[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hey, Kohler has pictures of real garments (albeit displayed on live models), and also some decent drawings of patterns taken from them--I've used one of his early 19th century bodices as a guide.
The patterns are maybe better for the later periods; I don't know that material, so I can't judge. At least for later garments, there was better extant material to work with, which is still the case for people researching those periods today.
However, some of the patterns for medieval garments in Kohler are pure fantasy (like the 12th-century dress with curved seams under the breasts). Others are early attempts that have since been revised by better research (like the Golden Gown pattern that inserts a waistline seam and misidentifies back and front). And many of the pattern drawings, IIRC, are presented as fact without making clear which are taken from real garments and which are simply someone's conjecture.
Kohler also is guilty of making sweeping statements that sound more authoritative than there is evidence for. Much of what's in that book has been repeated as fact by later authors and become enshrined as such in the literature. For instance, there's that "14th century" sleeveless chemise for which the provenance was never accurately determined (and it is lost, probably destroyed, so we'll never know).
Some of the material in the book, of course, was not Kohler's own, but must have been added by Emma Von Sichart, who revised the book substantially for the 1928 edition -- for instance, to include the just-published Greenland finds. Kohler himself died in 1876. So there's a mix of older and not-so-old scholarship in that book, and possibly some inconsistencies arising from that.
--Robin _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
