I just looked at your profile and noticed that you list Soper Lane as your homepage. I have to admit that AM and I (and others, I expect) drool over your page frequently. We are delighted that you've joined us here, and hope you'll tell us more about what you do with Soper Lane, and more about the group itself.

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Originally posted by Ginevra:
Hi Gina!

I just looked at your profile and noticed that you list Soper Lane as your homepage. I have to admit that AM and I (and others, I expect) drool over your page frequently. We are delighted that you've joined us here, and hope you'll tell us more about what you do with Soper Lane, and more about the group itself.

Gwen, who would love to do something like that rather than chasing a group of flatulent soldiers around the countryside.....

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ooo! Soper Lane gals!!!

I wanna be you when I grow up!

there are so few models for those of us interested in re-creating NON MARSHALL medieval stuff.

tell us more, auntie Gina! tell us more!

--Anne-Marie, who thinks boys in hose with pikes are cute but has more civilian interests herself .

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Well, what do you want to know? We're based in the UK - a very small group, and we only do a few events each year, some costumed, some talks, and this year possibly some workshops.

The group researches the lives and work of the 15th century London silkwomen, who were women who made and sold silk narrow wares. They were an unusual group of women - they did not have a proper guild (although in France the equivelant did) yet they did get together to petition parliament when poor quality silk, or worse, girdles from other countries, were being brought in.

We are all also members of The White Company, and Soper Lane started as a merging of interests (all of us have textile interests) and the feminists in us liked doing something like this! It also is a good reason to be able to research the middle classes, some of these women were married to fairly important Londoners, goldsmiths, mercers, and a few Mayors.

We don't have roles as such - we do not take on persona's, we are each trying to learn as many of the skills that silkwomen used and as much of the background about any named silkwomen as we can.

I hope that's helped a little bit (I really could go on for hours!)

Gina

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Something tells me they were likely woven silk girdles, with appropriately decorative buckles (worn around the back), but I dont know for sure. I certainly havent ever seen extant examples of textiles that are that wide, but then its hard to tell when all you see is a fragment anyway.

do you have any info you can point me to?

many thanks
--AM

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We know that the silkwomen supplied the royal wardrobe with 'broad ribbon of silk' for girdles, and something called a corse. The corse is generally agreed to be a woven band or strip that acted as a foundation for other work, such as embroidery. For the silkwomen to be supplying these, they either have to have been something that was woven by themelves on a band loom of some type, or something bought in, as large piece silk weaving wasn't done in England. I've found no evidence yet of a silkwomen purchasing from an Italian merchant broad ribbon or corses, and on occasion a silkwoman will be named as 'so&so - corseweaver'.

Looking at artistic sources, I do think that the majority of the bands were woven as bands, not cut down from a larger piece of damask or other silk. My main assumption for this is that in most cases, the patterns run from a central line on the girdles, and do not extend over the edges - they do seem to be 'complete'. The pattern (usually geometric, occasionally a stylised vegetation) repeats along the length of the girdle, another indication that it was woven in this smaller scale. (Van der Wedyn and van Eyck amongst others show this quite detailed in many of their paintings) Another thing gleaned from artistic sources is that the average width seems to be about '3 fingers'; using the wearer's fingers as a guide. This roughly translates to about 5.5cm. Of course, some are depicted much wider - particularly those girdles worn by nobility or saints.
The pointer in artistic sources that they were made of silk is the way that the artists show the light reflecting from the bands.

That doesn't rule out other materials, such as leather and silk cut down from a larger piece. One painting, (Deposition, 1470-1480, The Master of the Legend of St Catherine, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne) shows a cream girdle with a free flowing pattern which extends the edges of the band, and there is no visible pattern repeat, which implies that the band has been cut down from something larger.

Fingerlin (1971) lists various extant girdles from the moddle ages. Of the 15th century ones, examples of the wider girdles include a leather girdle (No. 127 -5.5cm wide) with a circular buckle (this is shown with an image of a statue of a woman wearing a girdle with a round buckle high on the waist over the gown), some described as silk brocade (No.110 - 5.5cm wide; No. 550 - 5.5cm wide; No. 354 - 3.4cm wide; No. 530 - 3.2cm wide), silken ribbon (No. 107 - 4.4cm wide) and one very wide black silk band (No. 356 - 8.4cm wide, measurement includes buckle width).

How were the silk bands woven? I am still in the process of obtaining photographs and translating the German text (Fingerlin concentrates on the fittings, with, in most cases, very limited information of the textiles). The MoL Textiles and Clothing book refers to No. 356, stating that it is tablet woven (pg134). My initial order of photogrpahs do not show enough of the textile in detail for me to be able to comment yet, except to say that if it is tablet woven, I would estimate that it required about 200 hundred tablets.

The brocaded bands do superficially appear to be tablet woven brocade, but without seeing the reverse of these bands, that can only be an assumption.

Other methods for weaving wide girdles include tabby weaving on a box loom or band loom, and possibly a form of tapestry weaving. An image from 1504 (Wyss, pg 129) shows Mary weaving a band with a zig-zag pattern in this method.

I have a feeling that with girdles and purses, I shall have a lifetime of research to do before I feel entirely happy with what I discover!

Main reference:
Ilse Fingerlin, Gurtel des hohen und spaten Mittelalters
1971, Deutscher Kunstverlag GmbH, Munchen Berlin

Crowfoot, et all
Textiles and Clothing: Medieval Finds from Excavations in London
1992, HMSO, London

R.L.Wyss,
Artes Minores
Dank An Werner Abegg
Herausgegeben Von Michael Stettler und Mechthild Lemberg
Verlag Stampfli& Cie AG-Bern 1973

Wardrobe Accounts of Edward IV - can be found at www.r3.org

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Now if I only had time to figure out how to use that small table loom I have sitting on the top shelf in the craft room....

--AM

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