A Purple Florentine Gown

Turbans in 16th Century Italian Art

10/18/05 - Today I turned my attention to stressing out about some type of head covering for my two new Florentine style gowns. I'm not sure what I'll eventually end up with to cover my hair but for now I'm experimenting with wrapping a turban like those seen in several 16th Century Florentine Paintings. From these examples we can see the beginnings of a wide range in the color and wrapping style of turbans worn by Florentine women. I'm very excited about this and look forward to getting a bunch of new fabrics to match turbans with my new Florentine gowns.

Striped and fringed Turban. Florentine. Full portrait can be seen here. Andrea del Sarto1513-1514

Colorful Turbans. The orange turban here was cut from another section of the painting and moved next to the purple turban. The full painting can be seen here. Florentine. Andrea del Sarto 1513

Turban embroidered and fringed in gold. Full portrait can be seen here. Florentine. Giuliano Bugiardini 1525

Rust/Red colored and braided Turban. Full painting can be seen here. Venitian. Bernadino Licinio, 1520s. This may actualy be a more commonly shown in portraits Balzo rather than a braided turban, I'm just not sure.

I had some sheer-ish blue and white striped cotton (seen at left) at home that I could fool around with. So I cut a 2 yard length with is perfect for wrapping a basic turban, sat down and began fringing the ends. My original thought was that I'd hem one end that would be tucked in and make about 4 inches of fringe on the other end that would hang out decoratively. The original plan was to braid and knot each fringe stripe but I quickly discovered that fringing that much fabric is tedious and perhaps the width of the fabric I was using made it more difficult than it needed to be. I'll explore this some more next time I see Bekah or Antine.

10/19/05 - I wore the blue striped turban to a Halloween Costume event last night and it worked just lovely. Though the fabric is a little wide and can be difficult to twist it gives a beautiful full effect of the turban. It's quite comfortable and breaths well so my head wasn't sweating. I wrapped it with the fringed end hanging down to my shoulder and added a silver brooch at the knot point that it was hanging down from. Not used to having something on my head it took just a little while to get used to wearing it.

This morning I worked on fringing it a little more and I think that I'm going to change my strategy for the knots and braids. I'm going to leave the fringe the length that it is and using thread create some longer sections that will be sewn in and braided. I also started to roll the hem and whip stitch the non-fringed end of the fabric.