Friday, June 10, 2011

Baselwear

Engravings of Swiss clothing styles from the 1630s



engraving 1634 - Basel costumes
How to admire one another in a good year



17th century Swiss fashion
Guildmaster and servants



Basler Kleidung j
Maidservants: fast mouth-work, slow housework



Basler Kleidung
Schoolmaster, teacher-assistant and student



Basler Kleidung e
Noblewomen and their maidservants going to church



Basler Kleidung a
The marriage court made up of a board member,
a clergyman and a member of the local council



Basler Kleidung b
Local aristocrats



Basler Kleidung k
A good woman beats the wine out of her drunken husband's head



Basler Kleidung d
Bridegroom and nobleman



Basler Kleidung c
Young fellows



Basler Kleidung f
A woman mourning her husband



Basler Kleidung g
Wine merchant (street crier)



Basler Kleidung h
A sexton and a heat controller (or fire stoker) announce a public auction



Basler Kleidung l
Peasants heading for the market


[All the images were spliced together from screen shots; the first image was slightly background cleaned; click through on any for an enlarged version]


Hans Heinrich Glaser (1585-1673) was an engraver from Basel in Switzerland who is best known for two volumes of fashion illustrations he produced about a decade apart. The first, from the 1620s, was copied from other illustrators.

Glaser's second book - 'Basler Kleidung', the subject of this post - was published in 1634 and remains a well regarded historical source for Basel's 17th century clothing and culture. The illustrator also exhibits a wry sense of humour at times, obviously.

'Basler Kleidung' (~Basel Fashion) is available online at the e-rara site of Universitätsbibliothek Basel (note the thumbnails link at the top of the page).

There are a couple of biographical sources around, both of which become impenetrably mangled by the online translation: One; Two.

I am grateful to typographer/designer Nina Stössinger for help with the caption translations. And, by some extraordinary coincidence, Nina is working on a project this year that includes images from this book. The odds for this must be just astronomical.

Previously: costumes.



Tangentially related: Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands at The Morgan Library [VIA].

5 comments:

  1. This finally and scientifically explains why people in Basel always wear such stupid hats!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm holding out for a leg of lamb girl. I won't abide these mutton tops!

    ReplyDelete
  3. WonderfulWork
    ThankYouForSharing

    ReplyDelete
  4. Somewhat puzzling, but fascinating costume work.

    ReplyDelete
  5. One must assume that these engravings bear the same relationship to real clothes as do the pictures in Vogue/WWD/Bazaar

    ReplyDelete

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