English Court Dress, for High Nobility and Royals.
Courtesy of the New York Public Library.
Merchant and Upper Class dress, not at court. This might be options for Merchant class dress when Royalty visits or a special event takes place, when everyone wants to best present their prosperity and place in society.
Courtesy of the New York Public Library.
c1575-1610
“Woman’s waistcoat and coif, England. these are said to have been given to the wife of Rodger Woodhouse by Queen Elizabeth 1st on August 22, 1578.”
MFA
Object Type
This object formed the handle of a feather fan. Feather fans were introduced into Tudor England through the great Italian city states of Venice, Milan and Genoa. Originally fans had arrived in Italy from the East. By the 16th century the Western secular use of fans was largely confined to women. Costly and elaborate, these fans were dress accessories confirming status and rank.
Materials
The fan handle was made in gilt brass, which was cast, pierced and engraved with Eastern-influenced Moresque ornament (a style of interlaced geometric patterns evolved in Arab civilisations of the Near East and in the Moorish states of Spain). It was a practical and durable item. When the fan’s feathers wore out, they could be changed and new feathers arranged in the metal handle. The gilt-brass handle was a less extravagant item than those made of carved ivory, gold or silver. The feathers used might be those of a native bird rather than more expensive feathers from exotic birds such as peacocks, swans, ostriches or parakees, which enriched the finer gold or ivory handles. Most fans were attached to the belt of the dress by a metal chain or silk cord. Due to their fragile nature, few examples of complete feather fans of the period survive, but they were frequently shown in contemporary portraits.
Folding fans, while available in the Orient, were not introduced to Western Europe until the late 17th century. This one, c. 1690, is from France, but is certainly not Elizabethan:
![The Cholmondeley Ladies circa 1600-10
According to the inscription (bottom left), this painting shows ‘Two Ladies of the Cholmondeley Family, Who were born the same day, Married the same day, And brought to Bed [gave birth] the same day’. To mark this dynastic event, they are formally presented in bed, their babies wrapped in scarlet fabric. Identical at a superficial glance, the lace, jewellery and eye colours of the ladies and infants are in fact carefully differentiated. The format echoes tomb sculpture of the period. The ladies, whose precise identities are unclear, were probably painted by an artist based in Chester, near the Cholmondeley estates.
Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=1500](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvmdwfcsHu1r2gg9uo1_500.jpg)
The Cholmondeley Ladies circa 1600-10
According to the inscription (bottom left), this painting shows ‘Two Ladies of the Cholmondeley Family, Who were born the same day, Married the same day, And brought to Bed [gave birth] the same day’. To mark this dynastic event, they are formally presented in bed, their babies wrapped in scarlet fabric. Identical at a superficial glance, the lace, jewellery and eye colours of the ladies and infants are in fact carefully differentiated. The format echoes tomb sculpture of the period. The ladies, whose precise identities are unclear, were probably painted by an artist based in Chester, near the Cholmondeley estates.
Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=1500
Hever Castle: What if Anne Boleyn is not Anne Boleyn?
I’ve just read a post in a Brazilian Anne Boleyn’s fansite, which compares the most famous Anne Boleyn’s portrait and the portrait of Mary Tudor, Princess of England, Queen of England and Duchess of Suffolk, with Charles Brandon, her second husband, Duke of Suffolk.
The right portrait, known to be Anne Boleyn, is a copy made in the 16th century, based on a original image supposedly made between 1533-1536. On the other hand, the left portrait, Mary Tudor, is a portrait by her 20 years old, in 1516.
According to “Boullan”:
- The color of the eyes, the format of the faces, the long neck, the nose and mouth are similar in both portraits. Mary was five years older than Anne (if we suppose she was born in 1501), and, in 1533, Mary would be 37 and Anne, 32.
- If it is Mary Tudor on both portraits, the B wouldn’t mean Boleyn, but Brandon. We could even risk this is a posthumous portrait of Mary, since she died in 23rd June 1533. Maybe her husband, Charles, would like to see in her neck the “B” of Brandon as a symbol of her love for him.
- The appearance of the woman identified as Anne Boleyn in the picture does not match with the descriptions we have by, for an example, the venetian ambassador: he said her eyes were “black and pretty”, and her mouth was “large”. It was also said that her hair was thick, shiny and very dark.
Link to the post: http://boullan.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/o-enigma-de-b/
What do you think?
MetMuseum
Pair of gloves, ca. 1600
English
Leather; satin worked with silk and metal thread, seed pearls; satin, couching, and darning stitches; metal bobbin lace; paper
Portraits from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries are replete with minutely detailed representations of garments and accessories decorated with emblematic motifs. The gauntlets of these gloves are embroidered with motifs which also appear on other objects made in the late Elizabethan era—a disembodied eye raining pale blue and silver tears, a colorful pansy flower, and a bright green parrot with pearls on its wings. The weeping eye is related to a contemporary emblem book, Henry Peacham’s Minerva Britanna, or A Garden of Heroical Devises of 1612, though this motif was known as a symbol of unrequited love well before the publication of Peacham’s book.
The pansy, watered by the tears of the weeping eye, was a popular flower in the Elizabethan era. It was known to be a favorite of the queen herself and the pansy continued to appear in embroidery well into the seventeenth century.
Despite the present fragile and somewhat degraded condition of these gloves, they retain enough of their sumptuous embroidery to convey the luxury of the highest quality needlework of the late Tudor and early Stuart era.
“a disembodied eye raining pale blue and silver tears”
“a disembodied eye raining pale blue and silver tears”
“a disembodied eye raining pale blue and silver tears”
Queen Elizabeth I Fact:
In 1575 Queen Elizabeth I was offered Sovereignty of the Netherlands, which she refused. Ten years later Queen Elizabeth declined an offer of sovereignty again, this time by the Dutch commission for sovereignty of the Low Countries, but issued a declaration taking the Netherlands under her protection.
Elizabeth feared by taking sovereignty over the Netherlands she would set a precedent that other Monarchs could mess with the affairs of another Monarchs (at the time the low countries were de-facto colonies of Spain.) By doing so, Philip could also have done the same thing with Ireland, therefore, Elizabeth decided against accepting sovereignty.
From the exhibit Pulp Fashion: The Art of Isabelle de Borchgrave. Borchgrave recreates historical fashion using nothing but paper and paint.
You can see more of de Borchgrave’s work here.
