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The Cloud Collar Project

1/16/2013

I have been in love with Cloud Collars since I first discovered Persian art. The painting at left is one of my favorites. I've made quite a few of them over the years, most of them now owned by other people. Here are a couple of photos.

Made for Duchess Amirah of Atenveldt.

Made for Countess Elizabeth O'Byrn of the Outlands. This was taken while she was officiating at our wedding.

And here's the first one I made.

I have felt a serious embroidery binge coming on for a while now and so I am in the planning stages of a pretty elaborate collar for myself.

We know that empires in Central Asia such as the Ottomans, Timurids and Safavids had royal design houses that created designs for everything from architecture, ceramics and book arts to textile arts. In the Ottoman Empire, the design house was known as the kitabkhana.

The designs were then given to craftsman to execute. Imagine my delight when I found reproductions of design sketches from the royal design house of the Timurids. My husband is used to these outbursts and is remarkably tolerant.

Some of these designs are specifically for cloud collars and some for other items such as quivers. They date from the first half of the 15th century, which is the time period during which my persona lived. In addition, the motifs include several that are of personal meaning to me, including lions and the simurgh or Persian phoenix.

I found them in the book Timur and the Princely Vision. This entire book is wonderful, by the way.

Design for a quiver. Iran 1400-1450.

Arabesque medallion. Iran 1400-1450

Design for a medallion with lion and phoenix. Iran 1400-1450

We also have information on Persian embroidery. One of my main sources has been When Silk Was Gold, one of my other favorite books. There are photographs of extant embroideries and a very good chapter on how to do the embroideries.

There are extant cloud collars including one that is reproduced in a number of books including The Princely Vision and The Tsars and the East.

This one has a little trick up its sleeve. It has undergone extensive restoration and not all books talk about this. The photo in the Princely Vision makes all the embroidery, including the background, appear to be gold and it is only briefly mentioned in the text. The photograph in The Tsars and the East (above) is of higher quality and the text includes a history of the piece, including its extensive restoration.

To summarize, the piece has been securely dated as 15th century Iranian, and was given as a royal gift to one of the Tsars which means that the design was likely produced by the same kitabkhana as the drawings in The Princely Vision. The original ground fabric was crimson silk and there are surviving fragments of the blue silk of the garment it was originally attached to.

The book identifies such a garment as 'a type of straight-cut Eastern robe without fastenings or collar', which is corroborated by the numerous paintings of figures wearing similar collars. The form of the collar follows what we see in paintings, except for the extended tabs down the front. I plan to omit those in the one I make.

The figures in gold and blue, the angels (peris), flowering vines etc were part of the original collar. The ground, which is actually of green silk is a 17th century restoration. This green silk was embroidered to imitate woven cloth and so in some inventories the collar is identified as having a green silk ground.

The loss of gold threads in the original motifs was replaced with gilt silver thread which has tarnished badly and some of the blue silks have been replaced as well.

So it was originally a blue silk garment with a red silk collar with gold thread embroidery with touches of blue. These are some of my favorite colors and I have all the materials I need to do this. I have a great piece of red silk taffeta for the ground and lots of gold threads. I also have a good supply of silk embroidery floss in blue, turquoise and red and I suspect I will use all of them.

Embroidered silk canopy. Yuan Dynasty 1279-1368. A little earlier and further east than the other examples, but still part of the same aesthetic system.

This embroidered canopy of gold simurghs is also going to serve as a model. It uses couched threads of a yellow silk core wrapped with a gilded paper substrate, made thick to 'achieve the effect of relief'. You can find this in When Silk Was Gold.

It's dated to Yuan period in China, 1279-1368. So it's a bit earlier than the rest, but the renderings of the simurghs is pretty constant through this period, so I'm using it to fill in technique details I can't get elsewhere. I've also made a test of the technique that is near the scale that will be used in my collar.

This was my first major attempt at gold-thread embroidery. My teacher, Lady Rouge from Caid (Las Vegas) suggested I use a finer gauge thread for something so small. It will be easier to get good detail.

So this is the preliminary research. The next step is to scan and re-size the drawings so I can make a paper mock-up. Once I think I have the design in place, I'll do a test embroidery for a couple of the major motifs to make sure it will work like I think it will.

Then dressing the frame and embroidering. I do not plan to cut out the coat until the collar is done. I suspect this will take me most of the year, working on it for about an hour a day.

While I'm working on the design process for this collar, I'll be executing the embroidery for another, simpler collar for a friend of mine. I want to have that one done by March, for Gulf Wars. I'll be using that project to do some testing of techniques for this project as well.

I have some issues with insomnia and so part of my routine is to shut down all computer and tv screens a minimum of a half hour before I go to bed, as my doctor recommended. I've started working on soothing art projects during that period, so once the design and set-up phase is done, this will be my primary bedtime project.

Anybody else have any major projects planned for this year?

6 Comments

The problem with pleats.

6/6/2012

7 Comments

Albert Einstein said, “If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research.”

That statement gets at the
heart of the title I chose for the website. When researching history, there is a huge continuum between “we’re convinced that this is a historical fact” and “um, we really have no idea”. The space in between is conjecture. And what I mean by conjecture is not a wild guess.

Conjecture goes something like this: Here is the evidence that I have been able to find, and when I have applied my critical thinking skills and my knowledge and my creativity, this is the way I think it was.

As researchers and historians, we hold the conjectures in a constant state of reflection, knowing that information and insight can come out of nowhere.

I was very fortunate to have my early work encouraged by other researchers who
convinced me that speaking in absolutes is perilous. For once, as a youngster, I followed advice and it saved me, many times.

When I began my research in the mid 1980s, I was told by many people in the historical re-enactment and ethnic dance worlds that no evidence existed for women’s clothing in Central Asia and the Middle East prior to 1600. This is completely, madly, happily incorrect, but we didn’t have the internet and so I did the best I could. I was lucky that I had access to several university libraries.   But
if you don’t know what you’re looking for, it is slow going.

Like most researchers of the time, I began with ‘folk costume’ from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries to guide me because it was
all I thought was available.

And that is what first got me into trouble with pleats.

Many of the Eastern European and Western Asian modern folk costumes had undershirts that had voluminous, pleated sleeves.
I taught my self, through trial and a ridiculous amount of error, to teach myself to pleat
in my college dorm room using the cramped study desk as my only work surface.

When I tell my textile arts classes about frustration that leads to the throwing of scissors, this is where I developed that bad habit.

Three things happened at about the same time. First, I figured out how to pleat without making myself crazy and I made many of these garments.

Second, other people began asking for my advice on making dance costumes or took their inspiration from me.

Those two things would have been lovely if it weren’t for the third thing. I had
moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico (SCA Kingdom of the Outlands) from
Atlanta, Georgia (SCA Kingdom of Meridies) and those wonderful folks introduced me to Persian miniature paintings and other period resources.

I discovered that I was COMPLETELY WRONG about pleated sleeves. COMPLETELY. WRONG.

So I changed the way I constructed my sleeves to something that was much closer to
the geometric garment construction
methods that I know now are right for the
period. And I tried to make up for providing a bad example. By this time I was teaching classes at other's request and doing the best I could.

And my mentors’ lessons were taking hold.

They taught me to say, “To the best of my knowledge, pleats were not part of the
sewing techniques in Central Asia and the
Middle East until after 1600.” when what I was really thinking was, “Oh my god,
they didn’t pleat, that was completely wrong, they never did it, DON’T
PLEAT!

And it’s a good thing, too, or pleating would have
bitten me a second time.

Hooray for the internet and the fall of the Soviet Union. The fall of the Soviet Union not only brought down political walls, but it brought down a wall between two entire universes of
scholarship.

New information is still being made available to English-speaking researchers that had been available in Russian and other Central Asian languages for many years. And of course, the internet made it much easier to share information.

In the early 2000s, an auction house that specializes in Islamic art and antiquities put the garment below up for auction. The garment is in private hands, so all we have is the auction listing with photos and a description. To my knowledge, no historical costumer has had the opportunity to
examine the garment in person

But. Do you see the pleats?

DO YOU SEE THEM?

THERE ARE PLEATS!

And they are the cleverest pleats I’ve ever
seen.

This is a Mongolian/Persian
undershirt. Mongols and Persians, male and
female, spent the majority of their time on
a horse or sitting on the ground.(I know that's a big generalization, but bear with me!)

And since your body spreads out at the
hips when you take those positions, these
may be the coolest pleats ever.

The pleating is only where you need it, no
wasted fabric, no unnecessary
bulk.

Which leads to my First Rule of Research: The simplest pattern or technique that works elegantly in the environment for which it was developed is probably the most period.

And when I say elegant, I mean in the mathematical or engineering sense. The folks in period where smart, and so were their solutions.

At some point, I’ll tell you the stories about my
Bedouin bedspread epiphany and my
seasonal Persian coat epiphany.

But back to Mongols and Persians and their clever, clever pleats.

Roxanne Farabi and I have both made reconstructions of the undershirt from the photos. We each came up with a slightly
different design, but after some discussion we came to the conclusion that it’s impossible to tell from the photos, but each of our designs is reasonable within the geometric pattern
theory that was used at the time. One of us may be right and the other wrong, but it’s more likely that there was variation within period
and we are both right.

Or we’re both wrong. That would stink.

So I made one of these undershirts and was amazed and gratified about how well it fit
and moved. In addition to providing ease
at the swell of the hips where you need it, the flat front of the garment also keeps the full skirt of your outer coats from binding up between your knees when you take long strides. It’s a brilliant design and it works well.

(You will also note that the embroidery on the
undershirt is blackwork. Most blackwork embroidery books state that blackwork has
Middle Eastern or Islamic roots, but don’t give any proof. The proof exists, it just took a while to find it. We also have extant examples of
very elaborate blackwork from 14th century Egypt. But that is for a later post.)

Suddenly, it seemed like pleats were everywhere. I knew about the North Indian garments that are post-1600 that are made from the waist up as a traditional Mongolian coat, but have gathered/pleated skirts attached at the waist. Without additional evidence, I had concluded that the pleating must be post-1600 and derived from contact with European clothing styles.

Wrong again.

13th-14th c. Mongolian coat

This coat is from the book Empires Beyond the Great Wall: The Heritage of Genghis
Khan.

There are at least two other Mongolian coats with pleating either on the side like the one above, or entirely pleated. I'll post photos of the others when I track them down.

So, I was wrong about pleats. Twice. What else do I have wrong? Also, what do you do if you think I’m wrong about something else?

Talk to me, show me what you have found, or
tell me your reasoning and we’ll work it out together. Research is a community activity and I’d like this website to be a forum for
discussion.

My thought for this website is as a place for me to post articles, photographs, projects,
links and other stuff. The blog portion is
going to be about the research process, mostly.

Some folks have the idea
that research is dreary and boring, but it’s
not.

I have started asking the people who attend my classes to send me photos of things
they have made and many have kindly done so. I would love to post photographs of the
work that others have done, so if you have sent me a photo, don’t be surprised
if I write you to ask if I can post it.

(It’s ok to say no, I promise to only pout a little.)

Even if you haven’t used my class materials to make something Central Asian, I’d still love to see it.

I would also like some feedback on what you would like to see on this website. I’ll answer as many questions as I can, but I can’t make a
promise on timing. Some simple questions have complicated answers and the reverse is also true. But your questions will help guide
me.

7 Comments

The Cloud Collar Project

The problem with pleats.

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