So that leads me to consider my next project. After viewing two polychrome coifs in person (one at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the other at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) I have decided that is my next project. Plus, I decided to teach a class on these at Pennsic, so it's good to begin planning.
Whenever I decide on a new project, I spend copious amounts of time finding as many extant examples as I can, whether in books, online, or in person. I think this is a crucial step: if I don't know what they actually look like, how can I possibly create a realistic copy? Understanding how many paillettes to add, how many colors to use in a motif, what kinds of stitches, how big a motif, how close are they placed together, what kinds of motifs are all extremely important questions. For instance, it would seem that the polychrome coifs are symmetrical on the y-axis. However, the Philadelphia coif is symmetrical along the x-axis.
So I have some more "seeing" to do, and then I can begin to design my own. I'm going to do detached buttonhole with soie perlee (although, Mistress Briony thought that soie ovale might make the smaller detached buttonhole stitches- the difference between spun and filament silk) because I have 30 spools of it in coordinating shaded colors, bought specifically for this project. This was before the aforementioned conversation, so the next project might use soie ovale. I will also use silver spangles, because I have lots of them in a small size, and gilt passing thread in a plaited braid. I do so love doing plaited braid!
"Seeing with a period eye" is something I'm still training myself to do. I think it's critical to be able to really understand how something was made, and that means really being able to look at the object and put it together. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm working on it. :)
