UFO’s
October 23rd, 2008 by TriciaAs we were having the debate on who was seaming what and whether the jackets were custom made to order, Susan went to a cabinet and got out another piece to show me – the best part of working in the storage room that day. She brought out a set of fine blackwork sleeves which were never finished. I knew about these sleeves as they used to be on display in the textile study room, but what I hadn’t known was that they also own the fronts which go with the sleeves, confirming that it was to be a jacket and not the separate sleeves so often referred to in Elizabeth’s era.
This was fantastic! So many questions could be answered from this. First, the point she was trying to make to me was that the tailor drew the outline of the pattern pieces and then the embroidery drafter took over and worked the pattern inside the outline. There were four sleeve pieces on the linen, nested with two vertical and two horizontal. From our own layout of the jacket, this was a much more linen-efficient manner, requiring only about 2/3 of the linen we had used for the four pieces. Susan reminded me that the linen itself was very valuable and hand woven. We had a mindset that we needed to put each piece on a separate piece of linen so we could maximize the number of embroiderers in the room and thus the speed for our project.
We do know from later workshops in the 18th century and modern Japanese workshops, that two people or more would typically work at the same time on a large frame. We didn’t try to do that to our volunteers. We might have had a riot! (I think I remember at one of the very early sessions we had Kris and someone else, I can’t remember who, working on each end of the back for a short time. It was too hard on them physically, not being able to adjust the frame to a personally comfortable working angle, and we never did it again.)
Well, if there were two people working on this frame then we have a better idea of how long chronologically it may have taken to embroider a jacket once we have the actual labor hours when we finish. I asked if the fronts were on one piece of linen too, much like the existing unfinished waistcoats of the 18th century. She didn’t remember and we will have to look this up later.
If you want to see the pair of sleeves we were looking at, type accession number 252-1902 into the search box at V&A collections.(Remember to use the “search the collections” search box on the collections page, not the search box on the main page of the V&A website. The main page search boxes looks for things like publications and exhibit openings.)
Tricia
PS. Several people have asked for an update on the blue silk lining. Justin, who is the weaver of the blue silk lining through Eaton Hill Textile Works as well as an interpreter in Plimoth’s 1627 English Village, PLUS he’s been weaving in Plimoth’s Crafts Center one or two days per week, is pretty busy through Thanksgiving (hmm, wonder why that is?). He’s going to concentrate on the lining in December and January, after Plimoth closes for the season, which works out just fine since I won’t be needing it before then at least. Arianna has taken some pictures of Justin weaving in the Crafts Center, and when Tricia’s research arc is done I’ll post those with story.
