"if it is allegorical or religious then the artist made up the garment". My feeling is that if this were true then all medieval and renaissance artists were fashion designers.
The Manesse drawings are simplistic and the artist does not have a full grasp of fabric pattern draping. The patterns can be woven, which is what the guy on the throne most likely has. Both horizontal, diagonal,..etc. can be woven or pieced. There is a slim possibility of bias but you need to take into account of the fabric width of that period and region. To my understanding, fabric width very rarely made it past 45". Though I can not locate the info anymore, I do recall printed fabric from Byzantium at around this period so there is a slim chance (very slim) of it being printed. De -----Original Message----- With the caveats that artistic representations aren't always intended to represent actual clothing construction, and that representations of clothing decoration are sometimes intended to convey symbolism rather than fabric structures, and that there are multiple ways to create any particular decorative effect in fabric ... What are people's thoughts on the garments depicted in the early 14th c. Manesse Codex that have diagonal striped designs? Woven as diagonal stripes? Print? Woven as straight-grain stripes and cut on the bias? Symbolic interpretation of armorial designs not intending to represent actual garments? Some other option? How is a given hypothesis affected by other stripe-like designs in the manuscript? (Primarily horizontal stripes, but also chevron designs.) (snip) I'm contemplating the plausibility of the bias cut hypothesis, but I'm failing to convince myself, given that the reasoning that would support it would also conclude that the diagonal-stripe and horizontal-stripe garments in the manuscript represent two entirely different ways of cutting garments that are otherwise identical in depiction. Heather _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
