Author Archives: Michaela de Bruce

At 13 I had two extremely important and life altering discussions with my high school principle.

They both were about my potential.

The first was essentially to counter the heavy social pressure to give up learning before the end of high school. I was told you could learn how to do anything here so here is another chance to do what *you* want. But more that than in a school with the resources that gave me those chances. Chem lab? Got. Bio labs? Got. Technical drawing? Got. Drama space and books and teachers? Got.

So I changed my classes to be STEM first but with a heavy side dose of arts

I needed my second discussion because I was 13 and the peer pressure was to waste time at school. I was goofing off and even skipped some classes.

That second discussion didn’t just help me, it meant I asked was that actually worth losing the future I wanted? And then wow, I wanted to give so many people that same chance and then the follow up chance at least.

And it wasn’t phrased as I’ll end up in “bad” jobs if I didn’t- just that the chances here were due to having the people and infrastructure to help me do what I really truly wanted to do.

I actually got to follow two, TWO!, paths at the same time. I ignored all the free time in senior school and filled them in with more classes

I ended up with tertiary qualifications in art and in science.

In many ways I surpassed expectation by doing both, and pretty well even if not in the highest grades.

I knew that was the cost.

But yeah.

I think about that a lot.

All the schools without the resources for each student to have what they need.

Oh goodness! My sewing machine stopped being able to do a zig zag stitch a while back. It was all a bit hard to think I might need to save to replace her given how much work she saves me, so for a good month or so I’ve just not felt confident and have felt overwhelmed. I couldn’t find any explainers as to what might be going on so I figured I’d start with the advice I give everyone when their machine isn’t operating as expected- clean for dust as it gets everywhere especially places you can’t see.

For my machine this is exactly what was going on. I did have to sacrifice some of the grease as dust absolutely got embedded in some. Luckily it’s over the disks that change the stitch type and I should be able to safely replace that.

But it totally shifted my mood when I was able to use my machine, and the very generous width the zig zag offers, to make over a dress I got second hand. I was also able to close a hole in the seam of my super cute A line tunic in violet, teal, and black striped mix. I realised why I was drawn to this fabric only recently when mum brought out her last pair of knitted footie-slippers Oma made which have the same marled pattern.

But more than that suddenly my options for how to get the brocade onto my velveteen for my Cleves gown has opened wide again. Same with hemming. And I absolutely can think about my other pieces languishing in storage boxes because this was such a barrier.

But yes. Dust, it’s nearly always dust.

I am currently doing an impression of a children’s TV presenter from the 60s or 70s with a long sleeved red skivvy and my teal-black-purple tunic over the top.

Yes! I’ve emerged from the fuzzy dressing gown!

My fibro really get very grumpy when I wear anything wool or acrylic next to my skin. Silly me totally forgot I have a few super soft layers not just my merino ones. I’ll figure some way to use them again. Even more research is pointing to a provable immune involvement that I really hope leads to treatment to prevent symptoms not mask them. Though I’m grateful for that.

My Anne of Cleves research is developing well. It still holds up as novel even as several books and articles use some of the lesser known sources. It’s handy as I can quote the sources and have a bit of a guide as to how they have been used, and include these books in my bibliography.

I’ve got hold of some lovely big art books and with no real reason have once again had a handful of useful images out of hundreds. This is an absence of evidence, not evidence of absence. When a book about different audiences for books entirely ignores the vast libraries of manuscripts owned by women within those audiences. Students? Not university but taught by tutors. Aristocrats? Well nobility mostly but same deal. Monks? Nuns.

https://booksofduchesses.com/teach is a great place to get and idea of just how much there is, though I think a bit limited by different digitisation efforts in different countries, which has been my issue. I suspect an absence of evidence too, not not evidence of absence as has been suggested. When you have the incredible BNF digitisation project then your manuscripts skew French.

So I’m almost ready to move my digital library into the folders of the women who owned them.

I’ve got a few projects that are really inspiring me. And they all tie in to my hyper focus on Anne of Cleves and her contemporaries. Three North Rhine, one Spanish/Portugese, and one Tudor.

I then have a few more once these are sorted.

a) One of my favourite gowns from the start of my journey in actually making frocks from this era is currently in pieces. Now I’ve had a horrible few years that has lead to some self destructive behaviour, and defaulting to trying to perfect my work means undoing all the good with it. Yet this time, I didn’t have those negative thoughts, more excitement for what I can do.

I’ve always had a bit of trouble with this frock for me, even though I can prove this kind of falling off the shoulder issue, it’s not something I am happy with combined with a fairly chunky edge to the brocade trim.

I now have some lovely trim to use, nice and flat real metal, diamond al over pattern, left over from my Bruyn Anne of Cleves gown. I’ll still need to sew the trim to a strip of wool as the circle skirt is just a little too short so needs a little extension. I may need to add an extension to the front of the skirt as yes, I’m going to convert the gown into a teal version of the Holbein portrait.

The upper sleeves are still a great shape. I just need to use my fab stash of linen and linen-ramie mix canvas stash. I will need to recycle my big orange frock for this- I hope not, my heuk should be enough for half the skirt and then the other half can be pieced from a pretty generous set of off cuts. And even more offcuts can line the bodice and sleeves.

The skirt is a bit short because the velvet pile is so thick that it moved about when I originally made it. I also didn’t trust my ability to

b) The Bruyn portrait frock and accessories. I’m using the actual original portrait, which means I need to put my research up as to what the real painting is. Because I keep reading even recent works that stick with the St John’s portrait as the original.

I have though got a few authors I want to link to and to quote as I think that they are on the same track as me, even if they came to a different conclusion, and that conclusion relies on what is the original portrait.

c) My glorious crimson and black Cleves gown. I’m excited about this too. I think I’ve got the faux ermine lining cut. I had enough also for my blue wool gown as well. I need to do so much basing for both as the Faux-mine is horizontally stretchy, with very obvious downward facing fur.

d) My Mencia de Mendoza/Eleanora of Austria inspired gown. So excited. Similar in cut to my kirtles so making it from brocatelle is very exciting.

e) My Catherine Howard gown. These last two are firsts for me, but not from inexperience with cutting theory or art and other forms of research.

f) A gown in pink for a Citizen of Kleve-Juelich-Berg.

g) a pink gown based on a Cranach painting of Judith.

h) The Elizabeth I coronation robes or maybe a fictional ensemble. The later would be such an awesome mix of historic an fictional accounts.

i) My farthingale- I will need to wash my red wool hem protection, hot-pink casings and green base to really know if there will be dye transfer if I need to wash it all in the future.

It’s amazing isn’t it just how much work you have to do to support a fairly simply hypothesis when the pieces are unpredictable? Today I finally got the last of the obviously French/Lowlands 16thC manuscripts sorted. In 2004 I was able to read a book on calendarium(s) and today all I have left from my list of MSS to find is one clearly German book. Going by the clothing I suspect is Bavarian.

All that is left is to get the official scanning institution pages saved as PDFs so I can be offline and still work on citations.

It’s also an amazing window into just how many manuscripts were owned by individual women. So many! I already have noticed an asymmetry when it comes to the most useful genres/fields of study for each region. Portraits and donor paintings were HUGE business in Cologne, but there are so very few “genre” paintings like you get in the Lowlands. Manuscripts are also in short supply, imported yes, local, no. Written printed works HUGE, printed illustrations, not so much.

So I’ll soon be able to separate out the most important MSS for my work, and set aside the rest for later.

So. I’m not going to find The point of evidence I’d love to have to back up my research, but I think I have the pattern of evidence that only comes out of time (200 years) and across countries and across art forms and language and histories.

And yep this affects all my research branches which means I also still need to support my work with the work already done to find patterns I rely on for my patterns.
For example my timeline of depictions of women’s dress from the North Rhine builds on the work by Hindegarde Westhoff-Krummacher. I had spotted the evolution of the Cologne style but relied on her work and others to put the known dates on the images with known dates and then was able to get a closer year date for others that don’t. I’ve been able to work out some local sumptuary laws, but I need to go passage by passage with published laws that other people have worked to get transcribed, translated, and explained.

Everything I have considered is fully supported by art, and I could easily just do a long essay with that. But I need to explain why. Not to just trust my eye.

My health is doing something similar, I hope this helps explain why what seems simple isn’t.

After hurting my achilles tendon I offloaded to the muscles and tendons on the sides, so I rolled my feet in but also out- my hypermobility syndrome means I can not notice an injury like this until I can’t roll my heel any further.

So I’ve been taping along the achilles but also each side so the offloading changes and my calf muscles regain strength where they should. But I didn’t just offload below the knee, I’ve actually would up tightening tendons up the back or both legs and through hips to back. Right to my neck. My ribs also really hurt near my old break.

So this injury to a tiny distance of a tendon way down at my feet has negatively impacted my body all the way to my head (headaches from all this tension.)

So when I have a narrow window each day for research, for writing, for fixing my sewing machine (cries) and I prioritise my heel? It’s not just the stretching, massage of my heel. It’s floor work. It’s putting shoes on to walk around.

So when my research is seemingly just about a single portrait it’s actually about all the reasons that portrait exists.

I’ve collected and reviewed digitised illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, sculpture, embroideries, embroidery books, tailoring manuals (thank you WdW and the SCA network for fully half of that!) across and up and down Europe and through time. I’ve collected digitised historical records including entire books of music, contemporary essays and larger works about the artists and subjects and lives of people.

And I’m now at the point I have an eye for the works of several artists and doubt some attributions but also have a nice record of artists who copied each other.

All because the stories about Anna of Cleves just didn’t ring true. I’m not the only person by far. I’m trying to work out why I felt that. What instinct made me first feel uneasy. Because it was pretty much a gut reaction based on my own many years of making and wearing historic and contemporary costume.

But you can’t go by instinct. You need to be able to explain it so that’s what I’ve been organising.

It’s a massive project. I’m trying to work with imprecise dates when I really need dates down to the half year, so in order to potentially find that I need to have many examples of any one genre by any one artist.

In order be able to edit down I need as many really solid examples as possible. To know the evolution of them.

I’ve been able to now narrow my focus in time and for each genre. The work now is to yes catalogue them all properly and to not crash my pc with file names that are too long!

It’s not enough that it’s very hard to recover from hurting my Achilles tendons but now I find my farthingale is simply not up to standard. I’m pretty sure I do know how I wound up with each section a bit wobbly and inconsistently spaced, but it’s so much work to unpick let alone restitch that I’m feeling very deflated.

I have a mess to tidy as well, and we’ve still got branches over the section post cyclone. It’s all fixable, it’s just it takes so much time. And I’d really like to be working on my frocks.

So sorry CMS weirdness means my posts for the last few months get cross-posted (previews anyway) but my post itself not showing up on my own site? What? (Thank you to those who ask if me and my sites are okay, it’s really appreciated.)

I wish I had the money to throw at a host to do all of this work it’s honestly finally cheap enough that it’s an option for new builds. I’ve had my web presence entirely to pass on my research, share the research of others and to generally pay it forward.

Anyway. My issue in my early-mid years was in low resolution heavily curated books that were Anglo-Franco centric and the need to get to the physical library.

Now? The efforts to prevent digitisation and offering previews is what’s a barrier combined with how do you get to a digital archive when search engines refuse to show you the results?

So yes, please let me know if my site isn’t showing up, my public profiles are public for a reason.

And yes, I have a fairly large update coming but this testing my site and shuffling around and protecting a steroid injection to be able to walk has taken up a lot of my time. I thought I’d protected my injection well, but I’m feeling the effects of a needle going a few times each side of my tendon. I also forgot how painful they are.

But for a day I felt so good….

It’s the boiled frog metaphor.

Pain that accumulates can be very hard to accept as pain. You tell yourself it’s your fault, you’re not working hard enough.

So when it was safe to put weight on my foot I got carried away and, walked around the house, washed some fabric and then crashed again today.

It’s not okay, but like realising my RA in general is doing weird stuff, and that my fibro was not controlled enough? Narratives about chronic pain are so powerful that even with 20 years of experience it’s easy to blame yourself.

And that’s another reason I have my site. I want people who tend to do this too to brush some of that off their own shoulders, not because *I* try to, but because yes, this is what we tend to do. And I want all of us to have our best chances.