A Cap of Maintenance

So now that this has been given, I can write about it.

My very good friend, Baroness Johanne ap Wisby was elevated to to the Order of the Pelican on 6 January 24 March 30 June.  In case someone who's not involved with the SCA happens to be reading this: the Order of the Pelican is the SCA's highest honor for service to the Society and is considered one of our peerage orders.  As such, during the elevation of new member one of the things they are given is a 'cap of maintenance'.  You can read more about caps of maintenance here.

The cap of maintenance is a red cap with ermine fur trim.  While the cap of maintenance is usually in the form of a bycokcet (the "Robin Hood" cap), this is not really in line with Johanne's persona.  Plus, she doesn't often wear hats.  Johanne usually wears 12th-13th century Scandinavian garb.  So, in an effort to give her something that she might actually wear in the future, it occurred to me that she might like something in the form of the St. Birgitta cap.

The cap, or coif, of St. Birgitta is a relic.  Birgitta was a 14th century Swedish saint.  This head covering can be called a coif, 'huva', or 'huvete'.  There are many descriptions of this type of cap online.  This page has some good information on the relic itself, which has an embroidered band along the front edge and insertion embroidery for the seam.  This one has some good images from period artwork showing this type of cap in wear.  These sort of hair coverings are almost universally made of white linen.  However, in order to make it into a cap of maintenance I would make one out of red linen.

I mostly used the pattern on this page which is pretty good.  The main difference in my construction was that I made small gathering stitches along the bottom rather than pleating, since I didn't feel I could easily pleat 10 inches down into 2 (although, I suppose that you could consider what I did to be cartridge pleating).  There a wonderfully detailed description of the complex insertion seam embroidery on this page but I chose to use a more simple version detailed here.  The seam is worked in red silk embroidery thread.

The edges were hemmed and then basted to a piece of graph paper.  This helped me keep the spacing even.  This first photo shows the herringbone stitch which is the base of the insertion seam.  The second photo shows the first pass of the interlacing stitch.

And finally, the other side is interlaced.

Originally, I had asked a friend who does silk painting - Lady Angelica de Nova Lipa - about creating a strip of silk printed with heraldic ermine spots.  She found the small scale and detail a bit difficult, though.  In the end, she embroidered ermine spots onto the silk for me.  I used this both for the embroidered band on the cap itself, as well as the straps (which are really one continuous band with the edge treatment). Here is the attached ermine band and the finished cap, posed on an upside-down pitcher.

This was a fun little project.  I particularly enjoy adapting historical styles and techniques in novel ways, either for some interesting "modern" use or for our unique SCA customs.  I don't think there's any evidence for this type of cap in anything other than white linen in the Middle Ages.  Likewise, a traditional cap of maintenance is always in the form of a bycocket.  However, this project really highlights the "creative" part of the Society for Creative Anachronism - which makes me smile.

For bonus, some pelican embroidery with Johanne's arms that was put on a cloak that was used as a "vestment" for her elevation:

A Medallion using Wire Embroidery

So, this year's super-secret project #1 has finally been given and I can now post about it!  (super-secret project #2 will get its own blog post once it has been given out)

My friend Þórfinnr was inducted into the Order of the Maunche this past Saturday.  For those not in the SCA, or the East Kingdom, the Order of the Maunche is one of our Orders of High Merit - it's an award for skill in the arts and sciences of the Middle Ages.  It usually recognizes not just skill, but also research into the way things were done/made in our period of interest.  Þórfinnr is an awesome guy whose research and crafting spans many topics (check out his blog on medieval Chinese brewing, where he is actually translating recipes from a period text, and this blog with other varied topics).  But, for the purposes of this discussion we're going to talk about Viking era wire ornament on clothing.

So, Þórfinnr has done a bit of nalbinding, and he knows that I've done quite a bit.  And we ended up geeking out over some wire embroidery from the finds at Birka in Sweden at one point.  In fact, he gave me a copy of the book referenced below.

Since he's very interested in all aspects of Viking-era Scandinavia and creating an authentic Viking persona, Þórfinnr was looking at a type of embellishment called posaments.  These are generally wire decorations done on the surface of clothing and there are many variations.  There is a particular version found at the Birka site in Sweden which is done in the same manner as the Coptic nalbinding that I've previously discussed on this blog (here and here).  Agnes Geijer, in her book Birka III - Die Textilfunde, describes them in the chapter on embroidery, rather than as posements, but is very clear that the work is done with fine silver wire.

This type of embellishment is worked with crossed loops of the wire, either in columns or rows.  The wire usually passes behind the base fabric at the ends of the rows, or on either side of a column:

This is the illustration from Geijer's book.  The work I did is mostly similar to type C seen here. 

All of this is basically preamble to the main thrust of this post.  Upon induction into the Order, each person is given a medallion with the order's symbol (seen at the top of this post).  It's a stylized, heraldic version of a particular type of sleeve that generally ends up looking like the letter 'M' (or a diagram of a colon - but maybe that's just me).  Since I think Þórfinnr is a cool guy and he introduced me to this interesting variation on a technique that I've been using, I decided that I'd like to use this type of wire embellishment to make a medallion for him.

So, I got myself some brass wire (with gold-finish and with an anodized purple finish) in 24 gauge, which was the thinnest wire in the store I went to.  Everyone I spoke with about working with looped wire had told me that one had to use pliers to manipulate the wire.  This did not work out so well.  Since the fabric base I was using was silk, the pliers and the cut end of the wire kept snagging the threads, which you can see in this photo.  Also, even though I tried to file the cut end of the wire, it was still difficult to push through the fabric.

Here are some early attempts (real failures on the right)

 So, I decided that maybe I needed even thinner wire.  After all, Geijer had described this as embroidery, and the technique is the same as nalbinding, which I was used to doing with a needle.  So, I got some 30 gauge wire.  This was thin enough that I could thread it onto an embroidery needle.  This worked out much better.  The portion on the left of the photo above was my first successful attempt with the thinner wire.

The thinner wire behaved much more like thread or yarn and did not require pliers to form it into loops.  Plus, the embroidery needle went through the fabric much more easily.  It was much more like working nalbinding - which I'm familiar with.  Once I got the hang of not catching the needle's point on the fabric when I didn't want to, it went pretty smoothly.   Ultimately, I think that the 30 gauge wire is probably very close to the gauge used in the originals.  My finished work has about 7 stitches/cm - which is exactly the gauge, as best as I can determine from Geijer's information, of the pieces from Birka.

The base fabric is silk taffeta.  I think it is probably less substantial than the silks that Viking-era people would have used for this purpose.  So, when I stitched together one piece of gold and one piece of purple silk, I doubled them back so I was working with a double thickness.  The shape of the Maunche was outlined with basting thread and then the work began!

Here is the left half done with purple wire on the gold silk.  Ruler for scale.

And here is the completed design.

The surviving examples of this technique from Birka were most likely apliqueed onto a garment of some sort.  But, not knowing whether Þórfinnr would want to do that, I figured I should finish it up as a medallion (as is typical SCA practice).  So, I cut out a circle around the embroidery and chose a bit of wool that I knew would not fray as a backing and then used some silk embroidery thread to make a blanket stitch around the edges (holding down a narrow folded hem in the silk).

I finished the edges of the piece with more wire work. There is a surviving cuff from Birka described here which had this.  It's the same Coptic stitch-style looping, worked into a tube (like "trichinopoly"/wire weaving chains) with the wire piercing through the fabric at the end of each row.  As I started working it, I realized that my backing wool was still a bit floppy.  So, I used a piece of medium weight leather in addition to back the piece.  The edge coil goes through all layers.

Wire coil in purple on the left.  On the right, you can see the blanket stitch in silk.  I probably should have done the silk blanket stitch in the same color as the cloth, rather than the color of the wire that would go over it.  I think it makes the coil pattern less distinct.  

The completed edge finish

Last, I used some coiled wire to add a loop for a cord to the top.  This is not structurally connected to the edge finish, so if Þórfinnr decides that he does want to apply this onto a sash, bag, or garment he can just take it off.

The finished medallion, with ruler in inches for scale

I think this was a very successful attempt at adapting a craft practice from period examples for something that is particular to the SCA.  A real piece of creative anachronism!

I did a guest blog!

I don't know if anyone is actually reading this blog or not.  But, in case someone is, they may be interested to know that I just did a guest blog entry on the Loopholes blog.  Loopholes is run by a retired museum curator with an interest in fiber arts and particularly looped-yarn textiles.

Following a really interesting discussion of the evolution of nomenclature for nalbinding, he has gotten into the intersection of knitting and nalbinding in Egypt - a topic of some interest to me as well.  After I had commented on a recent post, he asked me to do a guest blog about some knitted tubes from Coptic Egypt.  The result is this blog entry

I figure that anyone following this blog would probably be interested.

Nalbinding & Knitting: compare and contrast

Here are some excerpts from a poster presentation I did at an SCA event in August 2016.  It was a research-focused event hosted at U Penn, where people had the opportunity to share the results of their research.

These diagrams are analyzing the so-called Coptic stitch.  For more information on the Coptic stitch in nalbinding, see my other post on Egyptian socks: here.  So, the interesting thing about this particular nalbinding stitch is that it looks very similar to knitting.  Specifically twisted-stitch, or crossed-stitch, knitting.  This has led to some confusion among archaeologists and there are probably textile fragments in museum collections that have been mis-categorized.

The point of this analysis (which was illustrated with some samples on the poster) was to show the ways in which knitting and Coptic nalbinding can be distinguished from each other.  The structure of Coptic nalbinding, when worked flat or in a constant-size tube, is identical to that of twisted knitting.  However, they are worked in opposite directions.  Because of the differences in the way they are worked, the two structures can be differentiated by looking at the increases and decreases.  Some increase or decrease structures are unique to nalbinding, some are unique to knitting, and some can be created in both techniques.

The below terms in red (other than the 'F1 increase') are my own, since I could not find any categorization of the different types of increases and decreases which are possible with the Coptic stitch.  If anyone knows of one, do please let me know.

Distinguishing Nalbinding from Knitting: 
Increases and Decreases

Increases add a stitch to the row being worked, and decreases reduce the number of stitches, compared to the previous row.  Nalbinding increases are analagous to knitting decreases (and vice-versa).


Nalbinding:

F 1 increase – made by passing the yarn around the bridge between 2 stitches.  All of the increases in the extant socks that I have been able to analyze are of this type.

 Impossible to replicate with knitting.

Nalbinding:

Linked increase – 2 stitches are worked around the same stitch

Structure is the same as ‘knit-2-together’ or ‘purl-2-together’ knitting decreases.


Nalbinding:

Skip decrease – made by simply skipping one stitch of the prior row

Structure is the same as ‘lifted’, ‘make-one’, or ‘yarn-over’ knitting increases

Nalbinding:

Joined decrease – made by passing the stitch behind 2 adjacent stitches of the prior row.

Looks similar to a ‘knit front-and-back’ or ‘bar increase’ with proper tension, but structurally different.  COULD be replicated exactly with knitting, but this is not generally done.       

Egyptian Coptic Nalbinding

Here is the handout for a class I teach on Egyptian nalbinding.

Nalbinding is a technique for creating a stretchy fabric.  It predates knitting and seems to have been developed independently in various parts of the world.  It is most well-known in the Scandinavian context and the term 'nalbinding' is a Scandinavian word, but all the English equivalents are unwieldy so most English-speaking people keep using the term 'nalbinding'.  However, there seems to have been a strong tradition of nalbinding in Roman era and Post-Roman era Egypt as well.

Nalbinding creates a fabric by creating loops with yarn or thread.  The yarn is worked with a blunt sewing needle.  For wonderful instructions on many varieties of nalbinding, you can check out this site for instructions, videos, and all kinds of great reference material.

The socks from Egypt are mostly (but not all) worked in a stitch referred to as the "Coptic stitch".  The term Coptic has been used to refer to the Post-Roman era, which is the period of time between the end of Roman rule in Egypt (roughly 3rd century) and their conquest by the Muslims (7th century).  It can be a bit confusing because Coptic also refers to a sect of Christians based in Egypt.  We do not know if these socks were worn by Coptic Christians.  In fact, most were found in excavations at Greek colony cities in Egypt.

This handout is a collection of images I've found from various museums' digitized collections, followed by the illustrations I use in teaching people how to do the Egyptian style nalbinding.

Nalbound socks from Egypt