The Siglo de Oro (or golden century) is the Spanish term for the later Renaissance. It encompasses somewhat more than 100 years of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, roughly corresponding to the era of Habsburg rule. This is the age of El Greco, Velazquez, and Zurbaran; of Cervantes, Calderon, and Lope de Vega. This is also the age of the rapier, which is one of the things I love about it (though they can keep the Inquisition, thankyouverymuch).
Over time, as I’ve worked on practicing a progressively more historical style of fencing, I’ve been working on the clothes to match. I came home from last year’s Ducal Challenge with a linen ruff, made by the wonderful Katerina Falconer (who wrote about the process here). She made it based on the examples in Patterns of Fashion 4. With lots of help from the Elizabethan Costuming group on Facebook, I set about starching and ironing a proper late-16th century style ruff. Here’s the finished result:
Neck ruffs are very much formal wear. Just as silly and impractical as modern neckties. However, unlike modern neckties, the process of starching and setting a ruff is somewhat complex. Carmen Bernis, in El Traje de Hombre al Uso Cortesano, had quoted an account of 1615 (very loose translation by me, with reference to others' work):
One puts first the loose starch when the water is boiling, stirring always in one direction, because if you turn back across, it breaks and is less strong. To take it off the fire, you must not ignore the appearance, it must turn clear, because until that point it is not cooked.
Half an hour before taking it out, there must be blue powders in the water, which must be put in before it cools, so that they are well incorporated. How much quantity, certainly it will be enough starch for the collars and enough powders for the starch. They come out more clear if they dry in the sun; and if it is Spring, you don't have to let them get to be almost dry, because the starch sits well, and there is danger of breaking if it is left to adhere too much. If done otherwise, at the time you want to open [press] them, even if they are sprayed a lot, the water is not caught in the folds, so that the spraying is the same, nor is the starch and the blue well seated, if not made layers [?], and some portions stiff, some soft.
To dry them by the fire, it is suitable to make the starch a bit stronger and more cooked.
It is very useful (if there is time) to air them out a bit after they are starched, because they soak up the starch and it incorporates better into the cloth, and after you don't have to take it off the fire as much. Once dry, to open [press] them the most smoothly, they are usually sprayed, and moistening a cloth, they are wrapped in it, placing them in a basket in the way that cloths are arranged for doing laundry. They are squeezed after this very well, which revives them, and they soften themselves; they come out better if they were sprayed the night before for the following day.
On opening, one applies the irons according to the width, of course some have more folds than others, and thus they need many molds, of which you must have knowledge, to fix the faults that they have. One finds various makes, such as squared, round, and others.You can see why I was a bit intimidated! But, once I decided to just do it, it wasn’t actually as bad as I thought it would be - still time consuming, but not quite as bad.
I used cornstarch, since finding plain wheat starch can be a bit difficult and I was really not up to extracting starch for myself. But otherwise, the process was similar to the above, if a bit simplified. I cooked 2 TBSP of cornstarch in 1 cup of water until it went from cloudy to clear. I found this seemed a bit too thick and added some more water. But once it’s the consistency of mucus, it’s ready. I did not bother with tinting the starch. The "blue powders" mentioned in the description above might have really been blue. But it could also refer to something more like modern optical whiteners. Since all the Spanish paintings of this period show bright white ruffs, and my ruff's linen is nice a bleached, I didn't bother with any blue tinting.
I then worked it into the cloth of the ruff. Oddly, the otherwise very detailed description above glosses over this part. It's a bit finicky, since there’s really no easy way to do it. In theory, if one cooked up a large enough batch of starch, the whole ruff could just be dipped into it to let it soak in and then wring out the excess. I suspect this may have been done in laundries at the time. However, for setting one ruff, that would have been kind of wasteful. So, I ended up spooning the hot starch mixture onto the cloth and rubbing it around with my fingers to cover the whole surface evenly and soak it in.
Then, I hung the ruff up to dry overnight. The warning in the period description was apt. I let my ruff dry almost completely (there was a tiny bit of dampness in some of the gathered folds by the seam). And the cloth did stick to itself in some places. Fortunately, I was able to gently peel the folds apart and it doesn't seem any the worse for it.
The next morning, I sprinkled the ruff with water and put it in a ziplock bag, instead of wrapping it and putting it in a basket. On the advice of some experts on Facebook, I put it in the fridge for this portion. I probably could have ironed it that evening, but was busy so left it to the next day, as advised.
Once I took it out of the fridge, it was pretty stiff. I used a roll of toilet paper as a makeshift ruff stand, pinning the band around it. At first I had trouble getting the ruff into an approximation of the figure-8 shape that was the goal. I ended up doing a rough accordion fold to mark the general shape. Then, it was showtime. The curling iron set came with an insulating glove. This was very helpful to hold the individual setts firmly against the hot iron in order to get them set. The whole thing took a bit of time and concentration, but with a suitable tool it wasn’t more difficult than, say, ironing a shirt. All done, it was only about an hour’s worth of work - but it was spread out over 3 days.
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| The folds are not all completely even, but in portraits they aren't always neat and precise either. |
All in all, this was a pretty successful first try. When I have the energy to go through the process again, I may try doing the setts with a smaller barrel on the iron. This is definitely within the range of the sizes and shapes one sees in portraits of this period. But, I prefer some of the less extravagant versions, like this one. There are also some other issues (such as the failure of the edges to meet neatly at the front) which may be an issue of the proportion of the ruff, or may be my inexpert starching - only time and further practice will tell.
In addition to trying the ruff out at a recent SCA event, I also had my first try with what folks on the Facebook group affectionately call the “Elizabethan onesie”. It was the practice at the time to use cords or laces to tie one’s breeches to a strip of eyelet holes inside the waist of the doublet. While a bit awkward, it worked out surprisingly well. It was very comfortable, I was never overly aware of my clothing, and I didn't have to worry about having my shirt show between by doublet and breeches when I bent over. I was even able to handle going to bathroom (mostly) unassisted.
This doublet was my first go at using the Modern Maker's draft and methods. I highly encourage anyone with an interest in late 16th/early 17th century clothes to check out his books, because Mathew is truly awesome. He also has a Patreon page with video tutorials for patrons. As a learning experience, I did all of the doublet construction by hand. It was interesting, definitely gave me a good understanding of his methods, but there are several steps that I will probably do by machine in future doublets in order to save time. This was going to be a simple, basic doublet (made entirely from cloth I had sitting in my closet). But this wool twill, while nice, was just. so. red. I felt it needed a bit of something to break up the color. So, it’s got some black silk bias strips for embellishment.
The breeches are the latest iteration in my pursuit of the super bulbous silhouette exemplified by El Greco’s portrait of Vincenzo Anastagi. The outer fabric is a basic wool twill suiting, but it’s backed with a seriously stiff linen canvas. The canvas is kind of rough, though, so that is backed with a lighter wool twill as a lining. The gathering thread runs through all three of these layer, creating some nice and fluffy folds. I think it does a decent job of standing out from the body. But doesn’t quite reach Anastagi’s level. The pattern is also made from the Modern Maker’s drafting system.
The outfit is finished off with a bunch of accessories that are not new and, while passing the 10-foot rule, aren’t QUITE totally historically accurate. The knitted stockings are cotton, not wool as would be more appropriate for the era. The hat is a kind of in-between creation that isn’t quite any particular period style. And the shoes are modern clogs because there was a lot of snow on the ground and I needed the thick soles - although I should note that the shape of the uppers is similar to shoes that one can find in late 16th century artwork (and a couple of surviving examples). While the ruff makes this outfit a bit more formal, there really should be another layer on top of the doublet as well - usually this would be a jerkin/sayo/ropilla of some sort, but could have been a long coat/gown or cape/cloak or some sort. I had a cape but it spent the entire day draped over the back of a chair because the hall was so warm. You can kind of see it at the right edge of the photo (but I didn't make it, so we'll just leave it aside).
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