Blog Posts

  • Timely Fashions: The FitzWilliam Book of Hours, Part Four – Elite Dress

    Timely Fashions: The FitzWilliam Book of Hours, Part Four – Elite Dress

    Welcome or welcome back to Timely Fashions! This week we’re wrapping up the FitzWilliam Hours with this edition on elite dress. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that they were at times custom produced for elite clientele, Books of Hours often feature courtly scenes, with certain activities undertaken by members of the upper echelons of society depicted according Read more

  • Timely Fashions: The FitzWilliam Book of Hours

    Timely Fashions: The FitzWilliam Book of Hours

    Part Three: Servants’ Dress Welcome or welcome back, dear reader, This week’s edition will be a little shorter than the others, and once more focused on mens dress. I’ve decided to separate out a category for servants’ dress, which is higher class than peasant dress, but not quite at the level of noble dress. Keep Read more

  • Timely Fashions: The FitzWilliam Book of Hours

    Timely Fashions: The FitzWilliam Book of Hours

    Part Two: Peasant Mens’ Dress Welcome or welcome back, dear reader, Today I am stepping outside of my usual comfort zone of women’s dress to examine the clothing of men in the lower strata of 16th-century society. As with my prior edition on womens’ dress in the FitzWilliam Hours, not every character displayed here is Read more

  • Timely Fashions: The FitzWilliam Book of Hours

    Timely Fashions: The FitzWilliam Book of Hours

    Part One: Peasant Womens’ Dress The subtitle of this post is something of a misnomer – the term ‘peasant’ is often vague and doesn’t help in trying to split up the lower strata of 16th century society – but it remains a useful catchall for the more ‘lowly’ people, especially in an informal publishing setting Read more

  • Timely Fashions: Dress in 16th Century Books of Hours

    Timely Fashions: Dress in 16th Century Books of Hours

    This charming picture of a woman picking grapes first came to my attention whilst reading The Typical Tudor. I was immediately enchanted, and noted that it came from the Hennessy Book of Hours. Throughout the book I found other examples taken from Books of Hours, and soon my curiosity got the better of me and Read more