Holland countrywoman by Lucas de Heere, late 16th c. (image source: University of Ghent)
The Flemish gown research has become an excuse to make funny hats. YAY!!!! Because there are few things I love more than wearing crazy things on my head. First, I thought, oh sure, I’ll need some nice little linen cap. Then it looked like maybe a new type of wired cap a la Netherlands (because, oh yeah, did they go nuts with wired caps in the 16th century! see: barbels on the Facebook Elizabethan Costume community).
But what really caught my eye was this cap-cloak thingy with a duck-bill shape on the head that’s in the Lucas de Heere book. I mean, wtf is going on there? It’s awesomely bizarre. I don’t know, but it’s fucking crazy & I may need to make that just for the hell of it.
Is the duck bill to keep off rain or sun? Rain seems likely because of the curled brim, except that the most likely materials (starched &/or wired linen &/or buckram) wouldn’t be rainproof at all. I guess it could be a canvas, maybe waxed or oiled to repel water, but I don’t know how common that was used in hats in this era.
I need some contemporary written descriptions, not just images, & who writes about country-folk clothes at that time? I know where to find descriptions of upper-class clothes, but not the lower folk. Hrm…
I did find two more images, a woman in one of those “catalogs of what women of Europe are supposedly wearing in the 16th century” & a man…
The oddest is the man in Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting “Netherlandish Proverbs,” which is also called “The Blue Cloak” due to the central image of a woman putting a blue *duck-billed cloak* on a man. This image is supposed to represent a wife cuckolding her husband, according to every online analysis of the painting (& presumably lots of offline theses as well, which I need to get access too when I can hit up the library). What is unclear to me is if the meaning of cuckolding comes from the blue color of the cloak, the act of putting a cloak on one’s husband, or if the duck-bill shape of the cloak’s hood has any connection. Nobody says.
None-the-less, I’m obsessed! So once I finish the gown, I’m totally making one of these things, & I promise not to put it on a man or make it in blue. However, I might quack (damn you).
My fail-proof way of figuring out the names for weird things like this is to ask the Elizabethan Costuming group on FB. I know it’s lazy, but it effective. 😉
And I wonder if the cloak was a particularly female garment… Could be why putting the cloak on a man could be seen as symbolically emasculating him. Just an idle thought… And gimme the references to the articles you want downloaded from JSTOR and I can get them to you.
Also, Bruegel the Elder has a painting of children running around with this style of cloak on their heads. Children’s Games, c. 1560. Look for the little Cabbage Patch Kid looking girl in the lower leftish quadrant of the painting… Thing is, it looks like an apron pulled over her head. Maybe it’s one of those “dressing up in Mommy’s clothes” aspects of child play? Knowing Bruegel there’s probably more to it than just that… But there might be some accessible scholarship out there on this particular painting that may explain the cloak a little better.
Yeah, I’m thinking it’s a female garment too, which would make sense w/the cuckolding thing *and* the children’s version (since Medieval/Ren kids wore more feminine garments when they were very little).
And I’ll start collecting the journal article titles for ya to find! Thanks 🙂
It’s called a heuke 🙂 Very much worn in all over the Netherlands and even into Cologne. The bill is the modified collar, the cologne version and other west Netherlands versions have a wide and full collar or kragen, and the body is a cloak.
And yes, I made one:
http://costumes.glittersweet.com/early-historic/cologne-gown/
it is very heavy but also doubles as a blanket. These Cologne ones could be wool lined in wool!
In the Bruegel paintings the woman is putting her heuke over the head of her husband, it is some visual translation of a proverb about the woman having an affair and blinding her husband to it. Covering him- I can find the reference later.
Fantastic! Thank you for the name of the garment, that helps immensely.
I was wondering if it might be connected to the more rounded cloak-from-the-head garments too. There seem to be quite a few styles & worn by women of different classes.
Oh yeah, check out the bruyn Tractenbuch at Lacma (Omnium pene Europae, Asiae, Aphricae atque Americae Gentium Habitus) 🙂 There are also b/w images of it on bildindex.de. There are several versions of the heuke in there.
Heh, figured I should paw thru bildindex.de at some point — it can be a hassle, but there’s *so* much there, & at least having the proper name now, I’ll have more luck.
I’m amazed at my brilliance because before reading the comments I was thinking “I bet that is a ladies peice of clothing and she is emmasculating him.” Makes me think I might be able to rely on my common sense for some of my deductions…Best be careful with that mad idea!
Nailed it! Good thing my hubbi doesn’t go to many SCA events with me, LOL.