I’m still having trouble with windows trying to create thumbnails of files in folders I simply have not been using. I know why it happens and I’m not happy about it, because it makes my research and tidying efforts so much harder than they need to be. Mr Carlo is faring much better. He still has his neuropathy, but the steroids have increased his quality of life. Today for instance he has lead me around the lounge several times, and even wombled his way past Fluffy who was perfectly fine with this.
He is limited, obviously, and he does have difficulty eating and drinking. It’s not that he isn’t hungry but that he forgets what food is. So I have to put a tiny dot right at the bottom of his nose and then quickly move food in when he licks it off. And then half way through he gets distracted cleaning his teeth, so I have to repeat this until he finally has some food.
He’s always had something related to this I think. To drink water he has to get his nose just on the surface of the water, then twitches then drinks it. So now he also twitches when he finally smells the food up close.
But he’s chirpy again, which is so nice.
My sleep is shot but when isn’t it? Painsomnia and painmares alike. Painsomnia is when pain keeps you awake and painmares are when you do get to sleep and your dreams convert your physical distress into anxiety driven nightmares. It’s not a great combination as you just never get a break from the pain unless you actually are able to address the pain.
Anyway.
I’ve just exhausted myself getting some linen put away, Mr Carlo is asleep on the new rug, Mr Fluffy has snuck in to eat Mr Carlo’s biscuits, and Little Miss has had breakfast and even waited patiently in the hallway with Mr Fluffy proving that they can be united by a shared love of food. Mr Fluffy hasn’t liked the sachet catfood in years but because it’s Missy’s food… suddenly yes. It’s a good thing for them to not rely on one food because some of the shortages we have specifically been affected by has been cat food and kitty litter.
For the first time I’ve got mixed feeling looking back on my work for #FallForCostume. I think it’s because of what a struggle it is to make anything. That is once source of sadness and frustration. But the destruction of so many of my extraordinary patterning and stitching expertise by the environment has just been overwhelming.
What do I do with it all? I am just glad I’ve kept the card pattern pieces even though they take up so much room. It’s something at least.
Latex headpieces were a bit more durable but still not entirely. But yeah.
The armour is fine, even if glue delaminates the pieces are fine.
Some boots have also suffered the same fate.
So it’s a difficult time. I might just get them all on coat hangers in the studio so I don’t have to think too much about them.
Something that’s a bit of a myth in the historical costuming world is that you can’t use allegorical images for clothing information. But it’s not entirely true. I’ve been building up a collection of instances where both saints and background figures are based on real people. This is not new, I’m trying to get the examples specific to women’s dress. While organising some folders into what I like versus strictly catalogued I spotted these two images clearly use the same figure.
The family portrait that includes the young woman in red is dated to 1502 and is by Hans Holbein the elder.
I had both in my folder for deeply scooped necklines like this which is probably most famously represented in Bianca Maria Sforza’s potrait by Strigel.
I’m not going to lie, I’ve loved this gown since the time I only had low quality black and white prints to go by. So this may be what I make from the small amount of “Cranach” gold fabric I have. Oh no. No it’s okay, I can reuse my Heuke fabric into a ropa to go with my wool kirtle for a more comfy ensemble.
Ummm… after a winter sans sluggies we had 3, yes 3, seek shelter from the rain last night. All pretty small maybe 6cm fully stretched, 4cm travel sized. But fast! Yeah fast slugs who knew? The one I rescued from the front door also looked at me. I rescued it using a piece of card and it zoomed to the edge and elevated the front half to look around and it turned to face me. I’m not really prone to hyperbole but it was sufficiently creepy for me to go into said rain and throw the card and sluggie a little further onto the grass than I would normally. And it was upon returning that the third sluggie was found zipping over the front steps. I did get more card to rescue/remove it to the grass but ummm. Fluffy stepped on it. I tried nudging it to get it to start to move, but… Fluffy is now a, Absolute Unit. A hefty chonker. Sluglets don’t really stand a chance.
An upbeat title for what’s actually been a very tough week. I’ll get back to the title but I had to cancel my “Stickelchen” class. Barely a few hours before I needed to be asleep my pain levels were ramped up and despite being also fatigued I was no where near able to sleep. Horribly I’ve needed to recover as if I actually did do the class.
It’s hard to really explain fibro pain, despite being a classic patient in that I have a very strong and vivid memory and recall. So I should be able to articulate it better.
But if you’ve ever been in a situation where heavy machinery is used all day every day for a week then you know how noise and the deeper vibrations really drain your ability to concentrate and make you more aware of the noise not less.
The hyper stimulation that’s external is I think easier to understand, and respect, than when your nerves are doing it to themselves. But the effect on said nerves is still the same. They are firing overtime and no matter the cause the effect is the sensation that the external world has seeped into your blood and bone. You can’t shake it out. You can’t walk it off, and because so many of our senses are physically in our head and close to each other you find smell overbearing. Light is that much brighter. At least it’s fairly cheap and easy to gargle with mouth wash when taste starts getting in on the act.
But I’m taking this as an opportunity to further refine what I’ve been trying to articulate.
I have a timeframe in mind. And in the days since I’ve been working to make sure I’m properly utilising the work of researchers I need to rely on. For example I’m quoting from Textiler Hausrat and I’ve already found differences in translations I did a few years back and now.
I’ve got some more documents that are really patchily OCR ready which means I need a mix of A5 notebook compactness of terms to search for manually. OMG. Had I known this when I first accessed these I’d have already worked out where we have all gone wrong.
It helps that I can read these fairly easily. And much better than translation software for modern translations.
I am really excited by the prospect of both the research and making sides of all the hats. Especially given these were worn by my ancestors! Not the super OTT gold and pearlwork obviously, but Gelderland keeps springing surprises on me by how wonderfully Dutch and NRW influenced they are.
These two pages from the Codice de Trajes really do reveal this dual influence. And I love it.
I’m still very much fatigued and have only a short time each day but am working on my essay/class “Will The Real Stickelchen Please Stand Up.” And I’m now dealing with the effects of AI. Before recently google couldn’t translate “stickelchen” nor even “stickle.” But now that people are confidently using it in books (art, history, and fiction) and in blogs and social media google is now confident.
The problem is it’s wrong.
If I take the full set of meanings in dictionaries it’s clearly wrong, because the meanings translate more correctly.
But this means that now when people use google translate they’ll get a result that seems right, but isn’t.
The bigger problems are that my reach is obviously not the same as actual influencers. And it’s power of numbers when it comes to AI. So I’m getting more tired dealing with formatting and style in order to get all the information out there and without errors. Hah!
Mr Carlo has made so much progress that today he got himself across the lounge three times and even meowed to me! His little mrr-ow? with the upward inflection that sounds like a question. He’s normally so chatty that this is absolutely a good sign. He’s now within the healthy weight range, but still low, so I think the vets want to make sure it’s stable.
We both are dealing with neuropathy from about the lower spine/hip, and probably for the same reason some erosion in our spines. Yeah I haven’t really written much about this but it sometimes makes it hard to walk as the numbness can work in a weird way that it feels like my hip and knees are not bending the right way. But it means I have a bit of understanding of what he’s going through too.
So I’m also trying to work on my own health because on top of this lower limb shenanigans I’ve been dealing with undiagnosed POTS* for a while. I need to swap from lying, to sitting, to standing to limit any kind of pressure from my lower spine but that’s meant my pulse shoots up with each and takes ages to come back down.
I do indeed use breathing exercises- I am a singer so breathing techniques are a thing I just do- and it does help me get through that without becoming anxious.
Of all the disabilities it has to be the same as what I’m currently in a waiting list to understand. We both have neuropathy in our legs. We both seem to have degeneration in the (very) lower spine. Mine is made worse if I have any compression at any point from neck to knees, but his seems to be permanent. He also has had a really sudden health crash that obscured just how very determined he is. When he is unwell he just stops eating. Which, again, is what I do. I took a chance on a product that seemed to be the equivalent of what I need when I get to that point. It’s basically fluids, protein, and sugar in a very tasty sippy (or licky in his case) form.
It was exactly what he needed. In fact he’s even eating his preferred hard biscuit food. He has turned the emergency corner I think. He is so very tired so I’m under no pretences that he is cured.
My sleep is just…. but he seems to have learned that if he stands on my feet I pick him up to get water. If I feel him next to my feet that means he wants food. If he stands on my chest he needs the litter tray. He really has learned that I’ll loop my hands under him to let him get back on my bed himself and I’ll protect him from falling.
He is such a scrapper.
Boo was too.
I am too.
It’s not about denying this really important part of how you interact with the world and even more importantly how the world responds to you. It’s knowing that and doing what you can.
I’m worried that his habit of jumping is going to cause more injury to his spine, so during the day he has the entire lounge to himself. The sofa seats are low, he remembers where his water and food and tray are, all low to the ground.
Boo being deaf was also disabled and we also needed to find a way to gradually open up his world in a way that would prepare him.
If this emergency period is coming to an end I really hope we can try one of the two treatment options. Healthcare for pets is under pressure just as much as for people. It’s still a bit of a difficult wait.
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And another figure I’ve been interested in a very long time. It’s from The Book of Costume by Davenport. Like my figure from the Eton and/or Escorial Codices I have regularly tried searches based on the information provided in the figure descriptions. Normally a collection name . Even a reverse image search didn’t work.
Until it did. But not her. This is a pair of stove tiles at the Boston museum of fine arts and the details of the background match so perfectly. And now I realise why I thought she might have been part of an architectural element, the size of these tiles “68.6 cm (27 in.)” mean that yes the glazing blurs some fine details but they still show through.
DESCRIPTION Tile with portrait of Jacobea Maria of Baden. PROVENANCE Igo Levi (b. 1887 – d. 1961), Lucerne. April 11-12, 1962, Levi sale, Weinmüller, Munich, lots 385-6. Edward M. Pflueger (b. 1905 – d. 1997) and Kiyi Powers Pflueger (b. 1915 – d. 2008), New York; 2006, bequest of Edward M. Pflueger and gift of Kiyi Powers Pflueger to the MFA. (Accession Date: April 26, 2006)
DATE: ABOUT 1550 ACCESSION NUMBER: 62.618 Description Figure of Sybilla of Saxony, on yellow ground, in shell-topped arch in blue and green. Green skirt with yellow, blue and brown bands, blue bodice with green, white blouse, plumed hat. Provenance Igo Levi (b. 1887 – d. 1961), Lucerne; April 11-12, 1962, Levi sale, Weinmüller, Munich. R. Thornton Wilson (b. 1886 – d. 1977), New York; 1962, gift of R. Thornton Wilson to the MFA
Firstly hooray for these two depictions of powerful women because despite idealised faces these tiles were important works of art that were about political connections and aspirations and that is predominantly through clothing in these kinds of works.
Secondly this now lets me find my figure through an entirely new term to me, and let’s me imagine just how very vibrant this tile must have been. But first I need to prove she is on a tile, and hopefully identify who she is.
But I needed the translation and google translate did help: Ofenkachel I also tried the reverse to find the entire stoves in case any view revealed more uses of these particular kinds of tiles depicting clothing as revealing identity.
And wow. Also, oh no, another folder of new to me information including from archaeological finds, and unfinished tiles that really do reveal such an interest in essentially pretty clothing because aside from depictions of well known nobility, there are tiles that mimic the wedding dancer prints (a totally separate post for that.)
So this must be the photo used after the sale/auction of the Igo Levi collection when the GNM purchased it. Unfortunately that’s as far as I can go as I can’t seem to search for either the provenance nor an Accession number. I may have better luck trying to identify her partner. Her clothing includes sleeves pinned back and her haube is distinctly shaped which reminds me of the Aldegrever wedding dancers. But I do think I’ll have better luck looking for his beard and short hair. They are almost certainly copied from printed works.
In 2004 I took notes and recorded an image of an illustration from a book I believe I gravitated to as an exhibition catalogue about Felipe II. But my notes are lost. All I have is the artist name and that it was an illumination. This is a long post as this is sometimes the amount of work I need to track down any individual image or source.
In the years since I found only a few examples of Jörg Breu d.J.s work but yes that included two illuminated books. One of martial arts, and the other a family book of the Fuggers. Neither of which contain this illustration. He was important in Augsburg so I kept wondering how much of this probably ancestral figure used clothing known to him, and how much was made up.
I actually grabbed what information I could as I had seen sleeves like this before worn by Maria Jakobäa von Baden, Duchess of Bavaria.
This painting is very much about going to the very limit of sumptuary laws even for a duchess. And her hat. Come on. How much do I need one. I am making one, but that’s for another blog.
Every few years I try various searches but finally this year of curating enough manuscripts to get the actual information I need for my Anne of Cleves research.
Needless to say I tried all the terms in this page:
“Commonly referred to as the ‘Antiquitates’ of Hans Tirol. A possible formal title is given on f. [7]v, of ‘Sentencia heroaldi’. This accompanies the portrait of Hans Tirol pointed towards the dedication to Henry VIII.” and “This volume belongs with a further three volumes produced by Hans Tirol, entitled ‘De nobilitate et ortu heroum’: Eton MSS 93-95.”
Round and round I went, finding articles on JSTOR- the greatest interest in this and other manuscripts is in historic deeds, and non-figurative art- and then found a link to a British Museum held sketch of dancers by Breu (Augsburg was big on dance.)
Again! Puffed and paned upper sleeve and trumpeting lower.
But more than that her hem has the same decoration as the probable Eton College image, and the Lucretia from the same, and there are the same curving details to the top of her bodice. Here though she wears a contemporary set of hauben and barret. These probably are his fast fillers but were used on two figures with very different uses.
So you can imagine how exciting that has been. If we didn’t have the Maria Jacobae painting these figures might be dismissed as highly fanciful.
I still really wanted to know if my hunch was right.
I found exhibition catalogues in online bookstores, the exhibition site using the way back machine, and nowhere could I find more images that hinted if my hunch was right.
And then yesterday. I somehow I spotted another solution I must have skimmed several times.
Der Codex entstand in der Werkstatt des Augsburger Malers Jörg Breu des Jüngeren. Eine 1547 entstandene, weniger umfangreiche Fassung des Werks, die dem spanischen König Philipp II. gewidmet war, der Escorial-Codex, befindet sich im spanischen Escorial.
The codex was created in the workshop of the Augsburg painter Jörg Breu the Younger. A less extensive version of the work, created in 1547 and dedicated to the Spanish King Philip II, the Escorial Codex, is in the Spanish Escorial.
Oh no. Yet another codex I needed to hunt down using all the names it’s been known by across time and space. “Codex Escurialensis” with the date 1549 lead me to a facsimile with the titles of each volume. A great page for tracking down more information but nothing to help me check the style of the figures.
I had tried searching the Escorial library but just was not in the right section. So I still didn’t have the shelfmark. So I try another image search for “”Heráldica y origen de la nobleza de los Austrias” El Escorial
And oh my goodness. There she is. In a tiny thumbnail of a copy of the facsimile held open to her page.
She’s in the first thumbnail of the third row. in this screenshot. She’s in the top of the first page, and in the middle. Maybe the image from the site will help:
AHHHHHHHHHHH!!! My instinct was right, and oh did you catch the price? There were less than 1000 of these facsimiles made so no, I’m not able to afford one unless it’s an ex university library copy severely defaced and even then… nope.
But finally, I found the correct section of the El Escorial Liabrary!!!! And yes via the facsimile, so taking a bit of a chance I type in “Breu” in the search field, then selected “manuscritos” from the filters and… There they are!
So naturally I get scroll happy, hoping my girl (now girls as I want to see them all) will pop up. Now these are incredible books, with so much valuable information including for my own research, but as I suspected the volume I need is actually:
Historia originis et nobilitatis Hispaniae et Germaniae etc. / per Othonem Episcopum Augustanum por Truchsess von Waldburg, Otto , Cardenal (1514-1573) | Tirol, Hans (ca. 1505-ca. 1576) | Breu, Jörg (ca. 1510-1547). Idioma: latger Editor: Augsburgo , ca. 1547 Disponibilidad: Ítems disponibles para préstamo: Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de El Escorial Signatura topográfica: 28-I-10.
And that makes sense. I suspected she was dressed in an Augsburg style after all.
But what of the other images you find in an image search. Well another seller of facsimiles includes a page that is very familiar in style and that’s because Jorg Breu also illustrated the Fuggerbuch- a genealogy book for the very rich Fuggers. Of Augsburg.
These pages are so useful for heraldry, for calligraphy, and is absolutely helping me finally settle on how to do my pattern book! I get to keep my prefered font but include a latinised font “translation.”
As already mentioned Das Ehrenbuch der Fugger – (BSB Cgm 9460) was illustrated by Breu and uses this same person behind their arms, in various examples of contemporary and “ancient” dress.
So while I’m no closer to knowing who she was, I have the information needed while waiting, and hoping that the final volume of the Escorial Codex or Eton Codex are digitised.
