Etsy Shop Live! Also Pintrest

Hello everyone, I just wanted to let people know that I launched an Etsy shop, primarily for historic hats.

​Here is the link: JadisSilkRoad

​I love making hats because it's kind of an instant gratification project compared to whole garments (and whole books...sigh). 

Coral silk with jade, coral and silver ornament.

Framed pillbox with digitally reconstructed trim from 14th-15th c Spain.

I currently have two hat styles available; Persian tajs and Byzantine pillboxes and their variants. Below is a brief description and some photos of extant hats and artistic depictions. There is more information about the documentation of period hats in the description sections of the listings on Etsy. See how sneaky I am...

Anyway:

Safavid Persian miniature, 16th c, I think.

A lot of you will be familiar with the Persian taj or diadem style. I've made them and taught hands-on classes for ages but until recently all my documentation has been for Persia.

Persian miniature "Afrasiyab's Women" 1493 at the Freer Sackler Museum.

However, plain tajs were worn in Roman times...

1st-2nd c. Roman

...​and I'm beginning to see the same hat shape in Byzantine and Russian art. And, of all things, the Italian Renaissance. No seriously, check this out...

Andreas Solari's Salome with the head of John the Bapstist 1251 at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC

The second hat style is a pillbox. I have recently realized that the pillbox hat is kind of like a T-tunic for your head, in that it appears all over the Old World across a huge time frame. There is a ton of variety, but that hat shape shows up in so many places and we actually have many extant examples.

14th 15th c. Mamluk Egypt.

Some extant pillboxes are soft and flexible, others have a stiff frame. The ones currently on Etsy are the ones with the frames, with soft ones to follow. I have a new-to-me sewing machine with a ridiculous number of pre-programmed embroidery stitches and I think I want to cut out a bunch of soft pillboxes and put the machine through ALL of the stitches. There is even an elephant one. ​

Also 14th 15th c Mamluk Egypt.

Anyway, framed pillboxes show up from Spain, across the Mediterranean and into the Byzantine empire and Russia. There are fewer examples in western Asia but there are some examples from the Turkic people and the Persians.

2 Spanish example from 12th-14th c.

Byzantine mosaic

I've also been using Pintrest to keep track of all the hat research, my username is Jadi Fatima.

I'm not currently taking commissions for garments, but I will consider special orders for hats.
​
Anyway, I hope this is useful for some of you, it would not hurt my feelings if you wanted to share the link to this blog post or the Etsy shop...

Also, thanks for all the kind comments on the Caftan Book update, public and private. They soothed my soul and I feel so fortunate to be a part of this community. 

I hope all of your holiday plans unfold in precisely the way you wish them to, with an minimum of drama and an over-abundance of joy.