I have recently signed my contract so I am so delighted to announce that my first book based on much of the research that this blog showcases will be published by Bloomsbury Academic/Visual Arts.
Shaping Femininity is the first large-scale study of the materiality, production, consumption and meanings of foundation garments for women in 16th and 17th-century England, when the female silhouette underwent a dramatic change. With a nuanced approach that incorporates transdisciplinary methodologies and a stunning array of visual and written sources, the book reorients discussions about female foundation garments in English and wider European history. It argues that these objects of material culture, such as bodies, busks, farthingales and bum-rolls, shaped understandings of the female body and of beauty, social status, health, sexuality and modesty in early modern England, and thus influenced enduring western notions of femininity.
Beautifully illustrated in full colour throughout, this book offers a fascinating insight into dress and fashion in the early modern period, and offers much of value to all those interested in the history of early modern women and gender, material culture, and the history of the body, as well as curators and reconstructors.
I’m very excited to be publishing with Bloomsbury and to bring audiences an accessible academic book. At the moment it is early stages, but make sure to keep an eye on this space for more details about release date, etc.
Bodies and Stomacher of Dame Elizabeth Filmer (front), c. 1630-1650. Gallery of Costume, Platt Hall, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester
What should we call the torso-shaping female foundation garments of the seventeenth century? Were they pairs of bodies? Bodices? Stays? Corsets? Moreover, how were they worn? Were they underwear or were the outerwear?
This post was inspired by a question that I saw written on an Instagram post uploaded by the very talented Morgan Donner about a pattern from the new Patterns of Fashion 5:
“17th Century things are so 😍… one thing I’m curious about is that I’ve seen boned bodices for gowns, and then stays, and then stays with sleeves. I assume the latter are basically worn as “tops”, and that boned gown bodices obviously wouldn’t have stays under them… so are the stays only for under the lovely embroidered jackets and such?”
As I did my PhD on bodies and farthingales, and my forthcoming book Shaping Femininity examines these garments and the lives of the women who wore them, this question inspired me to make this post to clear the air. Not just about terminology, but also in an attempt to answer this question as it is much more complicated than it seems!
Bodies or Stays?
As long-term followers of my blog and my research my have surmised, I rarely use the term “stays” when I talk about sixteenth and seventeenth-century foundation garments, even though museums and other publications almost always do. Randle Holme’s famous 1688 manual most famously makes the distinction between “smooth covered stays” and “stitched stays”, something which Jenny Tiramani emphasises in the new Patterns of Fashion 5: The content, cut, construction and context of bodies, stays, hoops and rumps c.1595-1795.
Why then do I not use the term stays when so many others do? Well, in my almost six years of archival research I have never seen the term “stays” used in historical documents to refer to these garments until at least the 1680s, which is when Randle Holme was writing.
The term stays does appear in the records from the middle of the century, however, it always refers to the stiffening in the garments that are being made – not to the garments themselves. Artisan’s bills will often quote a total price for the garment and then break down the price of each component of that garment. For example, a tailor’s bill might look something like this:
A pair of bodies of crimson satin bodies with silver lace ______ 00 – 00 – 00
for 1 yard 1/2 of silk at 11s the yard ________ 00 – 00 – 00
for calico to the lining __________ 00 – 00 – 00
for silver lace to them __________ 00 – 00 – 00
for stayes and stiffenings __________ 00 – 00 – 00
for making and furnishing ___________ 00-00-00
Therefore, “stayes and stiffenings” refers to the materials used to stiffen these garments like whalebone, not to the actual garment itself. Additionally, “stays” referring to stiffening does not just appear in women’s clothing bills. I have also found references to “stay and buckram” in tailoring bills for menswear, such as a suit and coat from 1680 on this occasion.
This is why in my own research I use the terminology “bodies” or “pair of bodies” when I refer to these garments that would later come to be called stays and corsets. For me it is important to use the terminology that was used at the time, otherwise we are placing slightly anachronistic modern assumptions onto this clothing. This becomes especially important when it comes to answering the next question of this blog entry regarding the ambiguity of bodies as under or outer wear in the seventeenth century.
Underwear or Outerwear?
As you can probably tell the early modern term “bodies” sounds an awful lot like the modern term “bodice”, and that is because the term bodice is derived from bodies! Anybody who has read early modern English sources before knows that there was little to no standardised spelling at the time, and so words were regularly spelled different ways (even when they were only sentences apart). Thus, these are terms that are regularly conflated and used interchangeably in the archival sources from this century.
Variations in spelling included: bodies, bodyes, bodis, bodice, boddisses, etc. “I” and “Y” were interchangeable vowels in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries so “bodys” could be spelt “bodis” and then “bodis” spelt “bodice” (so bodys = bodis = bodice, confused yet?). So there appears to be no rhyme or reason for most of the century as to what a “bodie” is vs a “bodice”, or whether one is an under garment or an outer garment.
In the seventeenth century there was no firm distinction between under and outer wear as we see in later centuries when it came to bodies, or other items of women’s dress like petticoats. So “bodies” could be either outerwear or underwear, it all depended on a woman’s social status, the occasion she was dressing for, or maybe her own personal taste. Some surviving bodies from this century contain detachable sleeves (that are laced on with points), indicating that the uses of this garment were flexible, and its use could be easily manipulated depending on the situation it was worn in. Detachable sleeves were also worn in earlier Elizabethan petticoats (see more about that here).
Bodies with detachable sleeves, pink watered silk trimmed with pink silk taffeta ribbons, English, c. 1660-1670. Victorian and Albert Museum, London
Detachable sleeves on elaborate bodies may have been worn with a matching skirt to form a gown, but on other occasions the sleeves may have been taken off and the bodies worn underneath what we would now call a jacket (but at the time was known as a waistcoat).
1660s Gown containing a pair of bodies with detachable sleeves. Reconstruction by Sarah A Bendall
The particular decade of the seventeenth century being investigated is also important. For example, the 1660s saw the rise of the very rigid bodices that were retained for court wear in countries like France well into the eighteenth centuries. The highly boned nature of this garment meant that separately boned bodies were not needed or worn underneath. However, I would be hesitant to claim that this means that under-bodies were discarded during these centuries – as this highly boned style was not universally worn, nor would it have been worn all the time, even by elite women.
Ivory Satin Bodice, English, c. 1660-1669. Victorian and Albert Museum, London
Overall, there doesn’t seem to have been any hard or fast rules for how to wear bodies during the seventeenth century, and there definitely was not the major distinction between underwear and outerwear like there is in regards to stays later in the eighteenth century, or the corsets of the nineteenth century. However, there is still a lot to uncover, and I hope to tackle this question in my forthcoming book, so who knows, maybe soon I will have a better answer!
After many months of hand sewing and many pricked fingertips I present my reconstruction of the Filmer Bodies c. 1630-50 from Manchester Galleries.
My reconstruction of the Filmer Bodies (L), the original bodies (R)
Some closeups:
Afterthoughts:
As I was working completely from pictures, a few measurements and curatorial notes when reconstructing these bodies it was only after completing them that I realised that there were a couple of things I got wrong.
The first is that I did not do the boning channels 100% accurately. Although my boning channels run vertically to the centre front of the bodies, after reanalysing pictures of the bodies I can see that the boning is slightly slanted away from the centre-front at the top, like the effigy bodies. This would have been to allow for the bust and could slightly change the way that my reconstruction fits around the bust area, making it less accommodating of larger busts.
Note to self: Make sure you analyse all your photos in detail before sewing boning channels!
Secondly, I also realise that I did not cut the slits between the back tabs high enough. In my original pattern I actually had them much higher, as they should be, however, I wasn’t sure if it was going to be too high so I lowered the slits a bit. Turns out I had it right to begin with! Again this means that the fit of the bodies might be slightly altered, as it makes the waistline lower.
One thing I cannot work out are the shoulder straps. These straps are designed to sit off the shoulder in accordance with mid-seventeenth century fashions. However, the straps on my reconstruciton are very short, even though I checked my measurements and calculations multiple times before I cut out my fabric. Either the original owner had very narrow shoulders or there is meant to be a length of ribbon holding them together. Then again, my blow up mannequin off eBay doesn’t have the best proportions so once I try these on a model hopefully I can work this out more.
Overall though I’m extremely happy with how the bodies turned out and I can’t wait for my models to try them on!
After completing the stomacher I proceeded to cut out the three (or, really, six – lining and outer fabric) pattern pieces to complete the bodies. This consisted of two front pieces and one back piece, with extra seam allowance given on the side seams. As with the Effigy bodies I attached both layers of each pieces together by overhanding the silk and linen together, right sides facing each other (so inside out), from the wrong side, and then pulled them right sides out so that the raw edges were on the inside.
I then proceeded to back stitch the boning channels. This is the second time I have done this now and it is by far the most time consuming part of the construction process. The widths of the boning channels in the original are incredibly tiny and much smaller than any of the modern plastic ‘whalebone’ I could find. So each boning channel is 6mm wide to accommodate this 5mm boning.
After the boning channels were complete I then attached the pieces of the bodies to each other at the side seams. On the effigy bodies the side seams were stitched together from the wrong side so that the seam was on the inside of the bodies when worn. However, the Filmer bodies were whip stitched together from the right side so that the seam was facing outwards.[1] This seam was then covered by the decorative metal braid trim.
Whip stitching side seams together from right sidesView of side seam inside the bodies
After placing the boning into all the channels, I backstitched over the tops of them to keep the boning inside and finished adding all the metal braid trim and some grosgrain ribbon.
Binding
The centre-front, all the tabs, as well as the stomacher of the original bodies have been double bound – meaning that it was first bound with a thicker strip of the same silk used for the outer fabric, and then bound again with ribbon. This was done in order to prevent the boning from creating a hole and poking through the bottom of the bodies when worn.[2]
To make this binding I took a rectangular piece of the silk taffeta attached it to the stomacher in a manner similar to the ribbon binding: I placed the raw edge of the binding near the raw edge of the tabs, backstitched it down and then folded the silk over both raw edges and then felled the pressed side of the silk binding using a whip stitch onto the wrong side. Afterwards I then added the ribbon binding over the top.
The Filmer bodies also contain gores between the first, second and third tabs. To make these gores I cut four pieces of linen and 4 pieces of silk to size, backstitched the side seams, turned it right sides out and then bound the bottom with ribbon. I then whip stitched the gores to the inside of the tabs.
Eyelet Holes & Lacing
After binding the bodies the last step was to create the eyelet holes – all 42 of them. To do this I first measured where the holes should be and then I took a tailor’s awl (which is similar to a bodkin) and created a hole in between the fibres of the material. I then used two sizes of knitting needles – 4mm to widen the holes until they were the desired size. After the hole was made I whipped stitched around it until all the raw edges were concealed. To see this process in more detail see my post about how I did it on the effigy bodies here.
After the eyelet holes were complete and the shoulder straps secured, all I had left to do was to lace the bodies together with straight lacing.
I’ll be unveiling the finished bodies and my afterthoughts on the construction process in my next blog post so stay tuned!
References:
[1] Luca Costigliolo, ‘From Straight bodies to Stays’, Seventeenth-Century Women’s Dress Patterns: Book Two, Susan North and Jenny Tiramani, eds. (London, V&A Publishing, 2012), p. 10.
[2] Luca Costigliolo, ‘From Straight bodies to Stays’, Seventeenth-Century Women’s Dress Patterns: Book Two, Susan North and Jenny Tiramani, eds. (London, V&A Publishing, 2012), p. 10.
Unlike my earlier effigy bodies reconstruction, the Dame Filmer bodies (along with many other mid-seventeenth-century examples) has one extra component: a stomacher.
The term ‘stomacher’ can refer to various parts of early modern female dress. The first use of the term refers simply to a V-shaped piece of cloth, usually decorated with embroidery, lace, metallic thread or even jewels, that was worn with open front gowns, waistcoats or bodices (concealing the kirtle, petticoat, bodies or stays underneath) from the sixteenth to late eighteenth centuries.
“Portrait of a Lady, probably Elizabeth Southwell née Howard,” c. 1600. Weiss Gallery, LondonStomacher, English, c. 1730-1750. Victoria and Albert Museum, London
In regards to undergarments, the stomacher was a detachable, V-shaped boned forepart that sat underneath the front laces of the bodies and stays. In the mid-seventeenth century when boned bodices were common, the stomacher could also be boned. Stomachers could also include a busk.
Wenceslaus Hollar, Svmmer, c. 1640sInside of boned Stomacher with busk channel, 18th century, Museum of London, London
To construct the stomacher from the Dame Filmer bodies I first cut out the stomacher pieces (with no seam allowance): one lining piece from linen and one outer fabric piece from yellow silk taffeta. I then proceeded to sew the boning channels. The boning in this stomacher takes a ‘T’ shape with some horizontal boning at the top.
According to description given of the bodies on the Manchester Gallery online catalogue, the stomacher contains a “central bone and one bone each side.”[1] Examining photographs that I took of the bodies when I was in Manchester last year it seems that the centre front bone is the widest, with the bones on either side being a tad smaller.
As previously mentioned, the width of the boning channels in the original are very very small and unfortunately no modern whalebone substitute is able to be cut that thin. So my boning channels are 6mm wide. The two boning channels on either side of the centre front are 13mm wide and contain 12mm wide plastic boning.
The original stomacher is also decorated with a metallic metal braid in a ‘T’ shape. I managed to pick up this very similar gold and silver metallic braid from my local sewing store, so after the boning was inserted I stitched it onto the middle of the centre-front boning channel.
Next I started to bind the raw edges of the stomacher with a cream grosgrain ribbon. To attach the ribbon I used a half back stitch to stitch the binding to the right side of the bodies, leaving a couple of millimetres between the edge of the taffeta and the edge of the ribbon. Then I folded the ribbon over the raw edge and then felled using a whip stitch onto the wrong side (so the side with the linen). I left the bottom of the stomacher unbound in preparation for the busk to be inserted.
From what I could see of the inside of the stomacher when I viewed the bodies on display in Manchester, it appeared that the centre bone might be what was known as a busk, a long, flat piece of wood, metal or bone that was placed down the front the early modern bodies.[2] Although busks could be taken in and out of bodies and bodices at will, some were also sewn into the garment itself.
The busk in the original stomacher is most likely made from whalebone (baleen), however, as this material is not available I decided to use wood. For more information about how I made the busk, see my previous post. After the busk was complete I inserted it into the stomacher.
The bottom of the original stomacher has also been double bound – meaning that it was first bound with a thicker strip of the same silk used for the outer fabric, and then bound again with ribbon. This was done in order to prevent the boning from creating a hole and poking through the bottom of the stomacher when worn.[3]
Double binding on Filmer bodies
To make this binding I took a rectangular piece of the silk taffeta and folded one of outside edges in that that there would be no raw edges when it was sewn onto the stomacher, and ironed it flat.
Then I simply attached it to the stomacher in a manner similar to the ribbon binding: I placed the raw edge of the binding near the raw edge of the stomacher, backstitched it down and then folded the silk over both raw edges and then felled the pressed side of the silk binding using a whip stitch onto the wrong side. Afterwards I then added the ribbon binding over the top.
[2] Sarah Anne Bendall, ‘To Write a Distick Upon it: Busks and the Language of Courtship and Sexual Desire in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England’, Journal of Gender and History, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2014), p. 199
[3] Luca Costigliolo, ‘From Straight bodies to Stays’, Seventeenth-Century Women’s Dress Patterns: Book Two, Susan North and Jenny Tiramani, eds. (London, V&A Publishing, 2012), p. 10.
The busk is one peculiar element of early modern dress that continues to fascinate me the more that I research it. Understandably, most people have never heard of a ‘busk’ before and considering the term for it in English (derived from the French ‘busc’) is very similar to other words already in our common vocabulary, like “busking”, it can often be quite confusing when casually dropped into conversation.
Eighteenth and Nineteenth-century Busks. Victoria and Albert Museum, London
GENERAL HISTORY OF BUSKS
Yet from the mid-sixteenth century until the early nineteenth century, the busk was a commonly known part of female dress: an independent, interchangeable part of the bodies and stays (corsets). It consisted of a long piece of a stiffened substance that was placed into a stitched channel between layers of fabric in the front of the bodies or stays and secured into place at the bottom by a small piece of ribbon called the ‘busk-point’.
‘Pair of Bodies’ worn by Pfalzgräfin Dorothea Sabin von Neuberg, c. 1598. Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich. Note centre front busk channel and eyelets at the bottom for the busk point
In contrast, modern and later nineteenth-century busks are incorporated in the centre-front of the corset opening.
Corset, British, 1883. Victoria and Albert Museum, London Note new style of steel busk that could be separated to open the corset.
According to Randle Holme’s book, The Academy of Armory and Blazon (1688), the busk existed to keep the posture erect, to ‘keep in the fullness of the breasts’ and to keep the belly flat.[1]
However, the busk didn’t just serve a utilitarian purpose in female dress.
Collections of busks at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York helpfully reveal the social functions that busks played in early modern society. Busks were often elaborately decorated with common love motifs: hearts, cupids and foliate scrolls. Some even bore portraits and lovers’ words, or poetry, making them highly personalised and emotional accessories encoded with various significant meanings.[2] From the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and with decreasing frequency over nineteenth century, lovers saw the busk as a love token of affection, usually given by a man to a woman during the act of courting, thus entering into the complex social performance of courtship and marriage. [3] The busk’s association with the female body, its closeness to the breasts at one end and to the groin at the other meant that this object was inherently sexualised and participated in the construction of early modern sexuality and sexual practices. If anyone is interested about reading more about the busk in the sexual culture of seventeenth-century England, I have an article about it here.
Man’s portrait on French metal busk, 17th century [detail]. Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.Surviving busks in museum collections are made from a variety of materials such as wood, metal, ivory and horn. Many surviving seventeenth-century busks from France are made of metal or ivory, whilst many from England are wooden. However, due to the sporadic nature of surviving material objects such as busks from the seventeenth century, it is hard to know for sure what materials were the most popular in both countries by looking at surviving examples alone. Other sources such as the wardrobe accounts of Queen Elizabeth I reveal that whalebone (baleen) was also a common material used, for example a warrant dated 28 September 1586 requested an ‘item for making Buskes of Whalesbone and wyer coverid with sarceonet quilted’.[4]
English wooden Stay Busk, c. 1675, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
MAKING A BUSK
As part of the Filmer reconstruction I decided to construct a busk that would be placed into the separate stomacher of the bodies. Surviving busks vary in size depending on the style of fashion that was popular at the time of construction. For example, eighteenth-century busks tend to be short and wide whereas busks from the 1660s are quite long and narrow, as bodices during this period were extremely long-waisted.
Long-waisted Boned Bodice. English, 1660-1669. Victoria & Albert Museum, London
The size of my busk depended on the stitched channel at the centre front of the Filmer bodies’ stomacher, which in this case happened to be about 1.5cm wide and 34cm long.
Baleen and ivory is hard to source as it is banned in may countries (for obvious ethical reasons). Other historically accurate options would be metal or horn, but again these materials are hard to source (if you don’t live near an Ox farm) and use if you are not familiar with metalwork. Therefore wood is the only historically accurate material that I could use.
I’m no carpenter, so I wanted to find some pre-cut wood that I wouldn’t have to mess around with too much. At my local hardware store I found a coverstrap made from Tasmanian Oak that measured 2cm wide and was 4mm thick. Perfect!
Turning the coverstrap into a busk was quite simple and quick. Firstly, I had to cut the two metre coverstrap to size. I did this with a hacksaw in my father’s workshop. Then I had to reduce the width from 2cm to 1.5cm.
I marked the dimensions on the wood and then I used a very coarse (probably the roughest you can get) type of sandpaper to sand the width of the busk down.
Halfway there…
Once reduced to the desired width, I used the sandpaper to round off the perpendicular edges on one side. I also rounded off the busk at the top and bottom. I then took another bit of very fine sandpaper and smoothed away the rough edges until I was left with this:
Busk after final sandpaper
Finished product (L) next to original coverstrap (R)
As this busk was going to be sewn into the actual stomacher of the bodies, and therefore wouldn’t be able to be taken in and out of the garment like many busks were, I didn’t need to varnish it and I definitely didn’t need to decorate it.
However, as I will probably make another busk replica to use as a prop in presentations, I decided to use this as a test run (so to speak) for busk decoration. All I did was quickly sketch a folate design onto the busk in pencil, taking inspiration from these two French seventeenth-century ivory busks.
French ivory busk, 17th century, Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
French ivory busk, 17th century, Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Then I went over the design in a black ball point pen.
And that’s it! While this worked well enough, for my next busk I think I will either burn a design into the busk or draw on it with a felt tipped pen, so that the ink really seeps into the wood. Then I will varnish it.
[1] Randle Holme, ‘The Academy of Armory and Blazon (Book III) (1688)’, cited in Patterns of Fashion, Vol. 1, Englishwomen’s Dresses and their Construction c. 1660-1860 (London: Macmillan, 1972), p. 3.
[2] Observed from a sample of surviving seventeenth and eighteenth century busks taken from Metropolitan Museum of Art and Victoria and Albert Museum collections. There are no surviving busks from the sixteenth century.
[3] Scrimshaw busks were popular in the nineteenth century at the height of whaling practices and are featured in various museum collections. See: ‘Corset and Whalebone Scrimshaw Busk and Summary, accession no. TR*388604’, On the Water Collection, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Keeneth E. Behring Center (2012) <http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthewater/collection/tr_388604.html>.
[4] 1586: Wardrobe Warrant for September 28th, ER 28, MS Egerton 2806, fol 216 v, cited in Drea Leed, ‘Wardrobe Warrant for September 28th, ER 28’, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Uploaded (2011) < http://elizabethancostume.net/cyte/node/24574>
The second ‘bodies’ (ie. 17th-century corset) reconstruction that I’m undertaking for my PhD research is of the Dame Filmer Bodies at the Gallery of Costume, Platt Hall, Manchester Art Gallery.[1] The exact dating of these bodies is disputed. The museum has dated them according to their provenance: they are believed to have belonged to Dame Elizabeth Filmer, and they have a letter ‘E’ near the shoulder of the garment. Dame Elizabeth Filmer died in August 1638 and so a reasonable date range for these bodies of 1620-1640 has been given by the Museum.
Yet in Luca Costigliolo’s examination of the garment he states that the “long-waisted style” of the bodies is more characteristic of the 1650s, than of the higher waisted styles of the 1630s and 1640s, and subsequently has given the date range 1638-1650.[2] I’m more inclined to side with Costigliolo, but regardless these are an amazing and rare example of foundational undergarments from the first half of the seventeenth century.
Bodies and Stomacher of Dame Elizabeth Filmer (back), c. 1630-1650. Gallery of Costume, Platt Hall, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester.
The Pattern
At the moment there is no available pattern for these bodies, although I’m hoping that there will be one in the upcoming Patterns of Fashion 5. When I was in the UK last year, I did not have a chance to examine these bodies in detail as they were on display. I did, however, get to look at them closely from different angles through the display glass and there is quite a lot of detailed curatorial/conservation notes on the garment on the Gallery of Costume website.
So how did I draft a pattern?
There are two pictures of these bodies lying flat, one in Norah Waugh’s The Cut of Women’s Clothes, 1600-1930, and the other in Jenny Tiramani and Susan North’s Seventeenth-Century Women’s Dress Patterns: Book Two. On the Gallery of Costume website there are also some measurements for the bodies. So by scaling up the pictures that I have with the measurements given, I was able to draft my own pattern for these bodies. Of course the nature of bodies, being boned, means that they may not have been laying completely flat in those pictures, however, after making a mock up I feel fairly confident that my pattern is accurate in shape and size to the original.
Testing the mock up
The Filmer bodies consist of four separate parts: two front sections and two back sections. These bodies lace together at the front with nineteen pairs of eyelet holes, but unlike the effigy bodies, they have a separate stomacher over which the lacing sits. The stomacher in these bodies is fully boned, and I can’t be sure, but there does appear to be a busk made from a thicker piece of whalebone or wood in the centre of the stomacher as well. The shoulder straps fasten the same way as the Effigy Bodies at the front, but these straps sit more on the edge of the shoulders keeping in fashion with the off-the-shoulder fashions of the late 1620s onward. There are six tabs at the bottom of the bodies that spread over the hips, and between the first and second tab on either side of the front, a gore made from silk and linen has been added.
The Materials
These bodies are made from a crimson silk satin with a linen twill lining, and are bound with a pale blue silk ribbon. The bodies are stitched all over in blue silk thread, stiffened with whalebone and are trimmed with a metal thread braid.[3]
For my reconstruction, I decided to use a linen for the lining and yellow gold silk taffeta for the outside. Queen Henrietta Maria’s wardrobe accounts from the same period contain entries for both silk taffeta and silk satin bodies, and one of the bodies in these entries was yellow. Many portraits of the Queen from the period also depict her in yellow silks, so I tried to find a shade of yellow similar to those gowns she was depicted in.
Anthony Van Dyck, Henrietta Maria ca. 1632 – 1635. National Portrait Gallery, London.
The widths of the whalebone channels in this style are incredibly tiny and much smaller than the both the effigy bodies and another bodie that is contemporary to this. For both my effigy reconstruction and this one, I chose to use a modern synthetic whalebone, which mimics baleen’s properties. Unfortunately, there is no way that I would be able to cut these down to the same width as the original, so each boning channel will be 6mm wide to accommodate this 5mm boning. These are the same channel widths as found on the 1603 effigy bodies, so although not completely accurate for this particular reconstruction they are accurate for the period.
The original bodies are decorated with a metal braid trim, and I was lucky enough to find this very similar metallic gold and silver braid at my local sewing supplies store.
References
[1] In the museum catalogue these are called ‘stays’, however, I prefer to use the term bodies as this is what they were called at the time they were made and worn. The term stays does not come into being until the late seventeenth century.
[2] Luca Costigliolo, ‘From Straight bodies to Stays’, Seventeenth Century Women’s Dress Patterns: Book Two, Susan North and Jenny Tiramani, eds. (London, V&A Publishing, 2012), p. 10.
After blogging about the process of reconstructing the earliest pair of surviving English bodies that were found on the 1603 effigy of Queen Elizabeth I at Westminster Abbey, one of the most frequent questions that I received was: do you think these bodies actually belong to the Queen?
My answer: no… and yes, maybe.
Funerary records from the time list that an effigy “representing her late Majestie with a paire of straight bodies…” was ordered from a man called John Colte, and these ‘straight bodies’ were probably made by the Queen’s tailor William Jones. Although the Queen never wore these bodies, considering their hasty construction between Elizabeth’s death and her funerary procession, it is probable that their design and construction was based on styles of bodies (and thus measurements) that Jones had previously made for the Queen.[1] Yet, as some people have pointed out, they could also have been made purely for the effigy – as the two were ordered together. To me though, it would seem easier to make a garment from pre-existing measurements and patterns, and simply construct the effigy to fit the garments, rather than the other way around. Certainly, an effigy would probably be much faster to construct than the garments that sat over it.
Surprisingly, the process of trying my reconstruction of these bodies on a model seemed to confirm contemporary accounts about Elizabeth I’s appearance, which leads me to believe that they were made according to previous patterns that her tailor had made, and possibly previous measurements.
The average height of women during the Tudor era was approximately 158cm and my model was an AU size 6 (UK 6 / US 2) and 156cm (5’2”) tall, so just a tad shorter than the average height during this period.[2] When my model was laced into the bodies they nearly fit her around the torso, with only an inch gap between the centre front openings. However, the underarms cut into her, the shoulder straps were far too big and the back jutted up past shoulder height. This indicates that I need a taller model with a longer torso to accurately fit these bodies.
Shoulder straps come up way past the shoulderlineGaping at the back due to straps being too bigPulling the shoulder straps down at the front to fit model
In 1557 the Venetian ambassador, Giovanni Michiel, described Elizabeth who was then 23 years old as “tall and well formed.”[3] Later Francis Bacon stated that she was “tall of stature” and John Hayward described that she “was slender and straight…”[4] The findings from my experiment of placing the bodies on a slender but petite model seems then to confirm that these bodies were tailored for a woman who was not only slender but also tall and long in the torso, just as Elizabeth is described as being.
Ditchley Portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, oil on canvas, circa 1592
Okay, so the bodies were designed to fit a taller woman (or effigy), but what about the size of the bodies. Surely, they are far too small for someone (besides a child) to have actually worn them?? As I mentioned previously, the bodies did fit my model around her torso, with only a small gap at the front (when laced very tightly). However, as the portrait of the Countess of Southampton indicates, they were probably designed to be worn with the centre front pieces touching side by side, which means my model was just a tad too big for them.
Elizabeth Vernon, Countess of Southampton, 1595-1600. Unknown Artist. Boughton House
Although Elizabeth was described as being tall for the time, the tiny size of her waist was not unique, rather, it seems she was quite average. My reconstruction of the effigy bodies measures 53.4cm (21”) in the waist and 73.6cm (29”) in the bust, placing the wearer as an AU size 4 (UK 4 / US 0) or smaller. Some commentators (and my supervisor) have commented that maybe this was because the Queen was quite sick in the last few months of her life. Whilst this is true, Janet Arnold records that another pair of bodies dated earlier to 1598 from Germany, known as the von Neuburg bodies, had an even smaller waist measurement of 50.8cm (20”) and bust of 71.1cm (28”).[5] A much later bodice, which would have been worn to court, from the 1660s at the Museum of London has an even smaller 48cm (19”) waist measurement![6] Numerous other seventeenth-century bodies and bodices in other collections all show similar measurements, which means that the size of the effigy bodies is not an anomaly. It is possible that maybe a couple of inches was taken off the centre front panels of the pattern to fit the effigy better. Unfortunately, this effigy was redressed in the eighteenth century so we do not have the original outer garments that over the top of these to compare for size. Presumably those garments would have been chosen from the vast wardrobe that Elizabeth owned.
So did these bodies belong to Elizabeth I?
No they didn’t, as we have certain proof that were commissioned after she died for her effigy. However, I am inclined to believe that they were made from previous patterns for the style of bodies that would have been worn by the Queen and the measurements were possibly taken from previous garments made for the Queen… although we will never know for sure.
* If you’d like to see a much more thorough and detailed use of historical reconstruction to learn about past historical figures, dress historian Hilary Davidson has written an excellent piece ‘Reconstructing Jane Austen’s Silk Pelisse, 1812-1814‘ in the Journal of Costume.
REFERENCES
[1] Janet Arnold, ‘The ‘pair of straight bodies’ and ‘a pair of drawers’ dating from 1603 which Clothe the Effigy of Queen Elizabeth I in Westminster Abbey’, Costume, Vol. 41 (2007), p. 1.
[2] Ninya Mikaila and Jane Malcolm-Davies, The Tudor tailor: Reconstructing 16th-century Dress (London: Batsford, 2006), p. 9.
[3] ‘Venice: May 1557, 11-15’, in Calendar of State Papers Relating To English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Volume 6, 1555-1558, ed. Rawdon Brown (London, 1877), pp. 1041-1095. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/venice/vol6/pp1041-1095 [accessed 10 July 2016].
[4] Francis Bacon, The felicity of Queen Elizabeth: and her times, with other things; by the Right Honorable Francis Ld Bacon Viscount St Alban. (LONDON: Printed by T. Newcomb, for George Latham at the Bishops Head in St. Pauls Church-yard, 1651), p. 18; John Hayward, Annals of the First Four Years of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Volume 7, John Bruce, ed. (London: Camden Society, 1840), p. 7.
[5] Janet Arnold, Patterns of Fashion 3: The Cut and Construction of Clothes for Men and Women, c. 1560-1620 (London: MacMillan, 1985), p. 127.
The final step of making these bodies was to create the seventy or so eyelet holes that lace the centre front together and attach the skirts (or farthingale) to the bodies.
In the early modern period eyelet holes were created by making a hole in between the fibres of the material with a tool called the bodkin. As Randle Holme explained in the 1680s “The Bodkin, is a blade or round Pin of Iron fixed in Halve, it is not very sharp at the end: by its help, is Eye lid holes, and all other holes (which are not very large) made.”[1] Surviving bodkins in museums are often highly decorated with engravings, or contain their owners’ initials, and are often made from expensive materials such as silver, indicating that they must have been a particularly special or sentimental token of the tailoring or bodie making profession
Silver Bodkin, c. 1620-40, British. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
This long and narrow, but blunt, tool was pushed into the fabric creating a gap between the warp and weft threads, creating a small hole. The genius in using this particular tool is that by not breaking the threads of the fabric, the resulting eyelet holes “were able to withstand a considerable amount of strain without deforming or ripping.”[2] As well as creating the holes, bodkins were also used to thread the lacing through the eyelets, as this example from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York contains a hole through which to thread the lacing, similar to a sewing needle.
Silver Bodkin, c. 1620-40, British. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Contains the intials MP – possibly those of the craftsman that it belong to?
However, I don’t have a bodkin nor anything that really resembles one so I had to improvise. I decided to use ordinary nail scissors to push a hole between the threads of the fabric. Although this was not quite as clean as the results that a bodkin would achieve, and I did break some threads, it surprisingly worked really well. After the hole was made I whipped stitched around it until all the raw edges were concealed, as explained below:
Pushing ends of nail scissors in between fibres of silk taffeta to create a hole
Do some stay whip stitches around the hole
Go back and fully whip stitch the hole
Finished eyelet
Although the original has 29 pairs of eyelet holes that run down the centre front of the bodies, somehow I miscalculated my measurements, so my reconstruction only has 28 pairs of eyelet holes. Oops!
Nearly there! Eyelet holes on centre front opening
After finishing the centre front I moved onto the eyelet holes that are about the waist tabs, two above each split. These eyelet holes were originally intended to have anchored the farthingale or skirts to the torso, showing the ways in which bodies and farthingales by the early seventeenth century began to accommodate each other in dress.[3]
Eyelet holes above splits in tabs
The original effigy bodies in Westminster abbey fastened with leather points that were threaded through one eyelet hole in each shoulder strap and then through another in the top of the bodies.[4] The original holes were not worked, however, this was probably due to the rushed nature of making the bodies for the Queen’s effigy and so I decided to work mine with silk thread as I had done for the others. I then threaded through some left over grosgrain ribbon that I had used to bind the outside raw edges of the bodies and tied these in a bow.
Eyelet holes for straps
Grosgrain ribbon, view from right side
View from wrong side
After the eyelet holes were complete and the shoulder straps secured, all I had left to do was to lace the bodies together. Bodies during this period were straight laced, meaning that one lace was threaded through all the eyelet holes in a spiralled motion.[5] This differs from the way that Victorian era and modern corsets are laced, which involved having two strands of ribbon that criss-crossed over each other.
1. On one side of the bodies, at the top of the centre front, tie the ribbon or laces to one of the eyelet holes.2. Insert ribbon/lace through opposite eyelet threaded over towards the body3. Pull the ribbon to the other side and thread through the eyelet hole, from the body towards the front.4. Continue doing this in an over and under fashion all the way down to the bottomTie bottom of lace into a loop, and then another loop. Tuck underneath, between bodies and smock
At the moment the bodies are laced together with satin ribbon, however, I hope to source aiglets in the future to create period correct ‘points’. Points were laces of leather or ribbon tipped with a metal tip (aiglet) that threaded through eyelet holes in garments and tied to attached them together.
A point consisting of five strand braid of cream and silk threads tipped with an aiglet, c. 1550-1650. Museum of London, London.
It was not only used to lace bodies, but in male clothing they were used mainly to attach the breeches and sleeves to the doublet, whilst in female clothing they commonly attached skirts or detachable sleeves to the bodice. The plastic tip at the end of a modern shoe lace is derived from the metal aiglet, and serves a similar function – to allow for easier threading.
I’ll be unveiling the finished bodies and my afterthoughts on the construction process in my next blog post so stay tuned!
References:
[1] Randle Holme, The academy of armory, or, A storehouse of armory and blazon containing the several variety of created beings, and how born in coats of arms, both foreign and domestick. With the termes of Art used in each Science. (Printed at Chester by the Author, 1688), p. 290.
[2] Luca Costigliolo & Jenny Tiramani, ‘The Tools and Techniques of the Tailor and Seamstress’, Seventeenth Century Women’s Dress Patterns: Book One, Susan North and Jenny Tiamani, eds. (London, V&A Publishing, 2011), p. 11.
[3] Luca Costigliolo, ‘From Straight bodies to Stays’, Seventeenth Century Women’s Dress Patterns: Book Two, Susan North and Jenny Tiramani, eds. (London, V&A Publishing, 2012), p. 10.
[4] Janet Arnold, ‘The ‘pair of straight bodies’ and ‘a pair of drawers’ dating from 1603 which Clothe the Effigy of Queen Elizabeth I in Westminster Abbey’, Costume, Vol. 41 (2007), pp. 2, 7.
[5] Luca Costigliolo, ‘Pink Watered-silk stays’, Seventeenth Century Women’s Dress Patterns: Book Two, Susan North and Jenny Tiramani, eds. (London, V&A Publishing, 2012), p. 97.
The first reconstruction that I will be making is the effigy bodies of Queen Elizabeth I that are now on display in Westminster Abbey in London. These bodies were specially constructed, probably by the Queen’s tailor William Jones, upon the death of Elizabeth in 1603, for the effigy that would accompany her body to its resting place in Westminster Abbey. As Janet Arnold notes, it is therefore unlikely that the Queen ever wore these bodies, however, their size and construction was probably based on the bodies that Jones had previously made for the Queen.[1] Regardless of whether the Queen really did wear them or not, they are the second oldest pair of bodies in Europe that are known to have survived (the earliest surviving bodies were found on the corpse of Pfalzgräfin Dorothea Sabina von Neuburg, who was buried in what is now Germany in 1598), and the certainly oldest English pair that we know of.
The Pattern
The pattern I’m using for my reconstruction is one that the amazing Janet Arnold made of the bodies when she studied them in 1994, which was then published posthumously in the journal of Costume.
The effigy bodies consist of three separate parts: two front sections that lace together with twenty-nine eyelet holes and a back section. The lining consists of four parts (the back panel lining being divided into two sections).[2] There are a total of six tabs that spread over the hips, two on the back piece and two on each front section. From the pictures and the pattern provided I’m unsure as to whether the shoulder straps are part of the back section, or are attached separately. Arnold’s pattern has them as separate from the back piece, however, in the pictures and other sketches of the bodies they appear to cut into the back piece.
My intention is the make the bodies exactly the same size as the original pair in Westminster Abbey, which by my calculations means that Elizabeth I had a 21” waist (!!). A disclaimer at the start of the article states that “Janet’s full-scale pattern of the ‘pair of straight bodies’ has been scaled down to fit the page size of Costume.”[3] I, however, am working off a .pdf document version of this article printed on A4 paper which may be bigger than the pages of Costume. Although technically if I copy it correctly onto a 1 inch scale it shouldn’t really matter. To double check this though, I’ve also used the pattern provided in the Tudor Tailor.[4]
The Materials
Unlike the bodies mentioned in the wardrobe accounts of Elizabeth I, the effigy bodies are rather plain. They are made from two layers of twill weave fustian cloth that was originally white, are bound by green leather that had a suede finish and were stitched with linen thread.[5] The term ‘bodies’ during this period could refer to a number of things – from the bodices of gowns, to the undergarment that is visible on Countess Elizabeth Vernon of Southampton in her portrait below, and of course to the effigy bodies.
Elizabeth Vernon, Countess of Southampton, 1595-1600. Unknown Artist. Boughton House
My archival research has confirmed that bodies that belonged to elites during this period were always made from materials such as silk satins and silk taffetas, sometimes even velvet, and usually lined with sarcenet, fustian, canvas or buckram. Contrary to popular opinion, bodies were not always stiffened with material such as whalebone or bents, and rarely so until the late sixteenth century.
When considering how then I would make my reconstruction, taking into account the effigy bodies, wardrobe warrants and visual evidence such as the portrait of Elizabeth Vernon, an entry in the warrants of Elizabeth I from 1590 caught my eye. It requested:
“Item for makinge of a paire of french bodies of carnacion Taffata Lyned with fustian stiched alouer with whales bone of our greate warderobe.” [6]
Here was a wardrobe account that not only matches the only visual image of elite bodies from the period, but was made within a close enough time period to the effigy pair that they could have been the same or a very similar style.
Therefore, for my reconstruction I will use a pale pink (“carnacion”) coloured silk taffeta for both the outer fabric and the lining. Although fustian and sarcenet were the fabrics most commonly used as lining in the wardrobe accounts, they are rarely used in modern clothing and so are incredibly hard and expensive to source. There are warrants from Elizabeth’s wardrobe during the same period, such as this one: “Item for makinge of a pair of bodies… of black veluett… lined with Taffata…”, that shows that taffeta was also used as lining, although less frequently.[7] To bind the bodies I will use white faux leather which closely mimics the properties of leather and is easy to source.
Modern plastic ‘whalebone’, pink silk taffeta, linen thread
The 1603 effigy bodies are completely boned with whalebone and the average width of this boning is 6mm, except for two 12.7mm wide pieces on either side of the front opening.[8] As whalebone (‘baleen’) is, for good reason, not available anymore I will have to use an somehing else. A period alternative would be small bundles of bents (a thin reed), like those used in Hilary Davidson’s modern reconstruction of a sixteenth-century Spanish pair of bodies.[9] However, as the effigy bodies contained whalebone I will use a modern alternative that mimics baleen’s properties. I have chosen modern plastic dress making boning. It is similar in width to the original whalebone (5mm) and contains the same amount of flexibility as traditional whalebone. Although silk bodies probably would have been constructed with a mixture of silk and linen thread, as costs must be considered in my reconstruction, I will use only linen thread to hand construct the bodies and to work the eyelet holes so they don’t fray (similar to the way that modern button holes are done).
References
[1]Janet Arnold, ‘The ‘pair of straight bodies’ and ‘a pair of drawers’ dating from 1603 which Clothe the Effigy of Queen Elizabeth I in Westminster Abbey’, Costume, Vol. 41 (2007), p. 1.
[2] Arnold, ‘The ‘pair of straight bodies’, p. 1; Luca Costigliolo, ‘From Straight bodies to Stays’, Seventeenth Century Women’s Dress Patterns: Book Two, Susan North and Jenny Tiramani, eds. (London, V&A Publishing, 2012), p. 10.
[9] Hilary Davidson and Anna Hodson, ‘Joining forces: the intersection of two replica Garments’, Textiles And Text: Re-Establishing The Links Between Archival And Object-Based Research, [postprints], eds. M. Hayward and E.Kramer, (London: Archetype, 2007), pp. 206-108.
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