May 24: Documentation Breakthrough! Also, musings
Gloves by Valerie Cumming (charmingly located on the same shelf as Shoes and Pattens and a book entirely dedicated to pins and pincushions, both of which I also nabbed) has seriously saved my life. Srsly. I was having a hard time really documenting gloves with embroidered leather, rather than separate cuffs or something, that were solidly in period rather than sort of cheaterly museums-date-this-past-1600-but-I'm-sure-they-were-around-earlier-honest documentation. This book pointed me to not one, but TWO gloves whose provenance dates them FIRMLY in the 1560-1580 camp:
Gloves belonging to Queen Elizabeth, at the ashmolean museum
These also prove that the long slender fingers on these gloves weren't true to life -- the fingers on this are seriously huge! Lizzy was so fond of her long fingers, but she was totally faking it with gloves that were nearly 1/2-yard long.
The other is one that was owned by Mary, Queen of Scots which looks almost identical to my original inspiration from the Manchester museum and has a design that I like so much I might use that instead of the heart design that I fell in love with. The provenance, according to Cumming, is so rock-solid that they surely came from the 1580s. Squee!
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In other news, I'm conflicted about future A&S championship events. Would I be cheating if I submitted the following items?
-costume accessories: Elizabethan-era embroidered leather gloves
-leatherwork: handsewn gloves
-embroidery: satin stitch and metal embroidery on cuffs and thumbs of gloves
-alchemy: perfumed infusion on gloves (with a sample in a little bottle, probably)
-Lace OR Weaving: either metal bobbin lace trim on gloves, OR handwoven metallic/silk fringe on gloves (with a little sample piece on the side, probably)
Theoretically, you could compete at kingdom with effectively one object, but I'm curious to know if it's something that would actually seriously be considered. There would definetely be overlaps in the some of the more general documentation, but each one (I've found) has it's own specific line of study. I'd also have to work to make sure each item has a good amount of complexity, like, say, distilling my own rose water and grinding my own ingredients for the perfume. But really, at the end of the day, it's just a single thing. Hmmm...
