Houppelande Planning, choosing a better fabric.

In my previous post I talked about how the original fabric I had been saving for this Houppelande was just not longer viable.  So I chose a plain weave 100% silk velvet instead. 

I was inspired by this extant velvet piece for it's color, and the embroidery shows it would have been a high status color. 

Velvet fragment Milan Italy 1385-1402

So why was velvet used?  

Well at the end of the 14th century Velvet and silk production in general exploded due to several factors. 

The increasing contact with the Arabic world had grown, bringing new trade, ideas, people and skills to Europe. Italian merchants had established trade relations with the Mongol empire in the 13th century and then settled into major cities throughout western Europe.

The black plague signficantly shifted dynamic of industry, allowing people to have more disposable income and creating a high demand for luxuries and exotic products. High Fashion became a mind set for the nobility and growing merchant class, and so was very lucrative. 

In Lucca, Italy Silk artisans relocated from after the black plague. And many new regions incouraged emigration of these highly skilled weavers, offering incentives so they too could be able to profit in the demand for silk. 

The raw silk was being grown and spun more as it had become more lucrative, increasing it's availability. 

 

Velvet production was a highly specialized and time consuming process, raw silk was imported, then spun. To weave velvet needed a highly skilled worker on narrow looms, and a lot of tiny rods to create loops in the fabric, which then would be cut. A skilled worker could produce around 25cm of 60cm wide plain velvet fabric a day, and often it would take an entire year to produce 60 meters of velvet cloth of gold. 

Velvet was then often dyed in expensive dyes, creating many vibrant or deeply saturated hues. Kermes dye being the most expensive and producing bright vivid reds. 

Then velvet was then exported throughout Europe via the Italian trade merchants who were already established in the major cities, especially my focus, Paris. 

Velvet also needs special skills to handle it. It's delicate, has a strong bias stretch and fraying easily,  has a nap that is easily crushed by ironing, creases or improper storage. Mistakes in seams easily damage the fabric, and it also dosn't handle pressure well, and needs careful consideration for the lining. 

So of course Velvet became the high status fabric for those who could afford it at the end of the 14th century. 

But due to the nature of the fabric it doesn't work well for highly fitted cottes that were the it fashion. So velvet became the material used for travelers robes and the fanciest Houppelandes. 

There are many examples of velvet Houppelandes in the inventories of this time. 

The extant Houppelande of John of Gorlizt was created in 1396 out of black (originally) silk velvet for his sudden death. 

See the translated article by Charles de Bourbon, or my pinterest board for more in depth information about this. More about the details of this in later posts.

I'm choosing the velvet because of the status it would had in period, because the extant Houppelande is velvet, because there are inventory entries abound for velvet Houppelandes, because the visual representation shows draping like velvet in most of the court spaces. 

But also because of it's own particular challenges with working with it. 

One such challenge is that period velvets had a dense weave which provided a bit of structure. However modern silk velvets have a chiffon ground, which makes them lighter, gives a lot of fluidity, and bias stretch to the fabric.  So I am choosing to interline the silk velvet with a 2.8oz linen. The linen will allow for embroidery while also to help achieve the period characteristics of velvet.  

This velvet also changes colors signficantly in different lighting.  From crimson to magenta! 

Burn test confirms it is 100% silk.

I chose the color because it's one of my favorites, because it's high status when the fabric is lacking some of the other decorative elements, and because I enjoyed the deep dive into studying kermes. 

Here is a pinterest board of extant red purple extant fabrics. 

Some more sources too

Silk and Patronage pdf 

The last velvet merchant of Venice

Cloth and Clothing in Mediaeval Europe, Essays in memory of professor E.M. Carus-Wilson 

• Cloth merchants' inventories in Dijion in the fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, Françoise Piponnier 
• Cloth in Medieval Literature of Western Europe, Raymond van Uytven
• The Chemistry of Red Dyestuffs in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Judith H. Hofenk-De Graaff
• The Medieval Scarlett and the Economics of Sartorial Splendor, John H. Munro

The development of the Florentine silk industry: a positive response to the crisis of the fourteenth century, Sergio Tognetti 2005, Journal of Medieval History

Burns, E. Jane. Sea of silk: A textile geography of women’s work in medieval French literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

Crowfoot, Elisabeth Grace, Frances Pritchard, and Kay Staniland. Textiles and clothing, c. 1150-1450. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2001.

Ertl, Thomas, and Barbara Karl. Inventories of textiles - textiles in inventories: Studies on Late medieval and early modern material culture. V & R unipress, Vienna University Press, 2017.

Farmer, Sharon A. The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris: Artisanal migration, technological innovation, and gendered experience. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.

Monnas, Lisa. Merchants, princes and painters: Silk fabrics in Italian and northern paintings, 1300-1550. New Haven Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008.

Monnas, Lisa. Renaissance velvets. London: V & A Publishing, 2012.

Ferrand, Guilhem, and Jean-Pierre Garcia. Les inventaires après décès de la Ville de Dijon À la fin du moyen age: 1390-1459. Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Midi, 2017.

R.C. Famiglietti, Tales of the Marriage Bed from Medieval France 1300-1500, Picardy Press 1992

Scott, Margaret. A visual history of costume: The Fourteenth & Fifteenth centuries. London: B.T. Batsford, 1986.

Scott, Margaret. Fashion in the Middle Ages. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011.

Scott, Margaret. Late Gothic Europe, 1400-1500. London, 1980.

Scott, Margaret. Medieval clothing and costumes: Wealth and class in Medieval Times. New York, NY: Rosen Pub. Group, 2004.

Scott, Margaret. Medieval Dress & Fashion. London: British Library, 2009.

Snyder., Désirée G. Koslin, Janet E. Encountering medieval textiles and dress. Palgrave Macmillan US, 2002.

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES ·10· Edited by Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker

• Clothing Distrained for Debt in the Court of Merchants of Lucca in the Late Fourteenth Century / Christine Meek 97