Fashion in the Age of Datini

Table of Contents

• Breeches (ported)
• Shirts (ported)
• Hosen (ported)
• Doublets (ported)
• Gowns (ported)
• Short Pleated Cloaks (ported)
• Bocksten Cloaks
• Hoods
• Gloves and Mittens
• Shoes
• Belts
• Purses
• Knives (Working) (ported)
• Knives (Fighting) (ported)
• Swords and Sheaths (ported)
• Crossbows (ported)
• Beds (ported)
• Bibliography (ported)
• Literary Sources
• Especially Useful Art (ported)

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Short Pleated Cloaks

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Shoes

Most shoes seem to have gently pointed tips, without a long ‘pike’ in the ‘poulaine’ or ‘cracow’ style. Soled hosen seem very popular, at least among rich men. The method and place of fastening is not usually visible. The ankle opening seems to be at a similar place to modern men’s dress shoes, making them ‘shoes’ or low ‘ankle boots’ in the language of the Museum of London. Openwork decoration on the uppers seems to have been fashionable for men, especially north of the Alps.

Black is a very popular colour in art. I don’t know of any documentary evidence for the colour of shoes in Italy. It is possible that shoes were not commonly made in bulk and shipped long distances, so do not appear in merchants’ records. In 1480 Edward IV of England ordered shoes and boots of “black leather” and “tawney Spanish leather” (Shoes and Pattens p. 120) and an English Arthurian romance composed around 1410 mentions “A man… As blak As Ony Scho.” The Treatise of the Points of Worship in Arms mentions “A payre of shoen of red Lether thynne laced & fretted underneth wt whippecorde & persed, And above withinne Lyned wt Lynnen cloth three fyngers in brede double & byesse from the too an yncle above ye wriste.”

Pattens (wooden overshoes) appear on shelves next to beds in the Tacuinum Sanitatis in Paris but I do not know of other evidence for clogs and pattens in Italy. Olaf Goubitz gives the impression that few finds of shoes from Italy have been published, and says that clogs and pattens are rare archaeologically (p. 131), whether because they were less common, or because old clogs made good firewood. One researcher claims that a 14th century Italian name for these objects is pianelle (Meek, “Sumptuary Legislation in Lucca,” p. 212).

Further Reading:

• Francis Grew and Margarethe de Neergaard, Shoes and Pattens. Medieval Finds from Excavations in London 2. New edition. Boydell Press: Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2001. ISBN-13 978-1-84383-238-6
• Olaf Goubitz, Stepping Through Time: Archaeological Footwear from Prehistoric Times until 1800 (Stitchtig Promotie Archeologie: n.p., 2001) ISBN-13 978-90-8932-004-9
• Quita Mould, Ian Carlisle, and Esther Cameron, Leather and Leatherworking in Anglo-Scandinavian and Medieval York. The Archaeology of York, Volume 17 The Small Finds, Fasc. 16 Craft, Industry, and Everyday Life. York Archaeological Trust: Walmgate, York, 2003. http://www.yorkarchaeology.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/AY17-16-Leather-and-leatherworking.pdf
• Quita Mould, “The Medieval Leather,” in C. Howard-Davis, The Carlisle Millennium Project: Excavations in Carlisle, 1998-2001, Volume 2: The Finds. (Oxford Archaeology North: Lancaster, 2009) pp. 841-858. ISBN 9780904220575.
• Marquita Volken, Archaeological Footwear: Development of Shoe Patterns and Styles from Prehistory til the 1600’s (SPA Uitgevers, 2014) ISBN-13 978-9089321176
• Marquita Volken, “Arming Shoes of the Fifteenth Century,” Acta Periodica Duellatorum 5.2 (December 2017) pp. 25-45 https://doi.org/10.1515/apd-2017-0007

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Belts

Belts fall into two general categories, a kind with a long dangling tail which was usually wrapped around the belt and tucked behind itself, and a kind with no visible tail worn around the hips. They could be of tanned leather, woven silk, or interlinked metal plaques, and decorated in many different ways.

To learn about belts and their metal fittings (mounts), see Egan and Prirchard, Dress Accessories, Willemsen ‘Man is a Sack of Muck Girdled with Silver’, Schnack, Lederfunde aus Schleswig, and databases of metal-detector finds like the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Leather belts and pewter or copper-alloy mounts survive well.

The heavy belts of silver or gilt plaques often show up in inventories, merchants’ records, and rhetoric about excess: there is some information in Stuard, Gilding the Market.

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Purses

… more pictures to follow …

People in the trecento hung a variety of cloth or leather bags from their belt to carry small objects, or used them to project objects in storage. Painters usually show no more than one, while a variety of pouches and bags, often rather plain, are found by archaeologists.

Leatherworkers usually rely on Goubitz, “Purses in Pieces” to reconstruct late medieval leather purses. The problem is that this book relies in 15th and 16th century Dutch finds, and purses in trecento Italian art look very different from purses in 15th and 16th century Dutch art. The Dutch enjoyed the bawdy humour of a purse with two large lumps worn over the crotch (and often supporting a long, hard, stiff dagger with a phallic hilt) but Italians usually cut their purses and carved their hilts differently and usually wore both at the hip. I would therefore recommend caution in using this as a source to understand purses in Italy.

Goubitz also warns that many purses probably combined textiles, tanned leathers, and hides treated in other ways, but that only the tanned leather part has much chance of surviving in the ground.

Karen Larsdatter has a page on Medieval and Renaissance Pouches and Purses, but again its important to remember that fashions were quite different in different parts of Europe. There are some rectangular and round drawstring pouches in Schnack, “Lederfunde aus Schleswig.”

Leather purses often had a variety of pewter, brass, silver, gold, or gilt fittings. Photos of a wide variety are available in Willemsen, Decorative Mounts on Belts and Purses. These fittings are commonly found by metal detectors, so many private collections contain some.

… more to come … other styles of bag and purse …

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Medieval Literature

• James Tait (ed.), Chronica Johannis de Reading et Anonymi cantuariensis, 1346-1367. Publications of the University of Manchester, Historical Series, Vol. 20 (Sherratt and Hughes: Manchester and London, 1914) https://archive.org/details/chronicajohannis00john/ {This monk of Westminister Abbey, who died in 1368/9, comments on the new fashions of the 1360s on pp. 167-168 with commentary on pp. 328-330}
• Haydon, Frank Scott (ed.), Eulogium (historiarum sive temporis): Chronicon ab orbe condito usque ad annum Domini M.CCC.LXCI., a monacho quodam Malmesburiensi exaratum; accedunt continuiationes duae, quarum una ad annum M.CCCC XIII., altera ad annum M.CCCC.XC. perducta est. Volume 3 (Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green: London, 1863) {this chronicle by a monk of Malmesbury comments on the new fashions of the 1360s on vol. 3 pp. 230-231}

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