What Size Were Brooches in the Middle Ages ? – Part 7 – More Buckles

Posted on July 20, 2015 by Eirny

So last time I was wondering why buckles might be a bit smaller than we might expect. I proposed that some of the reasons could include cost, difficulty of construction, fashion, and functionality.

Looking at cost first – metal was expensive and valuable. Metal was dug out of ore deposits by hand and the smelting and processing of all metals was extremely labor and fuel intensive. Metals that were not available locally had to be imported, adding to the cost. Even the least expensive tin trinkets were cast in such a way as to minimize the use of metal while maximizing the effect. They were made as thin as possible while still allowing them to be functional.

I never really appreciated how much the frugal use of metal affected the manufacturing techniques used for dress accessories until I began making them myself and purchasing actual artifacts.

An excellent example are these buckles and belt ends. They are on two belts that my husband and I purchased at the Pennsic War about 18 years ago. We were looking for narrow belts with some pretty mounts, a buckle, and a belt end. I had seen lots of portraits with narrow belts and a few actual belt ends in museums, and these belts looked pretty good and seemed functional enough. And to be honest, they have worked perfectly well for all these years, and will probably make it for at least another five or six years. But now that I know what the real belt fitting look like it is very interesting to see the construction techniques.

First we have my belt buckle, belt end, and mounts.

The leather of the belt is 3/4 of an inch wide, a respectable width. The mounts are of an appropriate size, and while the buckle and the belt end are fairly large, they are believable.

If we look at the pieces from the side we can understand the actual construction techniques that were used.

This picture shows graphically what it looks like when your solder does not match the color of the main pieces of metal. The actual forms of the pieces are fairly close to the forms of several dismantled pre-1600 buckles and belt ends that I have seen, but the period belt ends and buckles were not soldered, they were simply riveted together.

My husband’s belt uses slightly different construction techniques and suffers from slightly different flaws.

The leather belt in this case is 1 inch wide – again an acceptable width. The basic form of the pieces is based on period buckles and belt ends. And then we have the mounts.

Lovely cast pieces that are definitely a period form and look quite nice.

And a side view of the buckle and belt end to show the actual construction techniques.

You can see that the plate that holds this buckle in place is actually just a folded piece of metal, and the rivets hold the metal tight to the belt. The belt end is a solid cast piece with just a small area where the end of the leather belt can be inserted. The belt end weighs a ton – about an ounce all by itself. By Medieval terms this is a TOTAL waste of metal.

But how thick should the metal be? We will talk about that next time!

What size Were Brooches in the Middle Ages – Part 6 – Buckles!

Posted on July 13, 2015 by Eirny

Buckles. It seems an easy enough topic, but it turns out to be quite the pile of spaghetti.

First of all, based on most of the buckles that I see at SCA events buckles were huge prior to 1600. But, based on the artifacts that I see in my collection, and museum collections, they were often quite moderate in size.

Second, a buckle, is a buckle, is a buckle. Or is it?

(photo credit: Irene Davis 2015, from the Eirny Historic Collection)

This picture shows just a few of the Medieval buckles in my collection. The buckle with the strange looking hook is called a locking buckle, and this particular one, along with the buckle in the top left corner are both from Northern Ireland. The other buckles are all from England.

So let’s start with the simplest part – the size of buckles. It really isn’t a mystery. While buckles big enough to make a rodeo cowboy drool may look pretty cool, they really have very little to do with the buckles that were actually worn by most people prior to 1600. We have tons of buckles available for viewing on museum sites and lots of portraits of people wearing belts with buckles.

Let’s look at an example. How about a family portrait of Archduke Maximilian II, painted in 1563? If anyone could afford a big fancy buckle, he sure could. But you won’t find one in this picture.

This portrait of Queen Mary I, by Master John, shows the belts that were typical for women during this time frame. There is no real buckle, just some sort of fastener that allows the length of the belt to be adjusted.

Well surely someone had big buckles before 1600! So I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum online collections, and looked for the biggest buckles that I could find. This amazing Frankish buckle (675-725 AD) is 6 inches by 2 11/16 inches. Pretty respectable! And this Visigothic buckle (550-600 AD) is 5 3/8 by 2 3/8 inches.

The first thing that I noticed when I started looking for big buckles was that large display type buckles were usually made up of several pieces. This Merovingian buckle is an excellent example. Each individual piece of the buckle is really not that huge, but the overall effect of the pieces when they are put together is pretty spectacular.

The second thing that I noticed about larger display type buckles, is that even most of those were really not that wide (the top to bottom dimension on our giant Frankish buckle in the Met was less than 3 inches).

Why do we see these limitations in size in pre-1600 buckles? Some of the obvious possibilities include cost, difficulty of construction. fashion, and functionality.

And that is what we will talk about next time.

What size were brooches in the Middle Ages – Part 5 – Fibulae, Dress Pins and Miscellaneous Brooches

Posted on July 6, 2015 by Eirny

So, the first thing I should probably do is describe a fibula (singular). Think safety pin without the safety. Fibulae (plural) appear on the scene by about 1,000 BC in Mesopotamia, and we still use their descendents today, in the form of kilt pins and safety pins. Pre-1600 fibulae can be made of bronze, iron, silver, or gold, They can generally not be made of lead or tin because these metals are too soft and will break when flexed repeatedly. Fibulae can be plain and functional, or large and ostentatious. This gold Etruscan Fibula shows just a hint of the type of complexity and beauty that was put into crafting some of the ancient fibulae. And this winged fibula from Panonia (an area that bordered the Danube) is an exquisite example of the jewelers art.

But on a practical level, most fibulae were relatively plain and functional. This picture shows a selection of fibulae and pins that I own. The left hand column is a 1500’s pin, a Celtic fibula (3rd to 2nd c BC), and a Celtic fibula (from Yugoslavia 1BC to 1 AD). The large dress pin on the left is a Roman silver hairpin pin (found in Yugoslavia 1st to 3rd c BC – and yes, that is a duck on top), and the large pin on the right is a silver reproduction Viking dress pin that I use for closing my shawl. The right hand column contains reproduction pieces from The Treasury. Three sets of two: dress pins – 1200’s to the Victorian Age. The top set are small brass pins, the middle are large brass pins, and the bottom are large nickel silver (looks like silver). The bottom of the column is two small fibulae, one in brass and one in nickel silver.

And what about dress pins? I personally believe that dress pins are probably one of the oldest types of closures that were used by mankind. A large thorn, a sharpened stick, and eventually sharpened pieces of metal were used by almost every culture to close a cloak, hold hair in place, or close a more complex garment. The size and complexity of construction of dress pins varies dramatically depending on the available materials used, and the technology available to the maker. Earlier dress pins were generally (always a dangerous word!) larger, usually three to six inches long. Later period dress pins could be much smaller, often only 1 to 1 1/2 inches long, but larger specialty dress pins, in the form of hair pins and hat pins are still in use today.

And then there are the “miscellaneous brooches”. Different shapes, different sizes, different metal alloys, and we often find them out of context. What were they used for? Were they decorative? Were they functional? Were they both?

It is known that in Roman times there were specific large brooches awarded to certain men of rank. This bow brooch, which is a specialized form of fibula, is an excellent example of this sort of brooch.

And some of the huge ring brooches that we find in Scotland and Ireland, certainly fall into the “I am obviously important” display category. This brief article on the Tara Brooch has a couple of great pictures.

There are also tons of brooches shaped like animals, hearts, flowers, and geometric shapes, just to name a few. But going back to our possibly long forgotten original point – most don’t lay flat, and while they may work well on an outside layer of clothing, they don’t work well on an interior layer.

Next Time: Buckles!