One of my goals for 2016 was to draw ten historical paper dolls. I confess I am far from achieving that goal and we’re halfway though the year (nearly), so I seriously need to get my act together on this one. So, my goal for the next few days is to buckle down and get some drawing, scanning and finishing done.
We’ll see how that goes.
I have a few days off work and I always start these things with a long list of “goals”, but I fear my plans are often larger than my capacity. Still, I’m out of backlog and nothing is as good as an artist motivation as desperation.
Picking out colors wasn’t very hard, since I seem to always come back to the same ones when it comes to the 1300s. I blame it on medieval manuscripts I have seen. I always think of the 14th century was being red and blue and gold.
Sterotypical, perhaps, but none the less. There we are.
Between my new 1300s Buxom and Bodacious paper doll, my viking paper doll, and my Cranach paper doll, we’re starting to get a pretty nice set of early Western Fashions. I keep promising myself I’ll do one from a decade of the 19th century, but I can’t pick one. So, 19th century B&B series suggestions would be welcomed.
Last week, we got to see my mid-1300s paper doll set in black and white. This week, here she is in color. Historical printable paper dolls always make me a little nervous. In inevitably, choices have to be made about what to include or not include and how to render a period’s fashion. These choices are easier the more you know about the period and harder the less you know. One of the reasons I often turn to Medieval inspired or Renaissance inspired rather than actual historical paper dolls is the knowledge that I don’t know enough to always make appropriate choices.
What I am not comfortable doing is always trusting the many sites out there that don’t cite their sources with enough detail to actually find the material if you needed it or want to confirm it’s authenticity. While I love the internet, I find that I don’t use it that much when I am doing this sort of research. I seem to fall back on my library training and rely on reputable secondary sources published in scholars with names in the field, backed up my own knowledge of solid collections of digitized medieval manuscripts where I can dig for source images, plus a few tumblers and blogs that seem to know what they are doing.
And this method worked great until I got down the problem of color. Now, I always think of the 1300s as being richly red and blue and gold, because those are colors I have seen in medieval manuscripts. Just because, however, they made a dress red in a book doesn’t mean the dress was commonly red in real life. Pigments used for illumination aren’t the same a pigments used for dyeing cloth and medieval art is heavy on analogy and symbolism.
What I really didn’t want to do was do a ton a research on natural dye processes, because a lot of people have written a lot on the topic. Textile fragments like this one, an incredible velvet cope or this equally amazing cope from the V&A Collections proved to me that colors were rich in the 1300 hundreds. So, I used those images along with this Medieval Colors article from Aux Mailles Godefroy. The resulting colors are a little more muted than was probably possible in the 1300s, but I just couldn’t get over my preconceived notions of muted tones despite seeing examples of bright yellows produced with natural dyes. The truth is that both linen and wool, common fabrics in the 1300s, take dye really well. The world was likely a lot more vibrant than my preconceived notions of history suggest.
By the way, most of my primary and secondary sources for this paper doll set are listed on the black and white version. It was a long list and I didn’t want to repeat it here. So go check that out, if you want to see what I used to create my mid-1300’s paper doll.
Today’s printable paper doll is from the mid-1300s when set in sleeves came into existence and fashion was all about layers and hanging strips of fabric off sleeves called “tibbets.”
There are topics upon which I can speak authoritatively and there are topics where I know basically nothing. I would say that I am fairly knowledgeable about certain periods of Western dress, but there are others that are beyond me. As someone who just isn’t that into the medieval period in Europe (though it is growing on me), I have never spent much time doing research. After last years adventures in the 10th century, I knew I wanted to explore some more early periods and the 1300s seemed like a smart choice.
I settled on the 14th century (or the 1300s), because I’ve been wanting to illustrate that period ever since I stumbled across the entire Roman d’Alexandre digitized from the Bodleian Library which is full of illustrations of ladies in fashionable dress. As I usually do, I cobbled together my decisions about this paper doll from a variety of secondary and primary sources. One website that deserves a shout-out is Illumanu which not only posts manuscript images, actually cites them properly. Makes the librarian in me so happy.
A few specific choices I should note. The pattern on the sidecut surcoat was from Romance of Alexander from the Bodlein Library. The far left dress is based on this casket lid from the Met and the Romance of Alexander from the Bodlein Library folio 181 verso. The green dress on the far left seems to have buttons down the front and hanging sleeves. The other two gowns are mixtures of literally dozens of primary and secondary sources. You can check out below some of the sources I used.
The stockings are scrunched below the knee. I wasn’t able to find any records of garters being worn in the 1300s. The shoes are both from Stepping through Time: Archaeological Footwear from Prehistoric times until 1800 which I would totally buy if I could find it for a reasonable price. I also designed a new face for this paper doll. I like it a lot, so it might become a regular member of the family. I haven’t decided yet. What do you all think?
