German 16th century spangles - Flinderlein

This article is about spangles, flinderlein in german, during the first half of the 16th century, in Germany.

This painting show a Flinderleinschlager from 1628. Its from Hausbüchern, a so colled housebook, showing historical craft in Europe. You will find all the pictures here. The worker sits on his work block and uses a hammer and a punch to punch small metal plates, the flinders, out of a long sheet of brass.

According to the Textile research center (The TRC Digital encyclopedaedie of decorative needlework) spangles is a small thin piece of metal with a hole in them, to be able to attach them to the fabric. They are made by cutting a small piece off a spirally wound metallice wire. This piece is then used to form a small ring that is flattened out. Searching the different types on Wikipedia it says like this "Sequins are sometimes also referred to as spangles, paillettes, or diamantes, but technically differ. In costuming, sequins have a center hole, while spangles have the hole located at the top"
But I wont really get into the definition of the English words here. If you are interested to read more about that The Dreamstress wrote an excellent article about that, and you find it here.

However, in german, there is a lot of different words for the decorative metal disk. In inventories, presented by Zander-Seidel in Textiler Hausrat we find the most common - flinderlein/flinerlien.
But also gulden and silbern plettlein/plättlein, gold- and silver sequins? The Swedish word for flat is platt, and the German and Swedish language is very alike sometimes so the word could have the same root. So a little flat plate? Sequins!
Spitzlein - The word för pointy in Swedish is spetsig, so maybe spitzlein is some kind of little pointy spangle?
They are also describes as tucked in or hanging. Tucked in could be a description for pinned onto fabric and hanging (obviously) is hanging from fabric. Drop-shaped sequins that, through their mobility, captured the light more efficiently. Very popular during this period it seems.
In Stanilands Medieval craftsmen Embroidery it is said about spangles "Late medieval taste was particularly attracted to light-reflecting ornaments on clothing where movement would produce a multitude of glinting reflections. Consequently gold and silver motifs of all shapes and sizes were incorporated into embroidery". Fixed prices for spangle were regulated in Ordinance for making spangles from 1441. But this is in England. I don't know how this were regulated in Germany.

Spangles where used mostly on headwear in Germany, during this time period, but also as decoration on fabric for clothing. They where attached to fabric, to embroidery, to hairnets. There are not uncommon with spangles in paintings on German hoods during the 16th century. We see spangles on haarhauben and goldhauben, not on regular white linen hauben. Later spangles seems to be common together with lace. They could be made by gilded silver, gilded copper, brass and gold. 

In this painting, Portrait of a couple by Hans Brosarmer, I interpret it as spangles hanging from her shawl/gollar.

And in this one, a closeup of the painting Samson and Delilah by Lucas Cranach. She is wearing a haarhaube/goldhaube with spangles hanging from it.

And here, from 1538, Hans Schopfers Susana Prand von Aibling.

Or this lady, by Gerog Pencz, around 1540.

Or this little sweatheart by Jacob Seisenegger, Anna from Austria (I know, but the fashion is so alike).

I think it is fair to say that this is something worn only by the top of the society. The use of finer materials like gold and silver were regulated by sumptuary law.

My golden egg project contained spangles, even though I didn't make them. Then. But it might be a good time to try that out. I have never done spangles before. I wanted, as usually, make them as accurate as I could. So I asked a friend to make me a tool for spanglemaking. And he did! This tool may not be so common in the world today… As inspiration we looked at the tools that were made in the project The Plimoth Jacket, the making of a 17th century embroidered jacket with spangles. In the project they examined the historic lace spangles under a microscope at the museum of fine arts in Boston, made technical drawings of the spangles and created a tool to make historical accurate spangles. They made nearly 1000 gilded silver (silver that has been gilded with gold) spangles. Ungilded silver would suffer oxidation and need frequent polishing; gold does not oxidize.
The inspiration for the tool is obviously 17th century but in the paintings it is clear that teardrop-shaped spangles where common in Germany during the 16th century too.

The tool Torbjörn made me look like this.

And a friend of mine had a thin silver plate that I could try this out with, happy day!

First try...

It works!

And so does the next step.

If you hit to hard, this happens.

I might need to grind the edges before using them om a garment. But it works! Now I just need to decide what garment I will use my silver spangles on. In 16th century they would have been gilded, but I didnt have gilded silver, so this is close enough. It is going to be so much fun to use these on a garment!


Sources

https://trc-leiden.nl/trc-needles/techniques/applied/spangle-uk
Textiler Hausrat
Wikipedia 
Medieval craftsmen Embroidery
http://thedreamstress.com/2017/02/terminology-sequins-vs-spangles-their-history-in-fashion/
http://pressroom.winterthur.org/pdfs/Plimoth-Jacket.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2wCagM4pUkUZeGOb9r2krPekbvaRHkKrTX4LUj_wg-kGhc-yBP0dA1sHw