Medieval clothing (and something else) from Vienna - part 3

This time I will show photos I made from the Imperial Treasury in the Höfburg, the MAK (Museum für Angewandte Kunst) and the Kunstkammer in the Kunst Historische Museum. Especially the Imperial treasury did have a stunning collection of medieval clothing, including gloves and socks. This set of medieval clothes was actually the coronation dress of King William II of Sicily, which later were used for the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (also the other regalia can be seen in the treasury).

Starting with the underwear, the Alba of the coronation clothes was made in 1181 in Palermo - according to the embroidered text on the cloth in both Latin and Arabic - for King William II. It is worn underneath the Dalmatica. As I could not make a decent photo of it, this one was retrieved from internet.

 

Over the Alba, the Dalmatica, also called blue Tunicella, was worn. The gown was also made in Palermo, Sicily in 1140 and belongs to the coronation clothing, and later of that of the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. It is made of dark blue Samite silk; the red silk at the end of the arms and the underside of the gown is the same cloth as coronation mantle, decorated with rows of pearls and gold embroidery.

Detail of the arm of the blue Dalmatica.

The coronation mantle or Pluviale is worn over the blue Tunica. It was also made in Palermo in the Royal Workshop around 1133/1134. The mantle is made from red Samite silk with gold silk embroidery, pearls, enamel, filigree gold, precious stones and a tablet weave at the edge.

The hands were covered with gloves. These were made in Palermo, Sicily, Italy before 1220 from Samite silk and decorated with gold embroidery, enamel, niello, pearls and precious stones. They are part of the coronation clothes. The front (right) and back (left) of the gloves are shown.

The legs were covered with stockings or short hose. These were made from red Samite silk with embroidery of gold thread around 1150-1200 in the Court workshop in Palermo. The hose have a length of 60 cm and a diameter of 34 to 40 cm. The silk bands used to tighten are a later addition.

The feet and hose were covered by the shoes, also made from red Samite silk around 1130 or around 1220. The top of the shoes show a broad band of gold cloth covered with precious stones (in total 5 sapphires, 4 amethysts and one emerald) and medallions of griffins and sirens. The shoes have a length of 26 cm and a height of 10.8 cm, which equals size 41 in the Netherlands (or the UK size 7). The sole is made of leather. Also here I used a better photo from internet.

The Eagle Dalmatia is like the blue Tunicella worn over the Alba. This gown, decorated with eagle medallions, was first mentioned in 1350 and is likely made around 1300 from Chinese damask (the fabric shows a Chinese cloud pattern) and black silk. The gold embroidered edges are made from damask silk. The (imperial) eagle medallions are stitched with black silk thread and have enamel eyes. Originally also a hood belonged to this gown, which was lost when these clothes were transported from Nürnberg to Vienna.

Not really clothing, but an accessory to put on clothing, although there is actually some clothing on this brooch. The brooch is Burgundian-Dutch and dates around 1430-1440. It is made from gold, enamel, precious stones and pearls.

These are 16th century Italian pontifical stockings made from red silk with gold embroidery. On display in the MAK.

Thes are images from the Vienna model book of around 1410. This booklet with a leather case contains many silverpoint drawings on paper of animals, men and godly creatures. The model book was used by painters as some sort of reference book. Some of the drawings show different types of head-wear, such as those shown in this photo. Kunstkammer, Kunst-Historisches Museum.

This is the complete set of the model book with leather casing. Photo from the KHM.

 

 

In the Kunstkammer of the Kunst-Historisches Museum was a late 15th century bust of a female by Francesco Laurana with an intricate hair net with (gold) latticework decorated with red flowers. The bust could perhaps depict Ippolita Maria Sforza or her daughter Isabella.

Also in this museum is a statue of 'vanitas' by Michel Ehrhart, made from linden wood around 1470-1480. It figures a young couple and an old wife. What is most intriguing is that the only piece of clothing is a piece of male string underwear (both women are naked), fastened with a bow! 

Finally, something else:  

 

This 15th century 'Saintly' beer glass was also on display in the MAK. Cheers Thomas!

I give you my heart with all my love….

I give you my heart with all my love….

How often will that have been said over the centuries. Very, very often probably. And is still said…. Sometimes the sentence may have been accompanied with a gift. And who wouldn’t fall for a suitor bringing a very nice and very precious gift?

In Sandra Hindman’s book (S. Hindman. 2007. Towards an art history of medieval rings. Paul Holberton Publishing, London, UK. ISBN 978-1903470640. Medieval (gold) rings from a private collection placed in perspective.) a very nice example is shown of a golden ring with a large heart-shaped ruby, lord of stones, with engravings of ivy and the text ‘CORTEPORTAMOR’ estimated to be just for the right period of our re-enactment group, the fourteenth century. Nowadays, I would probably laugh hard and find the ring very much over the top, but perhaps in older times I would just have been delighted. Well, actually no one ever gave me a present like that, so I will just have to make it myself!

The Gothic heart shaped 14th Century love ring in gold and ruby. 

With engravings of clinging ivy and text inscription. Height 23 mm, 

inner diameter 12.3 mm, outer diameter 18.7 mm, bezel 21.6 x 17.5 mm. 

Stone approx. 10.2x 10.8 x 7.7 mm.

The original ring is of course full of symbolism. Ruby is and was a very precious stone surrounded by myths of warding of danger, having the power of fire, removing evil thoughts and of influencing the decisions, mental and physical health of the person wearing it. The ivy expresses fidelity and eternity, as the evergreen crawls and creeps towards the sky, forming a union with whatever it clings to, becoming almost inseparable. And the text to make it even more plain in old Italian that the heart caries love… Someone really had to be convinced.

(Above) Text engraved on the Gothic Love Ring's hoop.

(Left) Engraving with ivy on the bezel of the Gothic Love Ring's hoop.

In Medieval times rubies were probably traded along the spice trading routes, arriving in Europe from India. Nowadays it proves to be difficult to find heart-shaped cabochon natural rubies of the size desired for the ring. Well, at least, I could not find affordable ones. In the end I resorted to buying a synthetic, opaque one – made in China - that as side bonus seems to come closer in appearance to the more pale pink colour of the original stone.

The ring itself is made from 1 mm thick silver plate material. I started sawing out the shape for the band and the heart in one strip very much like a loop shapes cigar band. Sizes. I neatly filed the ends of my band and soldered them together. Next I made the ring round on my ring mandrel. For the heart shaped stone I made the setting out of 0.5 mm silver plate. I drew the heart shape on a small paper and used to strips of approximately 5 mm to form to half shapes that soldered together exactly fell around my ruby.

 

Repeated annealing the hoop and bezel of my silver ring to be able to slowly mould it to its round shape.

On a half round file I now hollowed out the setting so that the bottom fitted nicely on my ring. I soldered the two pieces together. With a small file I made the top of the setting thinner to make it easier for the time I was going to fit the stone into the setting. Then I had to file and sand the whole thing thoroughly, before polishing it.

The heart shaped setting soldered to the rounded hoop and bezel. After this the heart shape was filed to its final shape and sanded.

The ring was polished except for the inside of the setting. 

The text and ivy has been written with a black marker on the hoop and bezel before engraving.

When it was nice and shiny I used a black marker to draw on the ivy vines and fit all the letters of the text on the ring itself. I am not a good engraver, but having the ring firm and stable in my ring clamp it worked out quite nicely. I lightly polished the ring again to get rid of any small scratches made. Then I placed the stone in its setting and slowly pushed, bit by bit, the setting round the stone. Bling bling, ready to show off!

The result shown from three different sides.

The CORTEPORTAMOR text on the replica.

A small movie to show the ring from all sides.

There are various other examples of heart-shaped rings and jewellery found in private collections and museums. Some examples are given below: A medieval 'A'-engraved heart-pendant of bronze (private collection), a medieval children's silver ring with gold-plated heart (private collection), an engraved gold ring with a heart shaped wolf's teeth (14th century, V&A museum, London, UK), and a heart shaped brooch engraved at the back with the text (14th century, V&A museum, London, UK).

Two pictures of a medieval small heart shaped children's ring in silver and gold (the heart) found on a terp - a man-made dwelling mound - in Friesland, the Netherlands. The ring is ornamented with diagonal ribs.

A medieval bronze pendant with a nice green patina, engraved with an A. Archaeological find, Germany.

Gold heart- shaped brooch with stylised leaves and flowers or feathers, made in France or England around 1400. The brooch would have been colourfully enamelled, both at the front and back. Engraved on the reverse in a dentillated border is the black-letter inscription 'NOSTRE ET TOUT DITZ A VOSTRE [D]ESEIR' (Ours and always at your desire), each word separated by a small floral sprig. Brooches often fastened garments with a slit at the neck; they were used both by men and women (V&A museum, item 86-1899, London, UK).

Decorated gold ring with wolf's tooth set in a heart-shaped bezel, made between 1200-1300 in France or England, inscription added around 1375-1425. Gems, but also other materials, such as teeth, were supposed to have magical properties. Inside the hoop are two engravings: a magic formula and a biblical phrase. The charm: ‘BURO + BERTO + BERNETO’ is to protect against toothache; the biblical phrase 'CONSUMMATUM + EST' are the last words Christ spoke on the Cross, and were used as a charm to calm storms. This large ring likely belonged to a man, possibly a merchant who travelled at sea (V&A museum, item 816-1902, London, UK).

A tinkling piece of pottery and a tinkling ring

 

A tinkling piece of pottery

A reader suggested that the rings on the curious piece of pottery described in a previous post was meant to attract the personnel at the bar to refill your cup. We tested this out and our cup made a nice tinkling sound. So nice that we decided to make a (half a) minute movie of it.

A 'tinkling' medieval finger ring

The style of the ring on the hand holding the beaker very well suits the tinkling cup. It is a replica of a medieval ring, of which we also posses the original. We bought this ring through internet, but unfortunately we did not record the accompanying information. The only thing we remembered is that it dates (according to the seller) to the 13th-14th century. The original ring is made of bronze, the replica of silver. The bead of the replica ring is turquoise, the bead of the medieval ring is either a blueish turquoise or coloured glass. Turquoise is a gem that was known during the middle ages. It originated from the orient and travelled trough Turkey to Europe, hence its name Turq-uoise.The rings have a decorative spiral groove on the outside. Spiral grooves are more often found on finger rings of the 14th century, for instance on the golden ring from the Fishpool hoard (Nottingham, United Kingdom) which has a beaded spiral groove.

A gold finger ring from the Fishpool hoard dated 1400-1464. The ring has a beaded spiral groove on the outside. On the inside is an inscription in English 'Uphaf ye entier' with a heart between the last two words. (lift-up your whole heart). 23 by 6.1 mm. Image and object from  British Museum, London, United Kingdom. Hinton (1982) in the book Medieval Jewellery suggests that the ring has a religious context, however the text and the heart seem more reminiscent of  medieval love rings that show similar texts.

Our replica ring was constructed by taking a 0.8 mm thick strip of silver of 60.6 x 4.2 mm. While still flat, the strip was decorated with parallel diagonal grooves: first with a triangular small sweet file, later with a 0.8 mm joint file. After this the ring was roughly rounded on a triblet and the ends were soldered together. Next, the ring was rounded on the same triblet till it was completely round-shaped and had an inner diameter of 18.5 mm - the right size for my ring finger. A small ringlet made of 1 mm round silver wire with an inner diameter of 3 mm (and thus an outer diameter of 5 mm) was first soldered close, an then slightly flattened on one side with a file to create a larger contact zone. Next, it was soldered perpendicular onto the ring with the flattened side. The turquoise bead has a diameter of 5.3 mm with a drilled hole of only 0.9 mm. Like the original medieval ring, the wire for the eyelet to fasten the bead is slightly thinner than the ringlet connected to the ring. In this case, I used a piece of 0.9 mm silver wire to fix the bead neatly to the rest of the ring. Both wire ends are stuck inside the bead, so no soldering - with chances of cracking the bead - was necessary.

The silver replica and the bronze original side by side. 

The original measures 16.3 mm diameter inside, the bead is 5.3 mm.

The tinkling ring. Actually, the ring does not tinkle that loud and nice as the beaker.

The spiral groove can be seen nicely in both rings standing on their side..

Medieval Jewellery-Byzantine Key Ring (9th Century)

While my husband is a master carpenter, I enjoy myself as a goldsmith interested in medieval jewellery. I still hope that one day he will make me a chest as large as the one he made for all his medieval tools so I can store my precious silver and gold handiwork. However, for the moment he deems my production not large enough. So I better get started about some of the things I made or am making at the moment.

For the medieval feast of Saint Nicolas on the 5th of December I got a very nice book written by Sandra Hindman, in which she describes her private collection of 35 golden rings dating from the 4th till the midst of the 16 century and compares them to rings found in several museum collections (S. Hindman. 2007. Towards an art history of medieval rings. Paul Holberton Publishing, London, UK. ISBN 978-1903470640. Medieval (gold) rings from a private collection placed in perspective.) Some of these rings are really fabulous and I really fell in love with them. The first one that I tried to replicate is a Byzantine Key ring dating from the 9th century and thought to originate from Constantinople (number 4 in the book). Where the original is made in gold, I made my two replicates in silver. One as original as possible, one with some small variations.

 Roman Key ring from the 2nd Century AD, 

photographed from two sides (Collection MAK Köln; Schmuck II, 1985)

Left: Byzantine key ring, 11-12th Century AD; Right: Roman key ring, 2-4th Century AD

 (Collection MAK Köln; Schmuck II, 1985)

In the 6th century BC, lock and key were invented by the Greek sculptor and architect Theodorus of Samos (or so Pliny tells us). In Roman times many of the keys could in principle be worn as rings, where shank and bit were solidly connected to the bow that would fit around the finger. But of course they could also be attached to a belt or stored otherwise. Most of these rings were made in base metals and quite a large number of key rings from Roman times and later have been found.

 Byzantine Key Ring in gold, 9th Century  (Hindman, 2007, ring no4)

The described ring is composed of a rounded band that is thicker on one side than the other. A round heart-shaped pierced disk is fitted to an in this case rotating shaft while on the opposite side of the ring a small round bezel with faded inscription is shouldered to the hoop. The ornate disk suggests it may have come from another piece of jewelry and thus that this particular ring probably never functioned as an actual key.

My two rosettes just soldered together, still red of the borax.

Making my replicates I started with the ornamental disk or rosette, which has an outer diameter of approximately 14 mm. I first made a smooth ring of approximately 12 mm in diameter out of a flattened strip of thread, approximately 1 mm in width and 0.5 mm thick. The heart (or horse shoe if you prefer that) shaped ornaments and the small strip inside the rosette I made from the same material, fitting them carefully together and soldering them in place. Around the filled circular ornament the original has 23 round granules, instead of soldering small granules one by one,  I used 1 mm diameter silver "pearl-thread'", meaning my ring has some 36-37 small globules around the rosette. 

The two connected shanks with both rosettes, the bottom 

one the replicate one the top one my own variation.

 Shank and bit together.

 

The two shanks I made of 2 x 15 mm silver tube with a diameter of 3 mm. To start with I left the two shanks connected and only separated them after soldering the rosettes. On each side they were ornamented/thickened with a piece of approximately 2 mm silver tube with 4 mm diameter, neatly fitting and soldered in place. A 3 mm piece of  silver tube with 3 mm diameter was later soldered on top of each shank as eye to be later connected to the ring.

Ring and bezel.

For the ring itself I started with a piece of 3 mm solid silver thread. Hammering both ends until they reached a thickness of about 2 mm diameter at the ends and a length of approximately 6.7 cm (large enough my middle or index finger), annealing the piece regularly. Rounding the ring on a tribulet, sawing the ends straight, filling and solderingit close. This resulted nicely in slightly oval rings like in the original. Some leftover silver was smelted to yield a drop of silver of approximately 6 mm diameter and soldered to the thinner part of the ring to form the bezel.

Just soldered the shanks to the rings, will they hold?

Yes they hold!

In the thicker part of the ring, I now filed a slot where the shank would fit. I heated the whole ring to oxidize the outer layer. For a normal soldering you want your parts to be nicely clean to solder together. In this case I just wanted the opened eyelet of the shank to solder close without getting stuck to the ring which would also heat up while reaching soldering temperatures. This worked nicely and shank and ring can move nicely in all directions as they should! So now they only need to be filed and sanded where necessary and to be polished to give a nice shine.

 My silver replicate of the 9th Century Byzantine Key Ring.

 

My silver variation on the 9th Century Byzantine Key Ring.

As said before, I made two rings. One is identical to the original as it has 4 heart shapes in its rosette. The other I varied slightly and is decorated instead with three hearts and three small silver globules. I have been wearing one in the weekend we spend in castle Loevestein in March and must say that they wear quite well as the shank and bow-ring are not fixed but can move  nicely.