Cranach Gown & Accessories

(Oct-Dec 2019)

Introduction

As mentioned in the write up for the basic pleated chemise I made, one of the many things I wanted to make for the SCA was a full outfit based on the portraits by Lucas Cranach. My favorite of his paintings is 16th century one of Emilie of Saxony to the right. I think that outfit is gorgeous, and wanted it for my own. I looked through numerous paintings, and decided I would largely recreate this specific dress. This outfit, like most from the time period, does not have an extant example. Since the bottom of the dress is not pictured, I figured I would just make a pleated floor length skirt with a band or two of gold at the bottom. So, *how* to make a dress that has a plunging neckline down to the waist with open lacing up the front being the only visible support is the question!

Materials

Red Cotton Velveteen (6 yards)

Red or white linen (red was scraps, white was around 2 yards)

Silk damask

gold silk taffeta

Freshwater pearls

Silk thread (sewing, and plyed embroidery silk to make the lucet and fingerloop cords)

gold thread (real and fake)

Metal aglets

Lacing Rings

Ostrich feathers

Metal hoop

Beeswax

5-6oz leather

gold paint

amber cabochons and bezel settings

chicago screws

Fabric: While silk velvet probably would have been what was used in period, I cannot at all afford it. Silk velvet is *expensive*, if you can even find it. That being said, cotton was available at the time, and was considered an expensive luxury fabric. I do not at all think it was unreasonable to choose this at my material. For the bodice, it is lined in linen. The accents are done with silk brocade I got online. While the listing said silk with metallic thread, I am not completely sure it isn't at least partially synthetic.

Color: Cranach gown seem to exclusively be either red or green (some of the reds venture more into the orange hues). Accents tend to be black or gold. I decided to keep the color scheme of the portrait I am basing the dress on, so red and gold it is!

Pearls: Pearl-producing mussels were extremely prevalent in the Saxon streams and rivers of Germany in the 16th century (Kunz). This makes it very likely that freshwater pearls would be a realistic and abundant choice. While there are no extant goldhaubes, there is a surviving pouch of purple velvet, embroidered with gold thread and freshwater pearls, suggesting that the materials would be used together (McNealy 44-45).

Underdress

There are several example of the Cranach style gown with the front torn open with the woman dramatically putting a dagger to her breast. These images seem to show nothing under the dress. This seem like artistic license to me. Even though there is little "proof" that a cranach dress would have a supportive underdress, I figure it has to. Unless you are small chested or incredibly lucky, boobs generally do not have that high and lifted look without aid. And then there are pictures like the one above... Notice the 5 women. Four are dressed in very similar styles, with one woman in water helping to wash her friend's feet. But look closely at her. The top of her dress looks very much like the brocase on the dress of the woman to the right of the picture. Could it possibly be that the woman in the water has simply taken off her over gown to avoid getting it wet, and that is what is under it? I think this is highly likely. That being said, I didn't quite base my underdress on this image, since it looks like the fancy bust panel is a part of it, and I wanted my underlayers to be more easily washed. Either way, the underdress obviously had to be made before the overdress. It would be essential for fitting.

I thought I would make a white supportive underdress. This made sense to be white since then I could have it show through the lacings at the front, and it looks like the woman in the photo above does have white around her middle. Since I made the fancy bloused, pleated chemise to wear under all of this already, I decided to make the supportive gown sleeveless (it is hard to tell if the sleeves in the above photo are part of her dress, or another layer).

I used a basic pattern I had drafted for myself previously, but instead of lacing in the front per usual, I moved the lacing to the side, and left the front all in one piece. I didn't have quite enough medium weight white linen to make a floor length supportive dress on hand, so I decided to add a red strip/kick panel to the bottom. This seems completely reasonable, since now I have something other than white down by my feet. And, just to balance it out, I added a little red to the top neckline too. The dress admittedly has some machine sewing on it... the two long seams, one down each side, are done by machine, as well as attaching the red stripe to the bottom of the dress. That being said, all seams are hand finished/felled, and there is no visible machine stitching anywhere. The eyelets were also done by hand.

The dress is laced closed with a red lucet cord that I made.

Overdress

To make the overdress, I thought it would be best to start with the bodice. Since I was not sure how well cotton velveteen would take tension, I thought the bodice would need to be lined with linen. To make the bodice, I used the same pattern as the underdress, and just cut the center front out. I used lacing rings up the front to secure it with a long black silk lucet cord I made. This actually worked surprisingly well, and I really didn't need to tweak anything (I used a different lacing cord for these photos, sorry). The sewing here is done by hand.

Sleeves were up next. If you look at the original photo of Emilie I posted at the beginning, you can see that the sleeves are rather involved... To make the sleeves, I first made them in linen to be a lining/base. There appear to be several areas of ruffles, and the top and bottom of the sleeve are detached from each other, so each sleeve was two parts. To make the ruffles, I sewed so so many long skinny tubes. They were sewn right sides together, then the edge was closed with a running stitch, and the tube was turned right side out. These were sewn down to the linen at one edge, then the center of the tube was sewn right up to that, and the other edge of the tube was sewn down against that. I then placed a piece of velvet or brocade next to that, depending on what was needed, and repeated. I should have taken more photos of that part, since it is rather hard to explain. Once I had the pieces assembled, I attached the upper part of the sleeves to the bodice, and sewed lacing rings onto the seams by the elbow. These were laced up with black silk fingerloop cord. Many parts of the sleeve were so thick that I had no choice but to sew this by hand.

All that was left now was to make the skirt. I kind of lucked out here. The fabric width of my velvet was the exact length I needed to go from my waist to the floor. As such, I just took the remaining 5 yards of fabric in one long strip, and that was my skirt. I first hemed the bottom (by hand) so that you couldn't see the selvege. At this point I was really daunted by the amount of sewing ahead of me to add 2 brocade stripes to the skirt, so, I cheated. Both stripes were added by sewing one side by machine with the correct side facing the velvet, then folding the stripe over, tucking the raw edge under, and hand whipstitching the other end. So, the dress was almost fully made by hand... it just has those few seams you can't see unless I lift my skirt up. I then sewed the sides together, leaving the top few inches open. Once the 5 yards of skirt was finished, I divided the skirt into 30 even sections (I have a 29" waist), and rolled each section into a rolled pleat that was 1 inch wide. I do this by eye and go back and adjust as needed. Who needs math. While I know that there is no proof for rolled pleats in period, they give the correct look, and there isn't proof that they weren't there either. I really do think it is the best option for the job. I then hand attached the skirt to the bodice (the selvage on this edge came in handy. I mostly sewed that to the bodice, with the flocked area of the fabric butted up to the bottom of the bodice. The vetical seam in the skirt lines up with the front edge of the left side of the bodice, since this is wear the opening to get in and out would be easiest to hide. For the front section where the bodice is open, I bound the pleats in a waistband. There are a few example in his paintings that show a waistband after all. This waistband attaches on the open side with the slit using two hooks and eyes (those are totally period and I love it). For proof, please see the pictures to the left of closeups from a lovely embroidered jacket (Arnold, Patterns of Fashion 3, p 51)

Bustflek

The bustflek was a rather simple creation. It is a rectangle of beaded gold fabric, backed with a piece of red linen. It is pinned to the inside of the overdress with straight pins to hold it in place over the bust. It is roughly 5"x14". For the design, I looked at a lot of the busflek patterns. They seemed to have a common element, so I simplified it in my mind, and then made a somewhat freehand drawing with pearls (the silk was in an embroidery hoop when I did this). I had 3 sizes of pearls, and decided to use all of them to add some dimension to the design. I am actually rather pleased with how it came out.

Hat and Goldhaube

So... headware. The goldhaube has its own entire paper in the documents section. If you want more information, go there. It is fully hand sewn and beaded with an insane amount of pearls in a latticework pattern, with gold work in the front. It is an odd design, but works well.

The hat I made was beyond simple, and based on a hat a friend owns. I should have perhaps made it more "hat" like, and less plate like, but it is what it is. I will likely make a split brimmed hat in the future to replace it. For the hat, it is made of the same red velvet and silk brocade as the dress. I purchased a 14" metal hoop to be the base of the hat. From here I cut a ~8" strip of velvet that was slightly larger than the circumference of the hoop. I sewed the 2 short ends together so that it fit snugly around the circumference. From here, I ran a long basting stitch along both long ends of the fabric, so that I could gather the edges towards the middle of the hoop. I tied these threads in the gathered position, and left them where they were. From here, I cut out 2 circles in the red velvet that were slightly larger than the hole in the middle of the gathering, and a third circle out of brocade. One of the velvet circles was hand stitched onto the gathered fabric on the "bottom" side of the hat, while rolling the raw edges under, to cover the hole. With the other piece of velvet, I cut some holes into the top and did a reverse applique using the brocade circle beneath it. Once finished, this circle pair was hand sewn onto the "top" side of the hat. I added ostrich feathers by literally just shoving them into the hat under this seam, since the pleats made nice little channels to do so. Finally, I made a gold 5 strand fingerloop braid and sewed it to the bottom of the hat so it could be tied onto my head.

Collar/Necklace

Most of the drawings portray a very bold close fitting necklace of some sort. It appears to be gold, with jewels, and no visible openings. I am not a metal worker. That being said, I can use leather. I decided to make a leather necklace, and then paint it a metallic gold to emulate the look of the necklace. I cut out a slightly curved piece of 5-6oz leather, stamped out some pretty patterns, cut recesses into the leather to glue in bezels, painted the leather gold, and set 6 real amber cabochons in gold toned bezel settings. The closure of the necklace is just 2 chicago screws. While I made some mistakes (apparently I couldn't measure and one of the settings is not centered), I like the necklace, and it is easy to wear.

Final Look

The final outfit is exactly what I hoped it would be. I absolutely love it. I should have either made the neckline of the chemise bigger, or the neckline of the dress smaller. I can force the chemise to be hidden under the dress with pins, but the pins don't always want to stay. And on that pin front, the bustflek's bottom edge doesn't always like to stay down, so it must be pinned too. Having it as a part of the supportive under dress would help that, but I like having the pieces separate.

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