Smocked linen gollar - Sebald Beham 1547

In portraits gollars can be found during the first third of the 16th century. Most people think about the round type of gollars that you wear on top of you clothing when they hear the term. But there are another type that is common too, the undergollar, made of linen, I have been writing about it before. Often you might dont even understand that its what you are seeing in a portrait, it might look like her shirt. But to few pleats might be a sign, or in this case, to many...or something like that... 

In a woodcut made by Sebald Beham in 1547 we see farmers dancing. They dressed up and went to a dance. She is wearing a hemd (shirt), maybe an unterrock (kirtle), a rock (gown) with borders in a different colour at the bodies and a lacing partly visible, an apron with smock, a headcloth and a linen gollar with smock. If she would have wore it underneath her dress we would not have know it was gollar, we would have thought it was a shirt, a smocked shirt. If I would have seen this garment I would have said that it were used underneath the dress, and it might have been wore that way too, but she is wearing it on top, showing it of.

Was this a fancy garment? For everyone today wearing smocked shirts it might seem like a everyday thing back then, but maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was what this women wore when she was going to be pretty, when she was going to look nice, when she was going to the dance. Maybe we have to rethink the meaning of the smocked shirt. Maybe it was not for everybody. Most farmers or workingpeople in woodcuts and painting dont seem to wear them. And when it look like they do, what says its not just a gollar? I dont know, Im just thinking out loud here.

Anyhow...

 

I made the smocked gollar!

Its perfect to make things like this if you have small pieces of fabric left. You cant really see if you dont know it but its made of pieces in different kinds of white even. I took what I had and didnt want to cut into larger pieces. I have not had a chance to take proper pictures of me wearing it yet. But it will come, later. 

I thought when I looked at the woodcut that it had a slight curve over the shoulder and that it covered her from the neck to below the bust. So that is what I did too, when it comes to sizing. I didnt see any closing, so I chose to use strings underneath the arm to close it with. I also thought it was closed at the front, no opening or seam there, so you put it over your head to get it on. 

The smock is made before I sewed everything else together. I smocked all the pieces, one frontpiece, one backpiece and two shoulderpieces, separate. All the pieces are squared pieces, the shoulderpieces are only slightly smaller.

 

 

And I added a strip of linen to the backside of the smock to get the right size for my neck. If you dont have this backpiece the smock will loose its shape over time.

 

I thought I could see bindings around the arms and waist in the woodcut and while working on it that became clear, its a must. Otherwise the piece of fabric on the shoulders wont lay flat, its to many pleats from the collar. The seams are backstitched and the seam allowance folded and whip stitched. In this picture one of the shoulderseams are visible. 

 

 

 

 

 

I love smock, especially on linen, its so crisp and beautiful.

In the woodcut I could not see how she closed it in the front, just that the smock has no gap. So I made worked bars and will close it with a string, that I have not made yet. Hopefully I will remember that before my next event...

 

Next time I see a farmer or working woman with a smock I will look twice, maybe she is wearing a gollar, and not a complete shirt? To see and understand what we are looking at is crucial to be able to recreate fashion in a proper way. And we all learn and develop all the time, and by this garment I certainly did. And that is the most fun thing with this hobby according to me.

Thoughts about German headwear.

Little has been found when it comes to German headwear. There are some hairnets, and also a wulst or two, but no complete wulsthaube. We dont know how they are made. Little do we know also absout what they would have called the different headwears and layers in headwear back in the 16th century German countries. 

This spring I got this amazing gift. A copy of Textiler Hausrat - Kleidung und haustextilien In Nurnberg von 1500-1650 by Jutta Zander-Seidel. And while turning its pages I started reading the little text beneath the pictures in the book. They are most of the time short and very informative about what we see in each picture. A despriction about what the person in it are wearing. And I got stuck on the headwear. 

Most of the time we talk about the Steuchlein as the complete headwear for 16th century Germany. But that might be to simplify it a bit. So I thought I was going to make a simple picture/description-thing here...I dont know the answeres...I just thought that it would be interesting to look at the terminology in Jutta Zandler-Seidel´s book when it comes to headwear.

Lets start..

This is a painting by Albrecht Durer showing a Patrician woman from Nurnberg dressed for church. On her head she is wearing what is called a Sturz. Its a wire and linen headwear in different layers that women wore to church, mostly older women. In Textiler Hausrat its also called a Kirchenhaube. 

This is also Durer and she is dressed for a dance. She is wearng what is, in the book, called a Haube, or just Schleier (veil). I think that what we are looking at here are a wulsthaube and one or two different linen veils. Th folded part over her forehead might be a part of the rest of the veil or it might be a loose seperat piece. 

Both of these two paintings are early, from 1500-1501 so the wulst is really big still, as it was in the beginning of the century. It changed later. 

This one, also Durer, show a lady in her housedress, her home-clothing. According to Zandler-Sediel she is the first one of these ladies wearing a Steuchlein. It looks like a wulsthaube and a veil that is hanging down in the back. The haube is also decorated with some kind of stripes. 

This painting is made by Hans Burgkmair 1505 and the lady in the painting is Barbara Schellenberger. She is wearing a goldhaube. It semse like a goldhaube is the same as a haarhaube but in a finer material. If I understand the writing proparly it semse like she is referering to hairnets, and it certainly look like it in this painting, but I do know that many have interpreted the term goldhaube as a headwear made of goldcloth. It might had been both, I dont know. 

A fun thing with this painting is that it has been x-rayed and from the beginning she was actually wearing a linencap on top of her wulsthaube. The goldhaube must have been much fancier and how she wanted to be seen in her painting. 

This portrait is made by Wolf Traut 1510. This headwear is also a steuchlein according to Zandler-Seidel. A wulsthaube with a veil that is hanging down, just like the last time the term were used. The dark part is not hair, its a decoraton, most likely an embroidery. 

This is also Durer, and it is a bit earlier, its from 1499. And she is also wearing what Zandler-Seidel is calling a steuchlein. A wulsthaube and a loose veil, hanging down. 

This is made by Hans von Kulmbach in 1518. The wulst is slowly getting smaller. She is wearing a haube. Probably a wulsthaube underneath and a haube on top, a haube that is not a veil, probably more of a cap sewn to this shape and attached with a drawstring or pins. She is also covering her very expensive embroidery with a thin fabric, a very common way of protecting something as valuable as this. 

This one is interesting. Its made by Durer 1503 and is called Frau mit Wulsthaube. She is actually just wearing her wulsthaube, with nothing on top of it. I think this is in a homelike enviroment and nothing she walked out it, but that is just a guess. 

Here we see the sturz again, on the older woman. The younger one is wearing what is called a Bundlein. Its a haube with what I think is a loose piece of linen that she puts on when she is going to church. This woodcut is made by Georg Pencz 1531.

This is Barbara Schedel in her haarhaube with a berett on top. Its from 1532 and we do no longer see any trace of the big wulst from the beginning if the century. The painter of this is not known. Is this a hairnet or a haube made by cloth? There is a string visibly in the painting, in the middle of her head, so Im guessing its some kind of drawstring that is knotted around her head. The fabric looks rater solid so if this is a net it must be with tiny holes. It could be an embroidered net. There are nets like that found, that has almost no space left without embrodery on, beautiful. 

Does a steuchlein need to consist of a wulsthaube and a veil that is hanging down to be a steuchlein? I dont know but it is easy to belive so after going through the descriptions in the book and look at all the pictures. I do think it is to easy to with certainty call German female headwear steuchlein just because it has a wulsthaube and some kind of covering. What do you think?

The book is possible to read online if you want to look for yourself. You find it here: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/artdok/3451/1/Zander_Seidel_Textiler_Hausrat_1990_Teil1.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2GgiwW_2dyq_fKIQXuKrMG8neSqbRKsFWLd33NH6z_vUp2HyPin6BOhPU