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1530's Saxon Gown

By: Catherine Griffith (SCA: Baroness Catherine Grace Fitzlewis QC)

The research for this dress was not as hard as one would imagine; during this period in Saxony, there was a boom of portraiture and there are many variations on this style. There are a few themes that run throughout, in almost every portrait, anyone with exposed hair has orange-ish blonde dyed hair, and if not, the hair is covered by a solid or net cap, sometimes called a goldhaube in the same tones. Clearly this color was the fashionable choice. Almost everyone has red on them somewhere (commonly on their hat), plain white ostrich feathers on the hats as well, and almost everyone is dripping with an inordinate amount of gold. These dresses are often referred to as “Cranach” gowns due to how prolific a painter Lucas Cranach the elder was of this style.

Saxon Princesses Sibylla, Emilia and Sidonia
CRANCH, Lucas the Elder 1535
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

I started with my fabric choice; I am using a conservative black and gray pallet for the most part, a reflection of my age, conservatism as a married lady and to a certain degree the newer religious climate of the region (due to Martin Luther and his followers,) I have however added touches of color by way of my petticoat, hat, and some trim.

I had been able to get 10 yards of 60” wide black wool from the Pendleton woolen mill in Oregon at $3.00 a yard. I used 5 yards of it to make German clothes for my husband and children, leaving me with 5 yards for myself. I bought 5 yards of gray linen for $25 on ebay, strangely making the lining cost $2 more a yard then the outer fabric. I also bought a wool shawl called a Jamavar shawl from India on ebay, for $40. The pattern is woven into the fabric of the shawl, and was not symmetrical, but cut into strips, of thin then wide I could make the guard pattern have a more symmetrical repeat, I also used the border as the thinnest guard. I felt that the pallet was at this point a little limited so I added blue-ish gray wool that I bought at G street fabrics for $6. I bought vintage silk Sari trim for $12 from India and some gold silk for $17 for the underskirt. The other costs were cording and a few hooks etc. for the cost of around $10. I already had the silk and canvas for the under bodice left over from other projects. So all in all, this entire project cost me around $125.

I started with the easy bit; I made the petticoat out of gold silk, goring it to increase the fullness at the hem, and decrease the bulk at the waist. I added 2 rows of the silk sari trim and hand gathered the waist into a band. I did french seams throughout and a rolled hem.

Next I drafted the bodice; I made a mock up out of cotton fabric then cut it out of my wool and linen. I sewed the front seams and added the guarding to the front and back by hand, so I had finished edge dimensions to work with. I had to take quite a bit off of the sides at this point as per the greater stretch in the wool and linen then in the cotton.

Based on German woodcuts and paintings I put the seams on the side, I often see seams on the side back of recreation German garb, but that was really more of an Italian practice at this point in time. I then shaped the armholes and finished off the bodice by finishing the armholes with loops, and added side seams, while leaving the bottom open for the skirt. If I was going to cartridge pleat on the skirt, I would have closed the bottom too. I then popped open sections of the front seam in order to hand attach eye loops in between the lining and outer fabric, this stops the fabric from rolling outward, secures the eyes, so they are less likely to come undone, and looks better. I have no German precedent for doing this, but in the 16th Century the practice was used as shown in Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion: The Cut and Construction of Clothes for Men and Women C1560-1620. There’s an example of an extant garment with a set of hooks and eyes sewn in this way. We know the Saxon’s used eyes of some variety as they are visible in the close up of this painting.

Portrait of a Lady of the Saxon Court as Judith with the Head of Holofernes
CRANCH, Hans c. 1537-1540

Next I made the bust band or “Brustfleck” a name given this piece by modern costumers. I made it out of 4 layers of linen for stabilization, and then the outer wool layer. I couched and pearled around the already existing design of the fabric.

Such a dramatic difference was made by the couching and pearls.

At this point I sewed the guards onto the skirt, I did most of it by hand, pattern matching as I went. I then used roll pleats to attach it to the bodice. I chose roll pleats over Cartridge pleats because I feel that that is most often what I am looking at in the portraits, the shadow that I see in the skirts implies a roll to me most of the time.

 

I finished the front edge and rolled it and sewed it into the rolls by hand, this will account for the space on the front skirt where there is no bodice to attach it too. I then moved on to the under bodice, I made it out of silk lined in canvas, in an attempt to prevent creasing. I have read the discussions of many costumers as to whether they believe that the white under piece was a full bodice, a plastron or the hemmed showing through. In my opinion it could have been any of those things, but I chose to go with a full bodice, as influenced buy this portrait, in order to flatten my chest, which is to large for a truly correct period silhouette.

Christ and the Adulteress, detail
CRANCH, Lucas the Elder 1532

I made my sleeves as 2 pieces, an upper arm piece and a forearm piece, including a bell shaped cuff that covers most of my hand. I then knotted black cording in to the sleeves in order to achieve a look that is close to this one.

I finished with hooks and lacing in order to wear the dress, I have experimented with a couple of different closures as I was not in love with the first couple of tries.

Next came the accessories, I added some gold chains that I collected from a couple of different thrift shops, a German replica cross that I got from Raymond’s Quiet Press, and a Saxon collar that I made by snapping together 2 cuff bracelets from Target.

I added white leather gloves that I slashed, minus the middle finger, as there seems to be only rare cases in which the middle finger is slashed.

Bildnis einer jungen Dame
CRANCH, Lucas 1537

And then the hat, the hat is made of leftovers and broken things, I made my husband a 15th century pleated gown of red wool, I also had a wide brimmed palm hat that I wore the year before last to Pennsic, one of the flat topped kind with a tiny crown, anyway I hat pinned it so much the crown sort of tore along the dotted line, I didn't throw it away as I decided that I wasn't paying $20 for a hat to have it break in the first month, fast forward a year, and I do my husband's gown and think "what should I do with the wool leftover from straightening the hem?" bingo hat!!! I used spray adhesive to attach a wool lair to one side of the hat (complete purists could use a period adhesive) and a silk lair to the other I rolled the wool side up through the hole in the middle and folded the seam allowance of the silk under and hand stitched the two lairs together in the opening for a finished look, same on the outer brim. Now I know this sounds wrong, but put the wool on the side that used to face up and the silk on the side that faced down, the brim could flop in your face all the time the other way with the added weight of the wool. I then made 2 circles the same size as the hat brim plus seam allowance and no hole in the middle, one of wool the other of silk. I sewed, turned and pressed the two circles together and then hand stitched the circle to the hat on the outer edge catching only the red wool. I added feathers and a pin. The whole thing is fully lined in the silk with no raw edges showing and sits with minimal pinning in my head. The hair net I made is just until I can replace it with a more period looking one.

I hope you found this informative, and if you have any questions, I would love to answer them for you. Here at the end I have a brief summary of some of the history of Saxony, for anyone not Familiar with the region.

I am sure we are all familiar with the mental image of heathen barbarian Saxons, the large piratical men that conquered and decimated England between the 5th and 7th Centuries. After all it is an image that is often portrayed in stories and movies, but if you were to fast forward a few hundred years and look into the Saxons future you would see a people that helped change the face of culture and religion for the world.

The word Saxony (German Sachsen, Latin Saxones, and French Saxe) comes more likely then not from the old Germanic word for "swordsmen". Since the 6th century the Saxons controlled large parts of Northwest Germany, but were conquered by the Emperor Charlemagne by 804. Saxony became a stem duchy of the East Frankish Kingdom that at this time was the core area of the later Holy Roman Empire.

In 1260 the territory was divided into two electorates: Saxony-Wittenberg and Saxony-Lauenburg. The Electorate of Saxony-Lauenburg existed as Duchy of Lauenburg up until 1689. The Electorate of Saxony-Wittenberg lost its independence already by 1423. The vacant electoral duchy of Saxony-Wittenberg was bestowed upon Frederick II, Margrave of Meissen. The name Saxony began to be used for all the Margraves territories. Therefore, Wittenberg, the city where Martin Luther worked as professor and from where the Reformation spread, was the nucleus of the modern Saxony.

Frederick the II died in 1428, leaving Saxony to be divided in two, over the next while it was broken up and joined again a number of times until 1485, where the land was divided almost equally into two branches, for the last time in period. Both areas can be seen as core areas of the religious reformation in Germany, as both dynasties were Lutherans.

Map of Saxony in 1512

Okay, now back to that mental image of the brutal barbarian Saxons, and then onto the image of the Saxons as religious reformationists, they made it through quite a lot of changes in just a millennia.