Itty bitty bows

I didn't get to the block printing today. I'm thinking more and more that I will actually carve a stamp. So that I had something to blog about I finished up the earrings. I picked up some ribbon embroidery silk ribbon to do the bows. Should be durable and it is the perfect thickness.

Since I already had a couple of pairs of pearl drops I wanted to do something a bit different. I loved the interesting pair in one of my favorite accessory rich paintings, Montemezzano's Portrait of a Lady with a Squirrel. The 3 pearl drops at the bottom and large gold component in the center are fun. I really like the bows as well. While Caravaggio is not usually really a good costume reference painter, there are a set of similar earrings with bows in the Judith painting I was looking at last month. The ones in the Montemezzano have heavy hoops but I was concerned about weight with the chandeliers and the pearls and crystals so I settled for simple leverback findings.

Not much else to say, but here's my second daily post. I have $2!

Pearls

I spent most of yesterday pearling the mantellino. Just 4 motifs left to go. As pearls were the theme of the day, I thought I'd go back and show you the first girdle I made as it is pearls and gold.

I had the circle disks hanging around after purchasing them on clearance and had oodles of freshwater pearls that I'd picked up cheaply from the Gem Faire back in June. The pearls are sort of a problem as the have holes too small for any of my beading needles and won't take a second pass of string through them and are far too large for embroidering with. As a result, they really haven't been all that useful. However, as I said, I have a lot of them. Making a girdle for me takes a lot of whatever it is I use, so they seemed like a likely candidate. The gold disks are set up to sit on two strands and two strands of pearls seemed pretty. One of my favorite Venetian necklaces in portrait has two strands of pearls. (Albrecht Durer's 1505 Portrait of a Young Venetian Woman.)

I'm plotting a green dress this spring and it is on my "must make" list.

However, pretty pearl necklaces being documentable does not mean pretty pearl girdles are. In looking over the portraits in my little chunk of time, it seems that they are all pretty much exclusively gold. Most don't have any visible "drop" either. Thick links at the waist seem to be the most common. However, in the portrait I just finished working with, Camilla's girdle had two drops that were very definite, one to the zibellino and one that her son is playing with. Its still very gold, however. I did find one portrait with a pearl girdle on a Venetian dress. Its from a 1565 fresco by Giovanni Antollio Fasolo. It might still be gold backed, however, with the pearls simply mounted to the gold. (And have a look at the entire piece, its pretty cool. I love the colorful print skirt of her dress.

So, basically, I'm not sure if I'll wear the girdle with this dress. Its pretty, but it seems more English in style to me. My portrait doesn't have a girdle at all to be honest, and I'm not sure the pearls will look right with the crisp lines of the patchwork as the only decoration and the colors. I fretted about it for a couple of days and then went on to make a primarily gold girdle. I'll show you that soon, but I suppose I should wrap up telling you about the girdle itself.

These freshwater pearls, as I've said, did not want to be cooperative and let me do multiple passes of stringing material. I eventually just strung them straight on a 28 gauge wire. I'm rather nervous about how the whole thing will hold up with the weight that any girdle for me automatically is, but that's the largest gauge I could get through the holes. I put the clasp at the back of the waist so there would be as little fiddling as possible. After considering making a pomander, and even starting to carve one, I just chickened out of that and found the tassel on the end at Hobby Lobby. If I end up using this, its $5 more of my budget used.

While I was at it, I strung a simple pearl necklace and threw together a set of earrings. I'm pretty definite on wanting to wear the necklace, but I'm not so sure about the earrings. They might get put aside with the girdle for another project.

"To a well to get water, without putting on gold earrings, do not go".

The title is a 15th century proverb from Novgorod (a northern city of the Rus.)  I am incredibly amused by it.  Its also a great bit of color for my persona and how Praksedys is different from Hastings.  Hastings barely manages to get dressed in clothes that match and hasn't managed jewelry in good long time.  Lady Praksedys won't go anywhere for any reason without the right accessory.

Russian women wore long extravagant earrings.  At the end of the 15th Century Giles Fletcher describes women wearing earrings of "two inches or more."  The picture is of two sets of extant pairs of 17th century earrings.  (Treasures of the Czars p.58))  I had a bunch of chandelier findings that I figured would help me make sufficiently dangly jewelry.  I went digging through my "random bead box" of stuff left from other projects and things purchased because it was clearanced.  I found some moonstones, some carnelian donuts, some little unakite spheres, a couple of green crystals from a bag of junk jewelry bits, little metal leaves I've had for at least 10 years and, of course, pearls.  I like them, but I'm a little concerned that they're too matchy.  The peach/oranges and greens are the same ones in the povoinik and volosnik.  Coordinating isn't nearly gaudy enough.  I've got plenty more chandeliers and I know there are some garnets around here.  Might have to play around some more.  That way Praks will have plenty of earrings for wearing around camp.