The Frock Chick

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.

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.

• Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. And yes I’ve on occasion stood up fast and then just dropped to the floor.

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)

Stove Tile – Works – Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (mfa.org)

But wait, there’s more.

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

Stove tile – Works- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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.)

But I did eventually find her.

Ofenkachel-Paar
Datensatz 71298056
Aufsberg, Lala: Ofenkachel-Paar, 1961/1964
Beschreibung: Ofenkachel-Paar. Keramik, farbig glasiert. Nürnberg: Germanisches Nationalmuseum

Deutsche Fotothek

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.