Introduction

Very few garments survive that represent and fully convey the fashionable achievements of Renaissance artisans. Worn in harsh working or living conditions, repurposed into new outfits or household rags, and even sold to make paper pulp, the vast majority of items of clothing from the past no longer survive in material form. Survival bias has privileged the extraordinary and elite above the ordinary and everyday. Yet, it is clear from the visual records and archival data of close to a hundred thousand records of artisan fashions from sixteenth- and seventeenth century post-mortem inventories from Florence, Siena and Venice, gathered by the ‘Refashioning the Renaissance’ project, that ‘middling sorts’ consumed clothing, textiles and other household goods in order to participate in fashionable Renaissance culture. Could we bring some of this data to life and reconstruct a garment, by hand, using historically appropriate raw materials and methods, that would represent and spur on further research about artisan fashions?

In order to fill in the gap in the material record, and understand some of the garments that were used, owned, and worn by the artisans uncovered during archival research, the ‘Refashioning the Renaissance’ project initiated a major reconstruction project: the reconstruction of a seventeenth-century male doublet from fibre to finished garment (Figure iii.1). Based on rigorous archival and visual research, scientific testing and close object analysis, the doublet was created in material form by skilled craftspeople and researchers using natural and historically appropriate materials, and in the digital realm using 3D animation (See Experiment in focus v).¹

Our approach was inspired by prior successful reconstructions of early modern dress, but these tend to begin from a single rich textual, visual or material source that details dress of the elites.² Given the very different sources available about everyday artisan dress, we were challenged to imaginatively combine information spread thinly across a wide range of textual, visual and material sources, in order to be able to reconstruct a garment that does not exist.

Figure III.1 The finished doublet, mounted with sleeves, on display at the Reconstructing Everyday Fashion Exhibition at Aalto University, September 2021.

The experiment

Our experiment began by selecting a source from which to begin. We searched the inventory database for an artisan who was representative of his peers, and whose wardrobe epitomised the fashionable creativity we could see quantitatively through our data.³ After considerable discussion, we selected one entry, taken from the 1631 inventory of the Florentine waterseller Francesco Ristori. Among his family’s wardrobe, totalling 122 items of clothing and accessories, one garment stood out: a doublet of black stamped mockado, described as nasty (Un giubbone d’ mucaiardo nero cattivo stampato) (Figure iii.2).⁴ Doublets, or in Italian giubboni, were upper body garments worn by some women and most men across the social spectrum. Worn as part of everyday dress, they often showcased extraordinary cutting, shaping and decorative techniques. The use of mockado fabric, stamped decorations, and black dye in Ristori’s doublet seemed to suggest a particularly artisanal and urban form of Renaissance fashionability that has been largely overlooked.

Figure III.2 The brief description of the black stamped mockado doublet, found in the Household Inventory of Francesco Ristori, Archivio di stato, Florence, Magistrato dei pupilli, 2718, 2, 1631.

The process of making was inextricably linked to research. We worked with a team of makers at the School of Historical Dress in London (hereafter SHD). The team, led by Jenny Tiramani, comprises skilled hand-makers who have closely studied and reconstructed extant garments from the early modern period.⁵ Their knowledge of historically appropriate materials and tools made them the ideal collaborators. Each step in the process raised new research questions – we constantly referred between archival documents, visual depictions of watersellers and other artisans, and surviving objects in order to select materials, choose decorations and make practical decisions. For example, the tailor and cutter Melanie Braun and I examined many depictions of Italian watersellers and noticed that many of them wore collars that fold down and fall open at the neck, and so this informed the cut and construction methods used in our doublet (Figure iii.3). Braun also took much inspiration from a rare example of a doublet associated with a working artisan. Formerly owned by a mason, its survival is thanks to its later use by the Dutch humanist Hugo de Groot as a disguise when he fled the Netherlands in 1621 (see Figure 10.3).

Figure III.3 Jacopo del Conte, Il facchino, c. 1580 originally located on Via del Corso, now on Via Lata in Rome (since 1872).

The first step in the making process was to commission the woven fabrics from a skilled weaver. This launched a major research question: what was mockado, and how was it made? Guild records, sample books and lexicons suggest that mockado was an imitation fabric, woven with supplementary warp loops in the same structure as silk velvet, but using a blend of wool, linen, hemp and/or silk.⁶ In order to get specific information about thread count and fibre and dyes, samples of the warp, weft and pile warp of a stamped wool velvet were taken from a surviving example in the SHD collection, which was examined under microscope and using Ultra-High Performance Liquid Chromatography, High Resolution Mass Spectrometry and Scanning Electron Microscopy by Cristina Carr at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Art Proaño Gabor at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and Krista Vajanto at Aalto University, Finland. From these results, we established that our mockado would be made of a linen ground with supplementary wool pile.

To weave the mockado, we first considered the structure. Velvet is more commonly woven with silk, and so first we attempted to work with a silk weaver. However, wool and linen have different properties from silk, requiring different hand skills and loom parts. Instead, the wool and linen hand-weaver Ruth Gilbert was willing to experiment with her technique and tools, improvising at her loom, first using plastic straws and knitting needles for the rods that create the supplementary pile loops, and later sourcing hollow brass rods. This prompted us to wonder about how mockado, one of the novel blended fabrics that reshaped the textile trade in early modern Europe, was invented: would it have been made by wool or linen weavers who learned velvet technique, or was it created by silk weavers who experimented with different fibres?⁷ Without inventory information about the lining and structural materials for the doublet, we settled on fustian, linen and hemp interlinings, also woven by Gilbert, following examples found in early seventeenth-century sleeve linings in the SHD collections. Hand-woven linens and naturally dyed changeable pink and green silk taffeta were repurposed for interlinings and facings (Figure iii.4). Most fabrics required some level of post-loom treatment, which was all done by hand: the fustian was napped with a hand carder, and the hemp stabilised with a gum arabic size. Such processes remind us that cloth taken from the loom was rarely ready to be used straight away by a tailor or seamstress, and that many processes and makers were involved in transforming natural fibres into fashionable textiles.

Figure III.4 Samples of mockado, fustian, hemp and linen linings woven by Ruth Gilbert, and loop manipulated braids made by Beth Trapnell. These were sent to Melanie Braun, who drafted the doublet at The School of Historical Dress, London in 2021.

We cannot know which dyestuffs were used for Ristori’s black doublet, so we used the results of the UHPLC-PDA-HRMS dye analysis of the SHD black wool velvet as inspiration for our experiments. As the fabric was dyed in one piece (rather than as unwoven threads), we followed the same method, sending the woven length to the dyer Karl Robinson. As mockado consists of both vegetable and protein fibres, it needed to be dyed in multiple steps, to ensure colour adherence to different materials. The dye analysis suggested that woad or indigo was used in the first dyebath, and then the blue cloth was probably treated with an alum mordant before being dipped in a kermes bath. This would likely have dyed the wool, but not the hemp or linen ground. The dye analysis suggested that the fabric was dyed with black alder and oak gallnuts, a tannin and iron process that would turn the vegetable fibre dark black. A final dip in a logwood and potash dyebath probably gave the fabric a final deeper black hue. This complex recipe, combining more traditional expensive (blue and red dyes), cheap (iron and tannins) and state-of-the-art (logwood) methods, shows that early modern dyers used all the techniques available to achieve a good black. Due to limits in budget and material availability, we could not dye with kermes or alder, so Robinson used indigo and cochineal to approximate the first step in the process, rendering a beautiful deep blue-black tone, rather than a true deep black. Robinson also dyed loop-manipulated braid, made from six looped como silk threads by Beth Trapnell, which decorated the seams and edges of the doublet (Figure iii.5).

Drawing upon her experience as a trained tailor, and close observations of many early modern doublets, Melanie Braun cast pattern shapes using a compass and yardstick, and proportional measurements. This geometrical and mathematical approach meant that the shape of the doublet accounted for the physical body requirements of the model, the historian Valerio Zanetti, while giving him an elegant and idealised form (see Experiment in focus iv). After dyeing, Claire Thornton carefully laid out Braun’s paper pattern pieces on the woven mockado, leaving barely any offcuts and even overlapping shapes which could be pieced with scraps (both an early modern practice of economy and a contemporary necessity when we had limited funds to commission mockado) (Figure iii.6). During fittings, we discovered an issue with the dyed fabric, which was so fluffy and saturated with excess dye that pile and dye were transferring onto the hand-made white linen shirt. This problem was overcome by the application of silk inkle lace to bind the armhole edges.

The fabric continued to present challenges throughout the construction process. Underneath the mockado, the doublet is a complex construction of linings and padding made of hemp, wool (woven and roving), linen, fustian and synthetic whalebone. Much structure also comes from v-shaped pad stitching and hand manipulation as the tailor works. Jordan Colls, who assembled the doublet, explained that the ‘trickiest and most time-consuming’ element of work was responding to the hand-woven fabrics, particularly the mockado, which had a very tight weave in certain areas.⁸ It required significant amounts of manipulation and finishing as the doublet was assembled; seam allowances were shaved down flat and pressed with a hot iron, and the fabric had to be combed and shaved to remove felting that had occurred during the dye process and to ensure an even appearance. Not only was this slow work, but it was also messy: the dye kept transferring on to hands, and a lot of wool dust was created, reminding us of the often dirty and dangerous working conditions endured by early modern textile workers.

Figure III.5 The mockado and braids hanging after being dyed by Karl Robinson, 2021.

Ristori’s doublet is described as ‘stamped’, which suggests that its decorative pattern was not created during the weaving stage (which required significant time and skilled labour), but rather was applied after the fabric had been taken from the loom and out of the dye vat. Comparatively quick and easy to execute, stamping could be done by hand or using a roller press, using metal tools and heat to impress a pattern into pile weave. Stamped textiles survive in many museum collections, showing that the technique was widely used. The metalworker Dave Budd cast two stamps, one with a double ‘S’ and six-ball flower motif, and the other a four-petalled flower, following a surviving stamped crimson velvet in the SHD collections. The creation and control of heat is often a challenge for historical reconstruction, and in this case, Jordan Colls and Jenny Tiramani proceeded with caution to avoid burning the mockado, using an electric hotplate to heat the tools. Unfortunately, the pile of the mockado was several millimetres higher than the design of the double S stamp, and so it simply impressed a rectangle rather than a legible design into the fabric. Nevertheless, the flower stamp was successful, and working by eye (as many surviving examples seem to suggest), a striking square and bar strapwork pattern transformed the mockado into a more three-dimensional fabric that catches the light (Figure iii.7).

Figure III.6 Claire Thornton cuts out the drafted doublet pieces from the loom width of mockado, 2021.

Ristori’s doublet was one part of an outfit and could not have been worn alone. Hand-made metal hooks and eyes were sewn in to attach the doublet to hose, and eyelets were used for lacing bands at the shoulders so that sleeves could be attached to the doublet. A pair of hose, sleeves and a shirt were made for this reconstruction, in order that the doublet could be worn attached and over the closest garments worn on Ristori’s body, and a full outfit (comprising stockings, shoes, a swordbelt and hat) was borrowed from SHD for dressing and photography. Only when worn over a shirt and attached to sleeves and hose do we get a full sense of the range of motion, effect of movement and overall look of the waterseller’s doublet (see Figure iv.1). Each time it is worn, we see the stiffness of the garment soften with the heat of the body, and the stamped decoration starting to wear down in areas where the mockado is rubbed (such as at the sides of the body). The doublet, in its material form, is an active object that has life in motion and will age, fade and wear with use (although it is stored in archival boxes and acid-free tissue paper when it is not being worn or on display).

Figure III.7 The striking square and bar strapwork pattern, created at the London School of Historical Dress by impressing a hot metal stamp into the pile of the mockado, 2021.

Methodology: the challenges and benefits of imaginative reconstruction

This experiment explores how we might reconstruct an object that once existed but does not remain in the visual or material record. With limited textual record to work with – in this case, only seven words, written by an inventory appraiser – the finished reconstruction is an imaginative possibility. The doublet was made entirely by hand, from fibre to finished garment, by skilled makers using historically appropriate materials. But there are limits to its historicity: we had to make compromises when raw materials were unavailable or prohibitively expensive, it was made using electric lights and heating, and many of the makers – while highly skilled – were attempting some of these techniques for the very first time. It also cost far more than Ristori would have spent on a garment, with most of the cost paying for the labour of makers and researchers rather than the raw materials, which would have accounted for the bulk of the price of any item of clothing in the seventeenth century.

While there is much we can never know about Ristori’s doublet, the silences in the archives spurred on research, and encouraged close reading of those sources that were available to us. We had to approach the scant inventory information inventively. From the very start, questions arose that took us in all directions of economic, social, legal and cultural history. For example, when thinking about the fashions of the period, we had to wonder when the doublet was made. To answer this, we wondered how old might Ristori have been when he purchased it. He died in a pandemic year, and left behind young children, so he was possibly in his thirties or forties. But was his doublet in a ‘nasty’ condition because it was very old, or second-hand? Should we make it in a style from a few decades before the date of the inventory, or was it something that was more recent but had been damaged through repeated daily use and being splashed by water while Ristori worked? This got us thinking about the practical and legal constraints on a waterseller. What would he have been legally allowed to wear? What would have been appropriate workwear? When and why would a waterseller want to look fashionable? Such questions led us back to archives and libraries to research Ristori’s neighbourhoods, the labour and the social standing of watersellers, and to scrutinise other objects in his inventory for more clues into the habits and mentalities of a Florentine waterseller with a small but carefully chosen wardrobe and household.

Watersellers had an important role in early modern cities, bringing clean drinking water from rivers, fountains and springs to the urban population.⁹ Given that he would have had a highly visible presence on the streets, Ristori’s professional reputation would have likely been reliant on his clean and fashionable appearance. In other words, whether he wore the doublet for work (unlikely given its materials) or saved it for church and festival wear, Ristori’s doublet likely contributed to his social and professional standing in Florence. He also seems to have appreciated the novel aesthetic and material innovations available in his city, so, while Ristori was not a wealthy citizen, he did participate in the middling version of late Renaissance Florentine culture. His inventory reveals that he decorated his home with paintings of Florentine belle donna, terracotta busts and four angels made of cartapesta (papier-mâché) and owned forks as well as knives.¹⁰ We will never know the personal or emotional meanings embedded in Ristori’s black mockado doublet, or when he might wear it rather than one of his other four doublets (made of white leather, Nîmes wool, black spun silk and black baize). But the inventory, and the questions and possibilities prompted through this reconstruction, transformed the questions we asked of historical sources, as well as informing a material reconstruction that gives a physical presence to an object and its owner who are otherwise absent from the surviving material record.

Conclusion

The material doublet is an explorative reconstruction informed by rigorous archival, visual, material and scientific research. Reconstruction methodology raised new research questions and shifted the scholarly focus to consider overlooked subjects. It also fostered collaboration with makers, scientists, conservators and curators, enabled us to better appreciate the skills of makers past and present, and even helped us to revive and reassess lost techniques. By giving a material presence to the waterseller’s doublet, we can call attention to the fashionable aims and innovative techniques used by the artisan classes to participate in Renaissance clothing culture. We restore Ristori’s and his fellow artisans’ reputations as discerning dressers living, working and shopping in a dynamic urban environment in which novel and carefully chosen materials, creative and skilled makers and a culture of materially literate consumers generated a lively middling material culture of Renaissance fashion.