In the early 15th century, a houppelande was all about extravagance. It was primarily a garment seen in northern Europe, The French Queen Isabeau of Bavaria was a style icon and fashionista, and adopted this style of dress, and so her court and the nobility followed along. The style quickly spread to England, Flanders, Germany, and parts of northern Italy.
No matter your class, you would have strived to get the best materials available for this fashion garment. Expensive fabric that requires special handling in a complex pattern to best bring out the drape and natural pleating. Big sleeves draping on the ground, embroidered with gold and precious stones. Showy linings of silk, imported furs or even both!
In the case of a court garment, particularly one in the style I am attempting to recreate, this would have taken many many steps. It also a garment that is very international in nature
Silk Velvet was the in vouge fabric for these extravagant garments. Velvet at this point was produced in several places in Italy, most prominently in Venice, but also Lucca, Florence, and Milan.
However the silk worm didn't grow in Europe, Silk worms native habitat was mulberry trees located in China and India. Silk cocoons would be harvested and the shipped via the silk road to eastern Mediterranean ports, before arriving at the coastal port towns of Italy.
Many women would earn a living off of spinning fibres into useable threads.
Even a simple plain velvet was highly labor intensive. A task that required precision of weaving extremely fine thread around removeable rods, and then cutting the loops to form the velvet pile. The width of velvet was limited to 55 to 60cm. A silked velvet weaver could only produce about 26cm or 1 foot of velvet per day. A velvet containing gold, intricate patterns, or multiple heights of pile would take two workers to produce a handful of centimeters a day. A typical houppelande of 12-16 yards or more, would take months to weave. Velvet weavers were considered master craftsmen, and would earn 4 to 5p per day enjoying what would be considered a middle class lifestyle.
If one could not afford silk for a houppelande another common choice was fine woolens that often were imported from Flanders or Brussels, and made of the finest English wool.
Unlike today, what color a garment was deeply indicative of it's worth. Before synthetic dyes, dying was a multi step process, and different pigment came from widely different sources. The skill of dying was a precise scientific skill, It was messy, and often odorous, and highly regulated. It would have been done a specialized guild workshop. The highly saturated reds, deep greens, blacks and purple colors of the nobility most often were achieved by dying with Kermes, or multiple dye baths. Outside of Tyrian purple kermes, also known as grain due to the grains it was shipped in, was the most expensive dye due to the fact it was an insect blood that required a lot of intensive labor and special handling to dry and ship. Fabrics with complex designs would have had fibres dyed before weaving, but plain silks, silk velvets, or wools would have been dyed in the cloth after production.
After a fabric was woven and dyed, it would be shipped to various drapers, or cloth sellers, in major towns, most notably the Italian merchants. From the draper fabrics would be purchased, and then brought to a tailor to then construct a garment.
Although many women did embroider at home, gold work embroidery was also considered a highly skilled craft with it's own guild and regulated workshops, so fabric or garment would be sent to a workshop to be embellished with intricate designs, of gold, pearls, and precious stones. Which could take weeks or months.
Then you have to consider a lining. Many silk houppelandes, especially in southern regions tended to be lined in lighter cendel silk or silk satins for summer. Wool houppelandes could be doubled, or lined with the same wool, or a less expensive wool. But by far, the most fashionable houppelandes were line in fur.
Most People in medieval society had at least one garment lined in fur. The most fashionable furs were imported- Tiny, fine Ermine or lettuces that were snow white in winter from the far north. Pured minivair- Russian grey squirrel cut so that only the snow white bellies were used. Black Squirrel from the far southern regions of Italy, black lamb from the Maghreb, or various cuts of the Russian grey squirrels, followed by more local red squirrels, summer squirrels, rabbits and local lamb skins. Fur work again was a highly specialized craft in which there were guild regulations for. (Delort)
Although for the majority of people there would be standard sized fur plates available to make fur work quicker and less expensive. Fur linings for houppelandes appear to be custom made, yet an entire separate entity, often removeable. One account states that a velvet gown, for Prince Edward III, of 11 yards of black Lucca velvet took 1,046 ermine skins, and 18,000 powderings (black fur inserted into the white skins for the ermine look). Once the fur was plated, it would then have the edges bound and be lined before being stitched into a garment. (Veale) The sum paid for labor indicates it would have been over 1 year of work.
So One Court Houppelande would have needed dozens of people involved, materials from across the known world, and likely a few years worth of labor involved.
Further reading-
Silk Trade-
Figured Riches: The Value of Gold Brocades in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Painting
6 Panni tartarici: Fortune, Use, and the Cultural Reception of Oriental Silks in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth-century European Mindset Maria Ludovica RosatiWool in 14th Century Florence: The Affirmation of an Important Luxury Production, in Textiles and Wealth in 14th Century Florence. Wool, Silk, Painting, Exhibition catalogue (Florence, 5 December 2017-18 March 2018), ed. by C. Hollberg, Florence, Giunti, 2017, pp. 42-51
The development of the Florentine silk industry: a positive response to the crisis of the fourteenth century, Sergio Tognetti 2005, Journal of Medieval History
Dressing the King and the Beggar: The Various Levels of the Textile Market and their Prices in Medieval Valencia (13th - 15th centuries), Juan Vicente García Marsilla
5. London Merchants’ Cloth Exports, 1350–1500 / Eleanor Quinton and John Oldland 1116. Laboreria Sete: Design and Production of Lucchese Silks in the Late Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries / Christine Meek 141
3. Wefts and Worms: The Spread of Sericulture and Silk Weaving in the West before 1300 / Rebecca Woodward Wendelken 59
Farmer, Sharon A. The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris: Artisanal migration, technological innovation, and gendered experience. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.
Burns, E. Jane. Sea of silk: A textile geography of women’s work in medieval French literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
- Cloth merchants' inventories in Dijion in the fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, Françoise Piponnier
Velvet production-
The last velvet merchant of Venice
Working with Velvet, a Most Beautiful but Challenging Textile
Velvet and P et and Patronage: The Origin and Historical Background of
Ottoman and Italian Velvets, Sumiyo Okumura Dr.
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.
Medieval Textiles- Issue 31 March 2002 - Cloth Of Gold
Dyes-
Leggett, William F. Ancient and medieval dyes. Landisville, PA: Coachwhip Publication, 2009.
2. Some Medieval Colour Terms for Textiles / Lisa Monnas 25
- 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
Embroidery-
8. “A formidable undertaking”: Mrs. A. G. I. Christie and 'English Medieval Embroidery' / Elizabeth Coatsworth 165
Fur trade-
Veale, Elspeth M. The English fur trade in the later Middle Ages. London: London Record Society, 2003. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/london-record-soc/vol38
Delort, Robert. Le commerce des fourrures en Occident à la fin du Moyen Age (Vers 1300 - vers 1450),
Ecomomics-
Life and work in Medieval Europe P. Boissonnade
Medieval money (England)
Gitte Hansen Everyday Products in the Middle Ages: Crafts, Consumption and the Individual in Northern Europe c. AD 800-1600
Angela Ling Huang, Carsten Jahnke Textiles and the Medieval Economy: Production, Trade, and Consumption of Textiles, 8th–16th Centuries (Ancient Textiles)
The Rise, Expansion, and Decline of the Italian Wool-Based Cloth Industries, 1100–1730: A Study in International Competition, Transaction Costs, and Comparative Advantage, John H. Munro, University of Toronto, c 2012
List of price of medieval itemsInventories-
DALME online inventories
Inventaire du mobilier du chateau Chailloue de l’annee 1416
Buss, Chiara Giannelli The gift of 880 wool and silk garments on the occasion of four Gonzaga marriages. The Magna Curia of 1340
The household inventory as urban ‘theatre’ in late medieval Burgundy
Dressing the King and the Beggar: The Various Levels of the Textile Market and their Prices in Medieval Valencia (13th - 15th centuries), Juan Vicente García Marsilla
Household Inventories of Medieval Europe
Snyder., Désirée G. Koslin, Janet E. Encountering medieval textiles and dress. Palgrave Macmillan US, 2002.
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.
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