On the Authentic-SCA list, we were discussing the differences between bliaut, cotehardies, etc, and someone said there was no extant instances of bliaut. Then someone else said:
“ah – there is. In Lodose they’ve found several sections of these gowns, with pleating. The pleats are actually sewn in with running stitches. The biggest piece is IIRC 80×50 cm, so significant bits of cloth. The pictures and stuff can be found in ‘Den Ljusa Medeltiden’.”
Do we have any more info on this?
~ Brangwayna
Message #997, April 8, 2003
I have the book on order at the library. I’ll be happy to share when it arrives.
~ Katrine / Katherine Barich
Message #998, April 8, 2003
To call the finds from Lödöse (and Trondheim) finds of pieces of bliauts is definitely too much. Especially since there is no accepted, scientific definition of the bliaut. But that there has been finds of finely pleated wool twill is correct.
Margareta Nockert compares them with the Chartres statues and with Queen Katarina of Sweden’s tomb (I’m going to get a scan of the tomb someday) in the mentioned book, but we don’t know if these fragments belong to dresses like this. Most sculptures etc from the area where the finds are from (eg SW Sweden and Norway) show the non-pleated version of the tight 12th-century dress as do images from the rest of Sweden (there are exceptions, I’m having an idea about this European fashion only reaching the western part of Scandinavia, just like the courtly culture mainly influenced these parts, especially Norway).
The tomb that Nockert makes the comparison with is from ca 1250, which makes it hard to use when discussing 12th century clothes. I don’t know how exact the textile finds are dated either, they might well be from the middle of the 13th c. The tomb of Katarina is very interesting though, because it shows what might be a transitional style between the fashion of the 12th c and the 13th. It has long, pleated sleeves of the “maunch”-type (like a heraldic sleeve), that are slung over the lower arms. Her arms are holding a book over her chest. The sleeves are pleated horizontally from where they are presumably attached, maybe a hands-breadth off the shoulder. The main part of the gown is gathered to a small band around the neck (which makes it different from the french statues, but of a similar type as the tomb of Birger jarl, his wife and his son which is contemporary and from the same area). The folds are small and parallel down to the waist, where she has a belt with a hanging end, very much 13th century, and under the belt the folds are much wider and still almost parallel. For this to be an accurate representation of a dress, it has to be either made up of two differently pleated pieces of fabric joined in the waist, which is unlikely, or be fan-pleated. Then we have to allow for some artistic license.
The sleeves of the chemise/shift can also be seen, they are very finely pleated in the direction of the arms. BUT it’s still 13th century.
At Väfskolan in Borås, they have woven at least one of the fabrics from Lödöse, a very attractive diamond twill, I’ve seen it both in blue and red and I covet it. I have been told that there has also been made a reconstruction of the Katarina dress, but I have been unsuccessful at tracking it down, the person responsible for the textile section at the National Museum of History had never heard of it, which is very odd. They used parallel pleating in this reconstruction since all the Lödöse finds are parallel. In Trondheim you can find both fan pleated and parallel pleating.
Karin Gjöl Hagen (archaeologist from Norway) has written a small book about the pleated fabrics called: “Solplissé – en reminisens fra middelalderns draktutvikling“. The book is interesting, but she uses the scientifically very dubious method of comparing medieval finds with folk costume, mostly recorded and gathered in the 19th or 20th century. Her reasoning isn’t totally dependent on that though, so it’s worth reading anyway.
Marianne Vedeler Nilsen made a presentation about the pleated fabrics at the NESAT-conference in Poland last spring and hopefully the publication from that meeting should be finished soon(on the other hand, we’re still waiting for the report from York, four years ago!)
~ Aleydis / Eva Andersson
Message #1005, April 9, 2003