Sunday, April 24, 2011

Edumacating myself


I was planning to just keep the research for this to what I needed to make a nice dress, since Italian is not my area of research for my persona. Shows me for thinking. This is just far too interesting to not read and read and read.
I decided on my portrait because of the subject matter. Finding a little more out about Camilla is really fascinating and I think its going to add to the outfit.

First of all, she's not from either Venice of Florence, which I suppose does explain why her dress is a bit different from so many other portraits. She's from Mantua and married into one of the most prestigious families in Emilio-Romagna, living near Parma. Parts of the house she lived in still stand, decorated with amazing frescos.

The house apparently offers tours and as part of their production, they do a reenactment of Camilla's marriage to her husband Pier Maria Rossi. That's him in the picture to the left. It's a companion piece to her portrait, also done by Parmigianino. How cool is that! If I ever decide to get ambitious again, my husband might need garb to match mine. Sounds like a totally fun vacation destination too. I'm pretty drawn to the wallpaper behind Pier Maria there. Maybe artichokes will find their way into some of the embroidery on the drawers,

I also started looking into shoes. I knew I wanted to make some chopines, but wasn't sure what the shoes to wear with them looked like. Hadn't thought too much about it yet, but since I am down at my parents, and my dad has a pretty great woodshop, it sort of asserted itself. I started thinking about shoes so I could make sure to size the chopines correctly. I found some wonderful info here. I adore the cutwork effect of the pinking on the extant pair to the right. The pinking on this pair of chopines seems sort of similar and I might fiddle with it a bit to see if its something I can do if I simplify the pattern a bit. A trip to Tandy is in the works once I get home. I'm hoping to get the wood for the chopines at least crudely cut today so I can carve and shape it later this week.

Lots to do today with family, so I don't see much else happening with the project until Monday other than more lacemaking in the car on the way home.

2 comments:

  1. Have you seen this site for chopines? He's really talented and knows his stuff!
    http://aands.org/raisedheels/
    You should totally make an outfit for your hubby!

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  2. Yes, that is the tutorial I am planning to use. I have his tartar boots started for my persona so I already knew exactly where to go.

    My husband is not the type to wear a codpiece, so I'm not certain how the outfit would go over. His persona is Persian and its already a fight to get him into color. He picked the persona because he wanted someone that was good at math since he's a computer scientist irl. He sort of just deals with me and the strange things I hand him to wear. I may do it anyway.

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