Jutta Zander-Seidel, Textiler Hausrat : Kleidung und Haustextilen in Nurnberg von 1500-1650, 1990.
How do you review a book written in a language that you can't read? Well, I can review the pictures.
I inter-library-loaned this one after seeing it referenced in several German garb articles, and my experience with it was a mixed bag. First, if you ever get a chance to buy this one, and you have any interest in German garb, get it. There's frequently-excerpted illustrations shown in whole, second-tier illustrations that are sometimes hard to find, pictures of extant garments together with their 'portraits', and just plain neato stuff.
As examples of the last two, I offer my poor photocopies below (I wasn't allowed to take the book out of the room).
BATH HAT AND BATHING PIC
Here's the bath hat shown in this fresco fragment by Albrecht Altdorfer, which I could only find online here, in an article citing this book!
In the article she's talking about wulsthaubes and steuchleins, which are odd German headdresses that I will someday mess around with. Here's another gal in bathing attire that is staying on, and you can get a better idea of how one is Supposed To Look:
Actually, that would be a fun A&S on the body entry - get myself up in Badefrau gear, complete with hat. I'll ponder that.
WASHING LIST
This is another 'day in the life' sort of item that caught my eye. It seems to be a chalkboard, with little representative paintings of all the sorts of items that might go to the laundry.
Rather like a cash register...'five hemds (shirts), two rocks (dresses), three hosen... that'll be 5 marks.' (It wouldn't be marks, because a mark is a pound of silver, more or less, according to Barbara Tuchman, but I'm needing a word.)
Of course, I requested this book before going to Gatalop, and becoming part of The Deed, and therefore being sucked into the 14th century, so it isn't very useful to me NOW. But someday I will wear Germanic kirtles again! And hopefully this will help a bit.
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Happy Saint Nicholas' Day! Hope you remembered to put your shoes out last night?
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