We had a couple of questions about the stays or corsets that our interpreters wear.I’ll try to answer them, but if I miss something or raise more questions than I answer, let me know.

There are precious few extant examples of early 17th-century (or earlier) stays. The one we use most is in the collection of the Nationalmuseum, Munich. Janet Arnold drafted and published a pattern from them in her Patterns of Fashion 1560 - 1620 book. These stays were the grave clothes of Pfalzgrafin Dorothea Sabina von Neuburg. She died in 1598 at the age of twenty-two.

These stays were made of lightweight finely corded silk. Ms Arnold states that there would have been a linen lining and likely an interlining as well, but all that has disintegrated. If these stays were worn with a 2″ - 4″ gap when laced, as we have found ideal for proper support, then the Pfalzgrafin probably had about a 25″ waist.

Needless to say, these stays fit properly on only a few modern women. In order to fit everyone we have to make a lot of alterations.

I’ve only ever seen one other pair of period stays in person, the late 17th-century pair in the collection of the Pilgrim Hall Museum here in Plymouth. I’ve examined depictions in paintings (most in reproductions of paintings rather than in person), including the pink (probably silk) front-lacing ones worn by Elizabeth, Countess of Southampton in the c.1620 portrait. Incidentally, the Countess is also wearing an embroidered jacket, although the cut is very different from the one we’re making.

Then there’s the Queen Elizabeth I effigy pair, which some folks say are original to 1603, and some say are not. I don’t know one way or the other.

Carl Kohler describes a pair which (I think) he calls early 17th-century in his book History of Costume. Those ones are larger, and are front lacing. I’m not sure they’re early 17th-century, and I’ve never been able to track down what museum collection they’re in and so have never seen pictures of them, only the line drawing in his book.

All of which to say, I wish we knew a lot more about 17th-century stays. We’ve done a great deal of experimental archeology over about 20 years, figuring out by trial and error how to construct and fit stays to a wide variety of shapes and sizes and get them to look like the early 17th-century fashionable shape. I feel pretty good about our results most of the time, but I suspect early 17th-century women had more options than we have figured out.

And yes, the women interpreters can do up their back-lacing stays themselves. I guess it’s sort of like doing up a back zipper, you can do it yourself but it isn’t easy. We do make front-lacing stays, and front-and-back-lacing stays, but we’ve found that the Dorothea Sabina ones fit best on certain body types. The front-lacing ones work better on other shapes, and of course for nursing mothers.

The New England Lace Group invited me to speak about the jacket project at their monthly meeting in the library in Sturbridge, MA, yesterday. I had a lovely day, perfect day for a ride, thoroughly enjoyed meeting with them and of course loved talking about the jacket with people who get why I’m so excited about it. I even took a couple of pictures, but the camera is hiding. When it comes out I’ll share them with you.

From Marty, via the comments:

What would they have kept in their knitted pocket? Also, were these pockets made in other ways, such as quilted or of leather?

We surmise that the colonists kept small personal items in their knitted pockets, also coins, although there was little use for coins during Plymouth Colony’s early years. We guess perhaps a comb or a thimble, a handkerchief, a letter, or ? I recall one interpreter who was portraying the mother of a five year old son. She always kept two or three little pebbles in her pocket as if he’d brought them to her. I thought that was kind of weird, this being long before I was the mother of a small son. Years later, I thought of her whenever I emptied my pockets at the end of the day and found pebbles.

Our interpreters keep all of those things in their 17th-century pockets, plus marbles, or a steel striker and flint and tinder (for period fire starting) and reproduction 17th-century coins. I know they also keep bent nails, bits of twine, yarn or rope, books of matches (for non-period fire starting), hard candy/cough drops and cigarette butts. These things I have cleaned out of pockets prior to washing/dry-cleaning.

If you look carefully at 17th-century paintings, especially crowd scenes, you can find many shapes and sizes of personal bag/pouch/pocket. They seem to be made of a variety of materials. Some look sewn of cloth or leather. Of course quite a number of embroidered “sweete bags” survive in modern museums, but these would have been beyond the means of most of the Plymouth residents. The V&A has a book called Bags, written I think by Valerie Cummings. Most of the examples are post-1650 (alas) but it is worth a look.

We have two or three kinds of small-to-medium-sized leather pockets/pouches represented on our sites as well as the knitted ones. There several more kinds I would like to have, but have not yet developed either the methods to make them or sourced all the components we’d need.

When Tricia was taking these pictures, Rebecca was dressing herself in these clothes for the first time. Before this she had only tried them all on, with help, especially with the stays. This time she laced herself in. Once she got into the petticoats I cast a critical eye upon her things and decided to tighten the stays a little. Of course that meant adjusting the waists of the petticoats too. Here Rebecca is hooking them back up after my fussing.

Next Rebecca needs a jacket - in the 1627 English Village called a waistcoat. We have a few probate inventories from early Plymouth Colony - 1629 to 1633. A couple of them mention women’s clothing, and they seem to call the upper body garment “a waistcoat.” It can be hard to match up historic garments with the name they were given in the period, but these inventories list the waistcoat together with a petticoat, which is how they were worn in the period. If it listed a waistcoat with a gown and/or petticoat I would wonder if the waistcoat was sleeveless, but in this case, and with a complete absence of any other named garment that could be the long-sleeved upper body garment, I feel pretty confident that they were calling this item a waistcoat. So anyway.

Rebecca chose to wear a lightweight wool waistcoat this day, because it was pretty cold and rainy. Here she’s buttoning and I’m holding her girdle with suspended knife and knitted pocket. We were hurrying, because Tricia was photographing and she had to leave pretty soon to pick up her son from the English Colonial summer camp.

Here’s a detail of the knife and pocket. There are plenty of 17th-century images of people wearing a belt or girdle with a pouch or pocket and/or a knife hanging off it. Generally, those wearing knives seem to be men and/or working away from the home. Our interpreters, both men and women (and the oldest two boy and girl volunteer children, and don’t think there wasn’t a protest from the younger, knife-less ones), wear a knife on their belt. They each need a knife to do their work, and even though a housewife would likely not have kept her knife on her person as she worked around her hearth and garden, we don’t want to leave them lying around. Both because they might “walk” away and because we don’t want anyone to get hurt trying it out if they should happen to find it in a cupboard.

There is, of course, historical evidence for women having knives hanging from their girdle; those seem to be more for either eating or other delicate tasks, rather than the sturdy work-type knife we’re using.

When last we left Rebecca, she had on her smock, stays, bumroll, shoes, stockings, garters, one petticoat and had had her hair done.

Next is another petticoat. They go on easiest over the head. We put the fastenings in front; I know some others put the closure on the side. I can think of one painting (at least), dated 1569, that shows a woman undoing her stays, looks like she’s either going to nurse a baby or just has. Her petticoat opens in front, along with her stays.

Once you put it on, you have to give it a little flap to make sure it isn’t bunched up in back. In early 17th-century England, little girls (and maybe big girls, too, who knows?) played a game called “making cheeses.” Basically, you twirl around really fast so your petticoat flares out, then quickly drop to the ground. The girl whose petticoat makes the biggest circle on the ground wins. This may sound simple, and maybe you’re thinking that kids today wouldn’t be amused by something so basic, but believe it or not it was one of the favorite pastimes of the little girl volunteers this summer. And some of the big girl staff, too.

Here are a few pictures of Lacey fixing Rebecca’s hair.

In the early 17th century working-class women (like the Plymouth Colonists) wore their hair up and covered with a white linen coif. Modern female interpreters may or may not have “period-correct” hair, but either way they have to get their hair under a coif with no bangs or other bits showing. Rebecca has gorgeous period correct hair, by which I mean long and unlayered.

Some women with long hair put their hair up in a simple bun, some braid it. Here Lacey is braiding Rebecca’s hair in a style thoroughly illustrated in The Tudor Tailor. This book shows Jane, one of the authors, braiding ribbons into her hair starting about halfway down each of two braids. The ends of the ribbons hang down beyond the end of the braids. You then use those hanging ends to tie the braids up over your forehead.

The first time I tried to do my daughter’s hair that way, the ribbons pulled right out of her slippery fine braids. I thought about it for a minute, then cut a long ribbon, folded it in half, and placed the fold at the back of her neck. I began to braid one end into half her hair. The other end got in my way and I pushed it forward over her shoulder, saying, “here, hold this end”.

Then I had a flash of insight - in the book Pride and Joy: children’s portraits in the Netherlands 1500-1700, there’s a 1596 portrait called “Hilleke de Roy and Four of her Orphans”. Hilleke de Roy was the matron of an orphanage. In the portrait she is combing a girl’s hair. One half of the girl’s hair is already braided, and you can see that a ribbon is braided in. Hilleke is combing the other half of the girl’s hair, the unbraided half, and the girl is holding the end of the ribbon, which goes up and around the back of her neck - just as I asked my daughter to do. I love when stuff like that happens.