From Mayor to Artisan: Costuming the Working Man

As you know, my recent efforts in the realm of costuming has been on the side of the upper middle class and lower noble caste.  But now that I've spent the summer shaking babies and kissing hands, it is time to launch my new project: The School of the Renaissance Artisan and that means new clothes.

Like a renaissance Springsteen, I return to my blue collar roots.

I really should stop saying things like that. No one can live up to expectations like that. Nevertheless, baby I was born to run...

Ahem.

To be completely honest: For this project I won't be wearing a costume the whole time. Only when I think it will change the outcome, or if images need to be made of the process or when it won't unnecessarily impede my progress through a public space.

There's a lot of research to be done; there's no reason to wear galligaskins to the library.

This woodcut is the inspiration for the workingman's outfit I am about to make.

An English chap of the mid 1560's stands against a tree, a working stiff of some sort, tools arrayed in a pile at his feet. I've heard him called a surveyor because of the dividers in the foreground, but  I'm not so sure. There's also a pick axe, handsaw, and claw hammer. Not to mention the apron the man's wearing, which makes more sense for a carpenter or something than for a surveyor.

I like the elegant simplicity of it. I read this as galligaskins (probably of wool), plus a doublet and jerkin. Worn with a vestigial ruff at the collar, probably attached to the shirt collar. Made in appropriate fabrics and with the correct accouterments, it should pass unnoticed in any tavern, field, or guildhall of the 16th century.

It's perfect for my needs.

The first version I plan to make will be grey wool bottoms and white fustian or wool top. A simple color scheme that works well and adheres well to what we know from the research being done into English wills of the period by Ninya Mikhaila and Jane Malcolm-Davies. According to their research into the wills of the county Essex, 40% of doublets mentioned were leather,  24% linen canvas, and 21% fustian. I might make another leather doublet at some point but at the moment, I'm a bit leathered out. So fustian it is!

Clockwise from the upper left, in our fabric stash I found a nice grey wool, a heavy unbleached fustian canvas, a lighter white fustian, and a pale green linen tablecloth to use as a lining.

Yes, a table cloth. Why not?  It will make a nice lining for the Gascon hose.

More tomorrow.

My Time Machine

As a reenactor and as a writer, I spend a lot of time delving into the past and exploring what life was like at various points in history. I've lived in the renaissance and written about WWII, Prohibition, the Great Library of Alexandria, and Shakespeare. And a question I often hear is "Do you feel like you were born at the wrong point in history?"

I believe that children are our future: So 

feed them well and use them to fuel our 

time machines...

(Frankly, I'm a little disappointed that since I wrote Howard Carter no one has asked whether I was born on the wrong planet.)

It annoys me at times, but I suppose it's a fair question.

Let's face it, I have a lot of skills that aren't of much use in the 21st century. And by the metric of the rest of the country, my childhood was more on like my dad's than it was like the rest of my peers. We didn't have a video game system or computer. Dad didn't believe in them. I learned to type on a typewriter (as is right and proper.)

I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' farm where I made a lot of my own toys. I built rafts. I sank them. I swam to shore and built new ones. I played with GI Joe while we listened to Fibber McGee & Molly on the radio. I watched Star Wars like every other kid of my age, but read voraciously from a library that was stocked mostly with books written over a half century before I was born.

My friends refer to this as a 'sheltered upbringing' but I'm not sure I'd agree.

My childhood was a Mark Twain novel ghostwritten by Ray Bradbury, filtered through an Archie comic.
The world that was shown to me on MTV seemed distant and somewhat surreal, simultaneously more modern and less than the world around me.

I still prefer hand tools to electric, my typewriter to my laptop. It probably also explains why I have no real attachment to those wonders of modern technology that the people around me can't live without. It's not inarguable that I really am a man out of my era and I wouldn't blame you if you thought that if given a time machine and license to use it that I'd be off like a shot.

I certainly used to think so.  Why, I may have been misplaced several centuries! I even said as much to my dad once. Dad looked at me and kind of snorted and said "Take off your glasses."

Touché, Dad. 


I have allergies and poor eyesight and I have an asthma inhaler in my pocket as I type this. Even when I join in a historical reenactment and try to sink into a past age, never far from my mind is the fact that I never would have survived childhood in these past worlds.

Books are my time machine. Then and now, they are my preferred method of time travel. If someone offered me a trip through time I might not take them up on it if I cannot close the cover and return to the modern era any time I wish.

And it's not at all about the asthma inhaler. The women around me are valued as highly as the men. My wife is an engineer. My boss is a woman.  I can see someone passing me on the street and talk to them without see more about them than just the color of their skin. I can say whatever I want here and as long as I don't libel anyone, no one can stop me.

Because honestly... the 'good old days' weren't that good.

So until the man in the Blue Box comes to escort me to the opening night of Hamlet and then safely home again... I like this time period just fine, thanks.

Designing a Basic Kit for Reenactors

I've been sick, and as we all know, sickness leads to sewing.

I'm currently working out a set of easy instructions for basic start-up kit that would get a male actor from zero to fully costumed for as little money as possible. The kit would center around a simple outfit of shirt, jerkin, Venetians or galligaskins, and shoes. 

Conversations with potential actors, often center around two issues:

1. Start-up costs: All of the things a beginning actor needs seems daunting when you are starting from zero. Along with this post about "feast gear" and this one about modifying shoes, this set of simple patterns will complete the kit for any newbie.
2. "I'm not going to wear that." (Usually said while pointing to someone in short-short paned trunkhose displaying a lot of leg.)  The culture shock is sometimes too much for guys who grew up in the jeans & tee shirt era.  Because Venetians come down below the knee, they are the least threatening of the period-appropriate garb available to us; the least likely to scare off the potential actor who recoils at the thought of putting on a pair of tights or even thigh-high hosen.

If we get someone involved in this pastime with the minimum headache, they almost inevitably begin upgrading their kit. From these simple beginnings, most can be expected to begin to branch out into more intricate costumes as their characters progress. 

The goals for this project are:

1. Get new actors into a period-appropriate (1560-1580) costume for as little money as possible.
2. To teach some basic pattern-drafting and further my goal of getting more men to sew.
3. To get actors to shift more of their initial expenditure into period-appropriate fabrics.
4. To further the ideal that we are making clothes, not costumes*.

All of this will become a kit that I dispense to my new guildmembers, as well as a class I will teach for the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire (because they've asked me to) and anyone else who wants to pay me to come speak to their group.  My rates will be very reasonable... I don't know what that means yet, but whatever they turn out to be, they will be very reasonable, I assure you.

One of the laudable aspects of Venetians (from the standpoint of a new reenactor) is that
they have what we now consider a standard trouser fly. No codpiece necessary.

Because I wanted to illustrate some simple ways to dress-up a simple pattern (and because
I just can't leave anything alone,) I added some very basic chainstitch embroidery to the legs.

This blog will play host to those patterns and yes, they will be available as a free download. I will probably even get my wife to videotape the class so that I can send it to people and post it here.

See you soon with more pictures and information...

-Scott

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* Yes, I am aware that "costume" is the accurate and appropriate nomenclature for the clothing worn by a specific culture at a specific time. I further know that "garb" makes some people's teeth itch. I use it anyway. One of my missions is to make this pastime accessible to all, and we are combating an entrenched cultural connotation of the word "costume" with the word "Halloween". The word "Garb" is not only a period-appropriate word (Shakespeare uses it) it also specifically connotes period clothing, especially in reenactor circles. There are those whose mission it is to erase "garb" from the reenactor's lexicon, mostly because the academic community gets sniffy if they catch you using the term. Good for them. I, however, could not possibly care less what the academic community thinks of me. Academic accolades are not my goal here. 

Art, Ideas, and the Approaching Flood

Most of the things which delineate between "art" and "craft" is a judgement of the results, rather than the creation of them. In the end, it boils down to this: Craft is useful and art has no function. Nevertheless, all acts of creation are essentially the same.

I've said before that I view writing, painting, sculpture, sewing and carpentry as different faces of the same mental process.  Somewhere in the great echoing catacombs of my brain is a largish room that is crowded with ideas, each shouting to be heard above the din. Each of them carries a notebook or a roll of plans that they are waving in the air, hoping to be noticed, hoping to be next, striving to be realized.  Because an idea unrealized is a wan., pathetic thing indeed. And to go unrealized until it is forgotten entirely is a fate worse than death.

I can write or sculpt or paint with equal amounts of training and love.  But just as writing a story is to execute a painting in the reader's mind, sewing a jacket or blocking a hat is to execute a sculpture in cloth. The only difference is the usefulness of the results.

In truth, they are all ideas realized, one voice in the din that falls silent because it has retired to make room for the next.

I was reflecting on this recently when a back injury laid me up for three months, forcing the conference of clamoring ideas to wait until  I could do something about them. Notebooks were filled, stories scribbled, and deadlines pushed back as I tottered around with my cane and wished I lived in the future we all dreamed about when I was a kid, the one where malfunctioning bits would be replaced with shiny titanium and whirring servos.

Last week, the back problems evaporated. All of a sudden, it was as if they had never happened.  Back injuries, their causes and cures, are some of the great mysteries of medical science. I don't know about you, but I'm personally keeping a list in case God ever asks my opinion when the human race comes up for a design overhaul. I have a great deal to say on the subject of spines, knees and shoulders.

And now all of the ideas are shouting again, demanding to be heard at once.

So get ready for the flood as I try to keep up with documenting all of these projects and try desperately not to screw them up just because more ideas are jostling in the queue behind it. That's is where my viewing these things as art comes in handy. If there's one thing art school taught me, it's how to ignore the next idea and focus on the one in front of me.

I hope...