Wait! Where's the (smock) sleeves?

[mmcnealy]

Recently I've been thinking about summer, and about hot weather, and how my wardrobe is in a sad, sad state and needs serious work

.

And especially about how when I roll up dress sleeves because of the heat or to work, it just doesn't look like the pictures, because my smock sleeves show when I roll up my dress sleeves and the period pictures don't.

And so I groused, until it hit me.

MY smock sleeves show when my dress sleeves are rolled up, and ones in PERIOD pictures DON'T! Like this picture, for example, from REALonline, Errettung eines in einen Mühlbach gefallenen Kindes, Bild: 000496; 1518 ; 1522 ; Graz ; Österreich ; Steiermark ; Landesmuseum Joanneum.

Where's her smock sleeves?

Wait! What? How can this be? Aren't all chemise/smocks/hemds/whatever_you_call_em long sleeved?

Well, perhaps not, and here's some images for discussion of both sleeves rolled up and no smock sleeves showing, and sleeves rolled up and smocks showing.

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MASTER of the Pfullendorf Altar - Beginning of the 15th century - The Birth of Mary **Sleeves rolled up, no smock**

Geburt Mariens, Bild: 000448, 1438 ; 1440 ; Klosterneuburg ; Österreich ; Niederösterreich ; ** Rolled up sleeves on maid, no smock ** Detail

Geburt Mariens,Bild: 001844; 1450 ; 1499 ; Zöbing ; Österreich ; Niederösterreich ** Rolled up sleeves, no smock **

Geburt Mariens,Bild: 000322; 1475 ; 1485 ; Kirchdorf an der Krems ; Österreich ; Oberösterreich ** Green dress, sleeves pulled up, no smock **

Geburt des Hl. Rochus, Bild: 004698; 1475 ; 1485 ; Nürnberg ; Deutschland ; Franken ; St. Lorenz ** Maid with pushed up dress sleeves, no smock showing**

Krankenpflege durch die Hl. Elisabeth von Thüringen,Bild: 000518;1495 ; 1505 ; Laufen ; Deutschland ; Bayern ; Pfarrkirche **Maid with rolled up sleeves, no smock showing**

Geburt Mariens, Bild: 006144; 1515 ; 1520 ; Wien ; Österreich ; Wien ; Österreichische Nationalbibliothek ; cod. 2748 ; fol. 120v Anmerkungen: Gebetbuch des Ulrich von Montfort ** Rolled up sleeves, no smock **

Errettung eines in einen Mühlbach gefallenen Kindes, Bild: 000496; 1518 ; 1522 ; Graz ; Österreich ; Steiermark ; Landesmuseum Joanneum ** No smock sleeves showing under her rolled up dress sleeves ** Detail

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After all these rolled up sleeves with no smocks showing, I began to wonder if it was just artists convention not to show smock sleeves when dress sleeves where rolled up. But then I found images that showed smock sleeves underneath rolled up dress sleeves, so its not just a general convention.

Geburt Mariens, Bild: 001913; 1480 ; 1490 ; Innsbruck ; Österreich ; Tirol ; Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum ** Maid in sleeveless underdress with long sleeved smock **

TGeburt Mariens, Bild: 014920; 1480 ; 1500 ; Biertan ; Rumänien ; Siebenbürgen ; Evang. Kirche ** Maid in green dress has pulled up sleeves, showing smock underneath**

Errettung eines neugeborenen Kindes, Bild: 000949; 1513 ; 1513 ; Großgmain ; Österreich ; Salzburg ; Pfarrkirche **Rolled up sleeves with smock at edges**

Geburt des Hl. Nikolaus, Bild: 002441; 1514 ; 1514 ; Meran ; Italien ; Südtirol ; Städtisches Museum ** Rolled up sleeves with smock showing ** Detail

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And then there are these pictures, which show both dresses with pushed up sleeves and not smocks, and bodices with smocks.

Szenen der Monate April, Mai und Juni - Details der Frühlingsszenen ** Pushed up sleeves and no smocks, and bodices with smocks**

The Splendor Solis - Plate 21 ** Women washing linen. Some wearing bodice and hemd, others wearing dress with sleeves rolled up **

---

So, what did they wear under their dresses, if it doesn't have long sleeves? One option is the bathing maid slip, as seen here in these pictures. These are from the late 14th to early 15th century

These are from the late 14th to early 15th century

Bademagd, Bild: 005918A; 1395 ; 1405 ; Wien ; Österreich ; Wien ; Österreichische Nationalbibliothek ; cod. 2271 ; fol. 1r

Bademagd, Bild: 005918A; 1395 ; 1405 ; Wien ; Österreich ; Wien ; Österreichische Nationalbibliothek ; cod. 2271 ; fol. 1r

Bademagd, Bild: 005956A; 1392 ; 1394 ; Wien ; Österreich ; Wien ; Österreichische Nationalbibliothek ; cod. 2352 ; fol. 34v

TBademagd, Bild: 006578A; 1395 ; 1400 ; Wien ; Österreich ; Wien ; Österreichische Nationalbibliothek ; cod. 2789 ; fol. 1r

This one is from the early 16th century, but the style is almost identical Hl. Nikolaus beschenkt drei Jungfrauen, Bild: 002442; 1514 ; 1514 ; Meran ; Italien ; Südtirol ; Städtisches Museum ; IN 27

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Another option is a short sleeved, or 3/4 sleeved smock, as in these pictures

Doppelbildnis eines Brautpaares, Bertold V. Tucher und seine Frau, Meister des Landauer Altars,1475

Eine unschuldig verurteilte Jungfrau wird von einem Ritter gerettet (»Der Ritter vom Turn. Von den Exempeln der Gotsfurcht un Erberkeit«, Basel: Michael Furter 1493), 1493, Holzschnitt, ca. 100×125 mm. Konkordanz: Schramm 1029. [Künstlerisches Werk: Druckgrafik. Dürer: Das Gesamtwerk, S. 780]

---

And I included this picture because its just too cool. A woman with her dress unfastened, and her smock too.

Zeltlager Kaiser Karls V. vor Lauingen im Jahre 1546, Bild: 015457; 1551 ; 1551 ; Lauingen ; Deutschland ; Schwaben ; Heimathaus ** Woman with dress unhooked and smock as well **

Now I just need to translate the small section in Textiler Hausrat about unterhemden to see if if says anything useful. But it appears that a sleeveless or short sleeved smock is documentable.

Hurray! One more weapon in the fight against heat stroke!

Comments

[sister-bluebird.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Wonderful. I've spent so long trying to figure out how to get that much smock sleeve fabric jammed into such a narrow sleeve and still get it to roll up. And now I don't have to!

Any thoughts on the bodice/no sleeve pics? Do you think they indicate removable sleeves, or just dresses made without sleeves. (I've been pondering that one, too)

[mmcnealy.livejournal.com]

Actually I think the bodice without sleeve images are not dresses, but a support bodice and petticoat, which would have a dress over it in cooler weather.

You can see this probably better in Albrecht Altdorfer's Susanna and the Elders, check out the lady brushing Susanna's hair.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Albrecht_Altdorfer_038.jpg

[sister-bluebird.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Another case of "they wore more clothes than we do", then.

Thanks!

[mirazandar.livejournal.com]

oh bugger! I have a still sleeveless dress and i don't have any more fabric left. And all my research is german, and i sort of assumed that there were sleeveless dressed because of that one augsburg photo. What to do then... englishify it? But that would mess up my (obviously not too good) research. You wouldn't know of any shorter sleeved dresses, would you?

[peronel.livejournal.com]

All you need to do is re-name that dress a petticoat, and make another dress/gown/whatever to go over it.

Of course, this would involve buying more fabric. But when was that ever a challenge?

[mmcnealy.livejournal.com]

You could just put a full apron over the top, and then it would look just like a bodice and skirt.

I don't actually know if it *is* a bodice and skirt, or a sleeveless dress with an apron over the top.

[jillwheezul.livejournal.com]

Make a separate set of sleeves for it!

[joysdaughter.livejournal.com]

Interesting that a lot of the "maids" in the first section are wearing green? And the last photo is great. Is that a shirt and a pair of drawers drying on the tent? Or is it a shift?

Fascinating - thanks Marion for the time taken to show all these.

[mmcnealy.livejournal.com]

I noticed that too. I wonder if green was a cheap color?

In the last photo, I know that one of those is either a woman's shirt or a man's, not sure about the other item, probably another shirt as the drawers of the time where quite a bit shorter, but it could be.

[peronel.livejournal.com]

I would be surprised if green were cheap, as it's a double dieing process to produce. Weld (or similar) for yellow and then woad for blue. Or possibly the other way round. It's probably somethign symbolic, but I couldn't tell you what!

The second image down is fascinating. The BVM is wearing a smock with full sleeves gathered to cuffs, when the conventional view is that they weren't doing that then. Interesting.

Peronel.

[mmcnealy.livejournal.com]

The BVM is wearing the typical style of childbed gown or smock for this period, I'm not really sure which it is, either a gown or a smock, some are blue though most are white.

I didn't know that about the cuffs, interesting.
This site,
http://www.aurorasilk.com/info/natural-dye-colors.shtml
says you can get soft greens and sage greens with weld and fustic if you use iron or copper as a mordant.

And this page says that you can use nettles to get green
http://www.pioneerthinking.com/naturaldyes.html

Makes me curious just what color of green one would get with nettles...

[peronel.livejournal.com]

Agreed on the greens with weld and iron, but they generally tend to be in the olive, drab, goose-turd range. Which is not the sort of green in those pictures. (Usual disclaimers about the difficulties of interpreting paint colours onto fabric colours blah blah)...

[tattycat.livejournal.com]

I love that very first image. She looks like she's saying either, "HURRAY!" or "WHAT ARE YOU FOOLS THINKING?!"

She may have to be iconned...

[mmcnealy.livejournal.com]

Icon away!

But unfortunatly its nothing very happy. She's actually yelling for help because her son just fell into the mill pond and looks to have drowned. Its part of a miracle altar dedicated to the BVM.

[tattycat.livejournal.com]

Ah, then my evileness was properly placed :D OH NOES, indeed.

[mmcnealy.livejournal.com]

LOL, I love it!
Mind if I steal it? :D

[tattycat.livejournal.com]

Please do!

[jillwheezul.livejournal.com]

There's also that sleeveless chemise from an earlier date that is in Kohler's History of Costume.

It seems to me that when I was doing some of those inventory records that something indicating a different sleeve length came up. I suppose I should put all that stuff into a database :)

[mmcnealy.livejournal.com]

The Kohler chemise is what prompted me to go looking for evidence that such a thing at a later date than the 14th century.

Don't suppose you remember what that something was in the inventory records, do you?

[jillwheezul.livejournal.com]

I've put it in my head to muddle through to figure out where I saw that. It might have been English.

I also thought a little bit more about other examples. I found 2 examples of 16th century sleeveless smocks in context of bathing. One is by Jost Amman.

There's a picture of a woman in bed in one of these that accompanies the Bohemian bath house girls illustrations... (but this is before 16th century).

There is also the extant sleeveless smock circa 1650 from Poysdorf.

[mmcnealy.livejournal.com]

Is Poysdorf a place or a person?

Poysdorf

[jillwheezul.livejournal.com]

Place.

Here's the image:

http://pics.livejournal.com/jillwheezul/pic/00078gkf

This is also the find that has the shirts that end under the bust.

Re: Poysdorf

[mmcnealy.livejournal.com]

I thought it was a place, but couldn't find it on Bildindex. (Although its not like BI is a comprehensive listing of German towns or anything)

Thanks for the link to the picture. I'll have to include that in my study.

Re: Poysdorf

[mmcnealy.livejournal.com]

I just googled it. Poysdorf is in the Czech republic, no wonder I couldn't fine it in Germany. *headdes*

Re: Poysdorf

[jillwheezul.livejournal.com]

I think Poysdorf is in Austria and thus seems to follow with your Austrian images! I think the items may physically be housed here:

http://www.museum-poysdorf.at/

I've written them now - there seems to have been an exhibition in 1998 - 1999 that featured the renaissance find.

I wonder if there is anything on Realonline?

Re: Poysdorf

[mmcnealy.livejournal.com]

I check Realonline, nothing!

Let me know if they respond to your email.

[ninya-mikhaila.livejournal.com]

This is a great set of images, thanks for sharing. Very interesting too. I really can't imagine that any of these women would be wearing a sleeveless smock underneath a kirtle or gown just because of the laundering issue. A short sleeved smock would make sense though, as it's mainly the armpit that you really need to protect the wool and silk layers from.

[mmcnealy.livejournal.com]

Thanks and you're welcome.
I hadn't gotten to the laundry considerations yet, thanks for that reminder!

Funny how a difference in climates affects ones fabric choices. I make my summer gowns out of linen to handle the heat. When its 80-90 degrees F and humid outside, wool and silk are too hot for me. Some people can do it, but its a recipe for feeling sick for a week for me or being sick at the event from overheating.

I do recollect that in a letter from Magdalena to Balthazar, she asks him to bring her back some silk fabric from Italy since all of her silk gowns are rotted out under the arms and she has nothing decent to wear. Its in the book,
Magdalena and Balthasar : An Intimate Portrait of Life in 16th Century Europe Revealed in the Letters of a Nuremberg Husband and Wife
by Steven Ozment, ISBN-10: 0300043783

So that makes me wonder about what she wore under her gown, because if her silk gown was lined, and she wore a smock with sleeves, either she perspired heavily and it soaked through, or she didn't have as many layers at the armpit as might be presumed... What do you think?

[ninya-mikhaila.livejournal.com]

That's a great snippet. I'm afraid rotting underarms are all too familiar to me! The costumes which were worn on a daily basis throughout the years at Hampton Court all suffered in greater or lesser degrees, depending on how profusley the girl wearing the gowns sweated. In the end even wearing a linen shift can't completely protect the upper fabrics, it just helps. I think this also explains why so many garments were 'freshened' by tailors, replacing the lining befoe the top fabric gets damaged was obviously the sensible thing to do. The construction of extant doublets often reveals anticipation of this process in that the maine part of the lining is not caught into seams and buttonholes so it can be removed pretty easily. Something I am trying to do more of with reconstruction today.

[mmcnealy.livejournal.com]

Interesting, I'll have to try that with my next dress.

Oh, and about 4 years ago I tried worsted for summer wear. It was over 100 degrees that day and bright sun, but I didn't know how to take care of myself in the heat yet. I have some really nice fine wine color worsted wool, I should try making a dress out of that for this summer and see if I do better.

[ninya-mikhaila.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I forgot to ask - have you tried wearing worsted, it was the summer choice for gowns in England (for those who could afford it) and is much cooler than wool.