Leather Pouches

We appear to have some prototype pouches, though we're still playing around with ideas for the basic shape and insides. These are without compartments, but I'm still relatively keen on the idea of having a slot against the back wall of the pouch for character cards and the like (or out of character stuff, if you're so inclined).

We're consciously trying to step away from standard medieval/renaissance fantasy designs and dabbling in something different. The one on the left is based on a stylised lamassu (winged lion of Mesopotamian mythology) and the one of the right is the Raven stealing the sun.

It is likely that the next batch may wander back towards more classically fantastical designs, but we felt this was a worthwhile foray. The vambraces, however splendidly tooled, haven't sold that well over the last six months, so we're wary of getting too many of these in. That said, we do need some prototypes to at least show what we can do.

Also, Happy New Year!

Return of the Mercenary, Sheer Opulence from the Embroiderers and Some Books

I've again found myself neglecting the blog (and emails! Sorry!) but I am back again, with news and photos and costumes.

The rather magnificent green and silver frock coat to the right is one of the new prototypes we've been working on. The Embroiderers seem to have outdone themselves (though in a tragic twist of fate, they have gone out of business, but their machines - along with all the backups - have been bought up by a new company of embroiderers, so we're still in the game). We're still debating whether or not ornamental buttons should be added to the garment (it closes with hooks and eyes). There are vague plans for the embroidery to appear on other garments and new iterations of the embroidered tailcoat from last year are in the pipeline.

There's another dubiously amusing story of mistakes in colours of thread used, but I'll save that for another day. Suffice to say, if you're in the market for a cut price embroidered doublet, it may soon be your day.

Profound Decisions's Empire is glinting at us on the horizon, and at some point, when more information is available, I intend to do sketches for it (like I did Odyssey). But despite all the speculation, there's really a distinct lack of concrete detail to build costumes from. I've heard things like BBC's Merlin and Camelot being cited as potential sources of inspiration, and the word "coolthentic" has been making its rounds, but it's not quite enough to start me drawing. I want the garments to feel like they are grounded in the culture they are supposedly from (even if I'm building an outfit from tat I already own) and I'm not sure I can quite envision it yet.

I've also managed to raid Hilde Bede College's library back when they were renovating earlier this year, so I am sitting on a small mountain of costume books (though many of them are admittedly ancient and in some ways quite outdated in their research). Flicking through them has been very exciting and maybe eventually some of the new sketches inspired from them will make it onto the blog.

I've been indulging in the simple joy of flicking through all the pretty pictures on the various tumblrs on historical clothing, including Dames a la Mode (fashion plates), OMG that Dress, Impersonating History, Costume Reference (does what it says on the tin), The Ornamented Being (pretty things, mostly Victorian) and My Lovely Petticoat. Especially with the tumblrs with an interest in extant clothing, it gets all terribly modern at times (my interest begins to wane once we hit the 1900s), but it's been an interesting pictorial journey.

In other, other news, I've been playing about with Doll Divine's Tudor Scene Maker. It has an utterly mind-boggling number of options and layers to fiddle about with.

Portraits and Costumes: Henry VIII and Wives

It seems to be a thing that every other historical attraction with an empty room and a tenuous connection to the infamous Henry VIII will have a display of him and his six wives. Or it may simply seem so as I've seen three such arrangements (Warwick Castle; Hever Castle; Hampton Court), two of them in the recent past and have been musing on the subject.

The costumes are all clearly taken from iconic portraits, though some details differ. This set of photos are taken at Warwick Castle. The room was quite dark, so I've tweaked the colours and contrasts on these photos for a little more clarity.

Putting the portraits and the photos of the costumes side by side is a tad disappointing. Henry VIII, for example, isn't as insanely wide as his portrait. The lines of the costumes simply aren't as crisp and clean, or as detailed and opulent. All this is perhaps more fault of the portrait than the costume. After all, a portrait is not a photograph and it is hardly the fault of the costume makers that they cannot reproduce the exact idealised world of the portrait. Equally, the budget for the costume probably cannot match that of a Queen of England's. That, and puffed linings are obnoxiously hard to get right in real life.

The challenges reminded me greatly of those faced by cosplayers who want replicate (or in some cases simply evoke) a particular costume that exists only on the page or screen.

On the subject of Tudor portraits, I found this portrait archive particularly comprehensive.

Also, here's an iron capotain. It's awesome. Made all the more amusing to me due to the sheer number of hats that have been worn as "armour" (some with more justification than others) over the years.

More photos of the exhibition and some associated rambling under the cut.

Prototype: Embroidered Tailcoat

Due to the swiftness with which we sold the tailcoat, we never did manage to do photos of this coat beyond running into the garden, hurling the tailcoat on the Proprietor and pointing the camera at him.

The coat is made from a medium weight black wool. Elaborate black embroidery is on the front, cuffs and high collar of the coat. Aside from the tails, the back is plain and dark metal buttons go down the front. The silver faux silk lining has two hidden pockets at the breast.

Looking over the preview of the embroidery, and it really has been significantly more than a week. Many things seem to have gotten in the way. We will reuse the templates of the embroidery, though part of me feels reluctant to do an exactly the same combination of colour and coat shape. Perhaps we can do the silver embroidery on black wool, or perhaps a dark emerald green.

To commission a coat with similar quantities of embroidery from the Mercenary would cost in the region of £120-50.

More photos of the black embroidered tailcoat under the cut.

The Little Frustrations of Costume Research: Museum Websites

Dress Ensemble, 1790
Museum of London

I would be the first to admit that costumes here aren't by any means the most historically accurate. There are various reasons, including accommodating modern tailoring techniques or simply that the originals were designed for heated ballrooms and not open fields. But the Mercenary does do a substantial amount of research into actual historical clothing.

Which leads me into the rant: the numerous frustrations of museum websites.

(Démodé, incidentally, has a extensive list of museums with extant costumes, though be warned as it is not without broken links. The 18th Century Notebook is also excellent, with extracts from the descriptions. I'm contemplating doing an annotated link page, but I suspect it may descend into incoherent irritation.)

I suppose museum websites aren't designed to provide me with an extensive photographic record of each of its items. And perhaps, the logic is that if one could find the item online, one would no longer desire to go to the museum in the first place.

That said, well over half the items I'm examining online are in store and not on display. And truth be told, backs of costumes aren't always visible in exhibits themselves, due to the disadvantages of space and sometimes, an overly creative curator.

Ball Gown, 1785
Victoria and Albert Museum

Phoenix Art Museum, for example, has a beautifully snazzy flash-based website, but it's slow to load, doesn't provide shots of the back and doesn't allow you to save the photos. Kyoto Costume Institute is pretty good (and now supports permanent links to its items) but short of rummaging through the page source, there's no good way of saving the photo (and really, it's easier to scroll up and down to view a large photo that fills your screen than to operate its odd little "magnify" feature).

The Victoria and Albert Museum has an extensive collection of old costumes and some items are wonderfully catalogued with front and back shots (such as this gown and petticoat). However, some, such as this eighteenth century gown have only one closeup shot of the pleats at the back of the bodice. Equally sack back gown is only represented by its sleeve detail. (That intriguing looking ball gown to the right? Only its back is photographed, though admittedly extensively.) I suspect it's because these photos were taken for Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Fashion in Detail and were used to illustrate particular features rather than to document the garment as a whole. Bowes Museum has a lovely collection, but it's still frustrating to only be able to see the front of this two piece bustle dress, when the description intriguingly tells me that it has a skirt with "main fullness at back for bustle." Same can be said about Gemeente Museum Den Haag.

Colonial Williamsburg's eMuseum, on the other hand, has a deeply frustrating search function and I'm still not sure if "category" is synonymous with "highlights from select exhibits" (it doesn't seem like it should be, but otherwise, the only way to gain access to their textiles section is just by guessing what they've catalogued everything as. Not impossible, but tedious.) Also, they don't like photographing things from more than one angle, but I think we've gotten used to that by now.

Ending the rant on a happier note, Chrome's built in Google Translate, incidentally, has been a godsend. It's not that it doesn't give me occasionally baffling phrases (such as "Future Clothing" from the National Museum of Denmark), but it does provide the rudiments for a rummage around the databases.

The Nerd East Photo-post

Nerd East seems an aeon ago, but I've finally found the photos from in the recesses of a memory card. This year for reasons saw me quite a lot more stressed than I'd really have liked to be (despite having had quite a bit of help - who, incidentally are all splendid people). I didn't manage to attend any of the talks, games and workshops, except for the one ran by the Durham University Improvised Comedy Society.

All in all, we sold some stuff and met cool people. All without the great inconvenience of travelling for several hours either end. What more can a mercenary really ask for?

Except, I suppose, a photo of the stall for the blog. And daleks. There were daleks gliding about the floor. It was fantastic and is somewhat inexplicable I can't find any photos of them.

More photos and accompanying ramble under the cut.

Cotton Pierrot Jacket

This pierrot (a close-fitting, low-necked jacket-bodice with short tails)  is made from a black and silver stripped cotton and a grey cotton. It is trimmed in white ribbon. It is modelled after the one of yellow and green taffeta in The Kyoto Costume Institute and this other pierrot at the Metropolitan. These, in theory, in turn inspired this very splendid outfit in The Duchess. There is a rather excellent timeline of women's jackets on marariley.net, which more or less culminates in the pierrot, which were very popular from the mid-1780s through the 1790s.

These jackets were often worn with skirt of lightweight, white "linon", a woven cloth with a high linen-like quality made of thin and delicate cotton. The white skirt in this case is of a cotton-linen mix, but quite coarse in texture.

The choice of the contrasting colours rather makes the pierrot echo the shapes and colours of a men's jacket and waistcoat. 

I'm not really wearing it with the correct underpinnings (or really sufficient petticoats) and ideally, I'd have preferred to wear it with a belt and I was definitely missing the delicate muslin neck scarf to give the outfit greater modesty.

The long-legged nature of these croquis do make short bodice-jackets look very strange. Pillywiggen remarked that the figure looks like she's balanced on top of a giant grey rock. Which wasn't exactly my intention, though in retrospect perhaps is inevitable as M. E. Riley did note that "very full skirt acted as a counter balance to the molded top."

These photos were taken at the Hever Castle Gardens, the fountain pictured being the Millennium Fountain. It was getting rather late in the day (the primary purpose of the visit not being photography, after all, and the exercise largely incidental) and the light does get rather unflattering.

To commission a similar pierrot from the Costume Mercenary would cost in the region of £50-60. 

More photos of the cotton pierrot under the cut.