Mostly, our goal is to reconstruct a time, place and the artifacts from that specific time and place as accurately as possible. Towards that end, we generally want primary documentation on any subject. Secondary and tertiary documentation is good as a backup, but mostly we’re interested in first hand, contemporary documentation.

Allow me to use a current project of mine as an example.

I am currently working on 2 French arquibusier outfits of the year 1560 for Ft. Caroline National Monument in Jacksonville, Fl. These outfits will be worn by the rangers in their interpretive program and they specifically requested that the outfits be as historically accurate as possible. Due to monetary constraints, they cannot afford to have me hand-stitch the outfits, but there will be no machine stitching visible on the outside of the garments. This is a commonly accepted standard in most living history groups, including Wolf Argent and The Red Company.

In researching the pattern, I first looked for an existing French doublet from this period, rather than going to a modern pattern. Unable to find a doublet (not saying they don’t exist, I just didn’t find any), I went one of the patterns drafted from an actual 1560 Italian garment in Janet Arnold’s “Patterns of Fashion”. I could pull all of my reference from Norris, or Hill & Bucknell but then I would be re-digesting *their interpretation* of *their* research. I couldn’t know if he made an incorrect assessment of a detail, or if new data had become available. I use Janet Arnold because I can see photos of the garment she’s working from, along with the pattern she drafted from that actual garment.

Since I want a French style and I have a pattern for an Italian doublet, I looked at contemporary paintings of the period to define the differences between French, English, German and Italian styles. It looks to me as if Italian styles were more short-waisted and thick, while the French opted for a leaner, wasp waisted look, so I alter the pattern accordingly.

While I’m looking at paintings, I note colors and trimming. Constistency is important- I note that the Italians seem to favor dark jewel colors, while the French tend toward lighter pastels, so I steer away from black and dark blue to more medium tones. I’m doing soldier clothes, so I’ll be using wool and linen with minimal frou-frou; if I were doing upper class or nobility, I would use silk brocades and velvets with lots of trim details and slashing. For an upper class outfit I might also suggest corseting the wearer to achieve the very slim waist and/or use shoulder pads to extend the shoulder line. For our soldiers, the clothing will have a more natural line.

The key point throughout is consistency. I am using French references from the target year. I could pair English style slops with a French cut doublet, but it wouldn’t be historically consistent. I could use the pattern from 1580, but the look is different.

The idea of basing research in a narrow framework and remaining consistent throughout the process is the key of what we strive for.

Combining periods or adding theatrical details may make a wonderfully interesting COSTUME, but it won’t be historically accurate.

The same methodology may be applied to any discipline.

A great helm over a suit of Maximillian might look interesting, but the result wouldn’t be historically accurate.

I could wear my hair long like an Italian or a German, but then I wouldn’t look like a Frenchman because the French style favored shorter hairstyles.

A 13th C. piece of music played on a guitar might sound OK, but the result would be much different than a real medieval piece.

Adding tomatoes to a 15th. C recipe for “Alosed Beef” might taste all right, but it would resemble a modern stew more than recreate medieval dish.

I hope that this will help some new readers like Crispin understand our perspective, focus and methodology, and will assist them in their research.

A worthy goal, but difficult to realize. I have a public library 1 block from my house. It has 5 or 6 books on the entire medieval period, all of which I have. Public libraries now seem to loan out videos now a days, since none of these cretins know how to read. IUPUI, our local university, has less books on the subject than I have, judging from their internet card catalog. IU Bloomington has a fair library 6o miles from here. We have sports. And sports. And sports...

Secondly, let's take an example. Fiori's technique book is available on the HACA site, in medieval Italian. If you can speak modern Italian, you still might not be able to understand it. Italian wasn't a language choice in public schools around here. (or French, Dutch, Portugese...) If you could read it, it is written in a rhyming method that is difficult to understand. For the average re-enactor, these are nearly insurmountable obstacles. The advantage of having primary sources is that you are not studying someone else's opinion. The disadvantage is location of resources and the scholarship required.

We *are* trying Jef. Bob R. spends a HUGE amount of time writing answers, Jeff spent a good deal of time yesterday explaining about shoes on a thread, and I wrote the above to help others, not to prove that I knew it.

because not everyone has the time, desire or the willingness to put forth the kind of dedication required, or comes from the same background.

However, we feel that there can be a HUGE problem when you put uninterested people in "costumes" and let them go-- in that case you have a loose cannon rolling around the deck on several levels.

If the public asks the "actor" a historical question, the "actor" won't be able to answer, or worse yet might say something incredibly wrong. Then it becomes an issue of credibility for everyone.

Also, if you dress a guy who really isn't interested up, he might be willing to "play the part" for the day, but also may want to lounge around camp at night in his LL Bean parka and mucklucks, swigging beer out of the bottle and listening to Travis Tritt on his personal CD player. This blows the atmosphere for everyone.

We've had a little bit of this in camp in the past, and our members get *hostile* if someone is a slacker. It ruins their medieval buzz, and they don't like it. It's not just Jeff and me!

If the public asks the "actor" a historical question, the "actor" won't be able to answer, or worse yet might say something incredibly wrong. Then it becomes an issue of credibility for everyone."

You apparently have an entirely different crowd coming to your shows than we do. The typical questions are:
"Are you hot in there?"
"Is that heavy?"
"How heavy is it?"
"Can you go to the bathroom in that?"
"Is that a real sword?"
"Are you a pirate?"
"Is that metal?"
"Can I touch it?"
"Can I pick it up/wear it?"
"Can I take your picture?"
"Did you make it?"
"How much does it cost?"
"Where do you go to buy it?"
"What time is your next show?"
"My god you're handsome, can I have your baby?"

Hold the greek fire projecters a sec! I'm not advocating being a "pennsic viking" or wearing LL Bean to reenactments. I'm just saying I assume that the period evidence are exemplars of general styles and that I can vary near those styles without creating something that would have drawn stares were it worn in that time and place. For example, we may not have an example of a particular style of shirt in blue, but if I know they had a blue dye for that kind of fabric, I wouldn't have a problem with that.

Restricting ourselves only to items and variations we have exact evidence for would be very difficult and probably misleading. Respect for the historical evidence is important, but so is the inevitable variety of variations that haven't been passed down to us.

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Jef, the simple answer to the "standards" issue is that every group has the right to set their own at a level they're comfortable and happy at. Some folks are happy with blue plastic tarps and some aren't happy until they've examined every fibre in their kit under a microscope. Both of our groups fall somewhere in the midrange of that span. Vive la difference!

Hob, you are absolutely correct in your assertion that we can't possibly know every variation, and we limit ourselves and our efforts when we demand extant examples for every reconstruction. If we did that, we would never attempt music, food or thought because there are no surviving examples.

"Plausible extrapolations" fill in the gap. Using your blue shirt as an example, I would look at as many illustrations as possible to get an idea of style. I would also look at how much fabric contemporary records indicate a shirt required. I would also look at contemporary construction methods.

As for color, I have never ever seen a shirt in any other color than white in an illustration. I know how often contemporary accounts tell me I should wash and change my shirt. I know linen was the fabric being used in medieval Europe as opposed to cotton, and I know linen does not hold color well. I know period soaps could have a high lye content and could therefore be very caustic, causing a bleaching effect. I know what washing methods were used in period. I know that blue can be a very fugitive dye, especially in linen. Based on corrollary evidence, I conclude that a shirt made of linen which was washed frequently would be white, not a color. I couple that with the evidence of never having seen a colored shirt in a painting, and I feel confident *extrapolating* that all shirts were white in the 15th C.

quote:

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I looked at several dozen paintings by a number of different painters and noted major trends and similarities. ... I know there is a scientific method that advocates using a wide subject base to gain the most representative average, and I apply this to my methodology.

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Sorry, but they've assigned me to teach freshman statistics this semester, so I'm going to do a brief rant about this. Don't worry, it's a happy rant.

One of the things statistics can tell us is whether a measurement/item is significantly different than we would predict. The way this is done is to compare how much the test item differs from the mean to how much variation there is around the mean in general. The more variation there is around the mean, the farther away from the mean you have to be to be considered "out of bounds".

To give a somewhat medieval example, if you knew there were examples of this shirt in five different colors, you could be more comfortable with making in a new color than if there were only two colors in archeological examples.