern (Arabic) /Italian in origin. How does that translate to England and Northern Europe? Are there any Northern European accounts that discuss outer garments using linen or being linen?

I think, however, that should not stop you from offering the choice for folks who live in warmer climates or offer it in a decidely Italian style unless something can be found for Burgundy/England.

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So really light weight woolen outer garments will allow you to wear them that little bit longer before dressing down to the underwear. Perhaps this is what people need and want?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ginevra:
How would the authenticity officers for the "Big 5" groups respond to linen overgowns? Are they going to buy your argument and allow them, or are they going to say they can't be used with the group? Would a lightweight silk be a better [more historical] alternative than linen?

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This would be the province of our standards board, but I highly suspect we wouldn't allow them. We're English, and as Brent says, the weather in England in our period was cooler than now, so it's near-certain that there wouldn't be occasion for our people to wear linen outergarments. Lightweight wools are available, and we're using them, but not linen for anything but undergarments. We'll continue our current practice of dealing with the temperature anachronism by avoiding mid-summer events and sweating like horses when we must - suffering for our art.

Plus, we've started fur-lining outer gowns.

(PS - I wish I could wear my linen doublet!)

[ 06-13-2005: Message edited by: Jeff Johnson ]

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Were all upper garments lined?

Do we assume that only one set of heavy clothes was worn all year?

What is fustian? I have seen it mentioned as a wool/linen mix and heard of it as a linen/cotton mix.

People were wearing 'uncomfortable' clothes for as long as we can remember due to social pressures.
This is a slight challenge to the idea of automatic dressing down if the weather got hot. Look at Italian pics and people are still mostly fully clothed and hatted.

And hats, they retain heat, even the smallest and lightest, and hats only ceased beign general items of clothing some 60 years back, regardless of climate.

It is too simple an argument IMHO to merel ysay that if hot the clothes come off, people put up with all kinds of discomfort depending on the situation. Or more precisely people get used to it.

I suspect it is more a case of lighter weight garments rather than the materials per se.

As for peasants, you tend to see shifted peasants only at work not out of the field, so even then the context can be seen to be quite rigid.

Still doesn't answer question about linen clothes.

Arming doublets, jacks were, so what about normal items like doublets?????

Where is Dave Key when you need him?

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i'm not put off. had the some big wigs at work today and couldn't get any time at my desk. it'll be easier if i break your questions up.

firstly i'm not trying to discount the Tacuinum. believe me this is somethinng that we've debated in our group "cuz it sho is hot in the ole swamp!" the thing is that we try to portray people in either england or the low cuntries. i've interpreted the sothern regions to be the mediterranean basin. we went back and forth for a bit about this and decided that as an outer garment such as a gown, linen would not make sense. it would not protect much from the elements.

quote:

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How do you handle it when it's 100*, 100% humidity

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that's easy, we just don't really have any events. today drivng home i watch the ambient temp gauge on my car rise into the 100's as i sat in traffic. that is why our dressed event here in south FL are one in Nov, another in Feb and a third in March. the two events closer to summer, memorial day and labor day, are both in GA. so far mother nature has been kind and the temp has only soared into the mid 80's with averages in the 70's.

quote:

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yet you want to have fully attired ladies and gentlemen of rank in attendance

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we just don't have anyone of rank in our group. this is where we kinda "twist" history and why i still concider our group young because we're still working out our growing pains. however, it kept away everyone wanting to be a knight, esquire, space mercernary captain you get the picture. by keeping our portrayals to the lower middling it made it possible for all of our members to afford thier portrayals, sit at the same table for dinner, and be able to dress down when it came time for work.

out of curiosity, i too have come across several fustian shelled doublets in inventories. however, i haven't had much luck with kirtles. anyone out there have any luck?

daniel

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Db

Ignoring the geographical direction ([good for] the southern regions), where does the advice "It is primarily good for hot temperments, for the young, in Summer..." fit into the equasion? Isn't this an extension of the total "humoral theory" Big Picture?

So the textual arguement is weak without knowing how close to the original the translation is.

The strongest arguement that can be made in regards to linnen and clothing is to look at all 4 manuscripts and see what kinds of garments are being associated with linnen visually. But even then you have the problem of being depicted being the common uses of linnen and not necisarily all the uses.

Brent

I think Jeff covered Grey's thoughts pretty well. We're moving away from linen on almost all outer garments, so I can say with 99% certainty that we wouldn't want people wearing it for a gown.

We only have one woman with a completed gown right now, anyway...

For SCA marketing, I'd say that you might as well. Of course, with the caveat... I've talked to a lot of SCAdians lately who are very eager to know the actual reasoning behind the authenticity of a garment offered by any merchant.

Brent, I agree about the translation, I'd like to see the original and make sure it was translated correctly. However, but I don't agree with you regarding the Middle Eastern perspective. Kabalah is an ancient mystic religion, but plenty of 21st C. people have embraced it completely. Based on medical treatises and cookbooks of the period, it is pretty certain that humoral theory (i.e. the "nature" things from food to clothing and sexual activity and their/its affect on the body/health) rooted in the TS was enthusiastically embraced by some medieval people. Why would the humoral theory contained in the TS apply to food and its consumption but not to clothing?

There are a number of extant versions of the TS. Scholars feel it was at least as popular and widely distributed among "educated" people as other works such as the Decameron. Humoral theory seems to have been a popular fad, much like the current Atkins/South Beach diet craze. If a group is serving food based on the guidelines of humoral theory, why wouldn't they adhere to the dress ethics prescribed in the same document?

I've seen some small references here and there, I think we've discussed them all at length before. Most of the references I'm aware of are either to "exceptions", or to lower class people, or to underwear, or to white linen, or are vague, etc. I personally prefer a lightweight wool for all of my layers except underwear, because I'm more certain about it, and I tend to think that if dyed linen was used as a non-underwear layer, it likely would have still been the first layer, not likely the gown over top. I'm just not sure that it would drape and look quite right, either.

Like I said though, so much of it is personal choice. For myself, I choose wool. (As does the rest of Greys) I would imagine that so much more of the market is considerably less picky. That said, I think I'd rather see people choose a linen gown than a gown made out of their poly couch fabric.

Everybody's reasoning/opinions/positions is/are very interesting.

The short answer: Wool is preferred, but MoW has in the past and probably would in the future allow a linen kirtle for hot events.I think a lightweight tropical wool would not really be much hotter than linen, tho.

I'm almost positive that the vast majority of people going to, say, Pennsic, would choose a linen gown over a wool gown, simply because they associate wool->too hot.

The real question:
The main convincing factor for me is the coloration/dyes of garments. Outer garments are almost always represented as being dyed, while smocks, etc, are white. There is clear evidence for the bleaching of linen, IIRC, but I have never seen anything referring to dyed linen. Not that linen can't be dyed - but it is more expensive than dyeing wool, uses more dyestuffs/chemicals, and the color is not very light or wash-fast and not as deep as on wool. I have noticed considerable fading on linen garments which are dyed with modern dyes after relatively little use.

OTOH, what evidence is there for woolen garments? Inventory lists describing garments as being made of wool....what else?

quote:

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Originally posted by Nikki:

The real question:
The main convincing factor for me is the coloration/dyes of garments. Outer garments are almost always represented as being dyed, while smocks, etc, are white. There is clear evidence for the bleaching of linen, IIRC, but I have never seen anything referring to dyed linen. Not that linen can't be dyed - but it is more expensive than dyeing wool, uses more dyestuffs/chemicals, and the color is not very light or wash-fast and not as deep as on wool. I have noticed considerable fading on linen garments which are dyed with modern dyes after relatively little use.

OTOH, what evidence is there for woolen garments? Inventory lists describing garments as being made of wool....what else?

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This fits in very well with the few references that I've found. For example, even the associated illustration with the Tacuinum reference shows the ladies cutting through white fabric. One of my other examples is some text from Boccacio, referenced in Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince, of some young girls, wearing dresses of snowy white linen, tight through the hips, then falling like tents to their feet. Any other references that I'm aware of don't mention color at all.

It's not a 15th century group, but La Belle Compagnie currently allows linen for the first layer, but not for the gown. I believe that some of their members are starting to switch to lightweight wool for their underdresses.

What evidence? As far as I know, there's little to no material evidence for the mid-late 15th century, for England, France, or the low countries. I'd love it if somebody could make a liar out of me... Of course, there's the wool garments found in centuries before, Bocksten, Herjolfsnes, London, etc. Then there's pictures. Maybe I'm stretching it, but the gowns just seem *heavy* in the more detailed illustrations. The drape, the folds, etc, seem like they'd be impossible with something other than a heavy wool, velvet, or something else of a similar weight. I don't even think that I'd use a lightweight wool for one of the gowns. In addition, most of the time when we see under the hem of one of these overgowns, the lining looks like fur. There's a couple of examples where the collar is decidedly NOT fur, but the fur seems more common. a) there's no advantage to using fur under linen and b) I don't think linen would hold up to fur and the associated heavy interlining very well.

Edited to add a disclaimer - I only feel comfortable making this kind of generalization on women's garments...

Different climate - but then again, that's why we avoid summer events. That said, last year at MTT it was stinking hot, but Kass wore her heavy wool gown all day. I couldn't have handled it - I think it helps if you're thin.

Though, if you do offer linen *sigh* it'll just be one more thing for people to accuse us of being snobby about...

Funny, I've been looking at René and thinking the gowns would have to have been made out of something really thin and light to drape the way they're depicted.

It's all a matter of interpretation I suppose.