Appendix B
Surviving Tailor’s Manuals
Unlike modern sewing books, the surviving tailor’s pattern books were intended to serve primarily as a guide to the most efficient use of costly fabric. The books contain little or nothing in the way of construction guidance, and often smaller pattern pieces are simply left off the diagrams if they were expected to be made out of the scraps left from cutting the larger pieces. The pattern books also only concern themselves with the expensive outer fabric, which a number of the patterns call out as silk, velvet, or damask. There is generally no mention of the presence of linings, interlinings, buttons, trim, or any of the other parts required to make the garments. The majority of the written text tends to concern the lengths and widths of cloth required to make the patterns presented, and describes how to convert between the measuring systems used by a variety of cities.
For a lengthy scholarly comparison and discussion of various tailor’s manuals ranging from 1580 to 1720, with summaries and discussion of their stories, I recommend Ruth de la Puerta Escribano’s Spanish-language article Los Tratados del Arte del Vestido en la Esraña Moderna, available online at http://archivoespañoldearte.revistas.csic.es/index.php/aea/article/viewFile/403/401
Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion contains some drawings from one tailor’s book by an anonymous Milanese tailor, which has been dated to c. 1555 - 1560. It is held by the Biblioteca Querini-Stampalia in Venice. I chose not to use it as a main source, despite the fact that it is older than Alcega’s book and dates to the same time and near to the same geographic area as my inspiration painting, for the simple reason that I haven’t yet been able to find any more of it than is presented in Patterns of Fashion. I hope that continued searching through the Biblioteca’s web pages will turn up something useful, but it has been slow going so far. My Spanish may be rusty, but my Italian is non-existent, so I’m having to rely heavily on Google Translate for search terms to use, even though the web page results are often already translated into English by the museum. I’ll keep looking.
Juan de Alcega published his book Libro de geometria, practica y traça in 1580 in Madrid, Spain. A scan of the original may be accessed on the web page of the Spanish National Library, here: http://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000022768
Below is the pattern from his book to which I referred when making the pattern for the doublet I brought today. Note the two-part sleeves, grown-on collar on the back, and the separate collar piece on the front.
<picture removed, but you can find it yourself online>
Diego de Freyle published his book Geometria traca para el oficio de los sastres in Sevilla, Spain, in 1588. A scan of the woodcut following the title page may be accessed on the web page of the Folger Shakespeare Library (http://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/detail/FOLGERCM1~6~6~31001~102194:Spanish-tailoring-book), which purchased a copy of the book from the University of Madrid in 1972. Unfortunately, the Folger Shakespeare Library does not appear to have made high-resolution scans of the rest of the pages of the book. Older, rather low-quality images of the remainder of the book may be found in a variety of locations online. I hope that the Folger Shakespeare Library soon makes the remainder of the book available. Below I have included one of those older images. Again, note the grown-on back collar.
<picture removed, but you can find it yourself online>
Baltasar Segovia produced a handwritten tailor’s pattern book Llibre de Geometría in 1617 in Barcelona. However, I have been unable to find a complete copy of the book available for viewing. The only photographic pattern references I could find were from a copy sold at auction in 2012 (http://en.todocoleccion.net/old-book-handwritten-copy-llibre-of-geometry-of-tailors-offices-segovia-baltasar~x30560966). Unusually, the book includes a drawing of a finished garment alongside its pattern, and the pieces are helpfully numbered and labeled. I found a more recent bibliographical reference to the book (B.N.P., Segovia, Baltasar, Geometría del ofici de sastres, Barcelona: Esteve Libreros, 1917), so it may have been re-printed in 1917, but I could not find any other reference to the more recent date.
<picture removed, but you can find it yourself online>
Francisco Rocha Burguen published his book Geometria y traça perteneciente al oficio de sastres in 1618 in Valencia, Spain. A scan of the original may be accessed on the web page of the Spanish National Library, here: http://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000052415&page=1
One of Burguen's female doublet patterns is below. In this instance, the collar is assembled from a total of six pieces, as shown in the layout drawing. The presence of these patterns in all these different tailors’ books demonstrates that this style of women’s doublet was a relatively “stock” item in a tailor’s repertoire, rather than the exception.
<picture removed, but you can find it yourself online>
There is also a tailor’s pattern book published by Martin de Anduxar in 1640 in Madrid, Spain. I chose not to use it as a main source because it was later than the other three and contained much the same information, although it does have some two interesting layouts showing doublets made with bias-cut cloth, and the piecing joins for some items appears to have been more clearly marked by the addition of a flower-shaped matching point. The book is held by the Austrian National Library, and Google’s scan of it may be found at http://books.google.com/books/about/Geometria_y_trazas_pertenecientes_al_ofi.html?id=_1hpHQAACAAJ
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