Research Cheater

[hsifeng]

O Great LJ Hivemind...

I come to you with a request for information. A friend has recently been being pestered to produce evidence showing that 16^th C German men *did not* wear netted gold cauls under their battle helmets.

My initial thought upon hearing this was, “Are you crazy? Who would wear an item THAT EXPENSIVE under their helm?” I mean… gold…netted…re-embroidered over…? Are you nuts?

My second thought was, “I thought we normally tried to prove that someone *did* wear an item rather than the opposite? I mean, prove to me that 16^th C German men didn’t wear fairy wings under their backplates!”

*eye roll*

Then I realized; I have seen dozens of Landsknecht re-enactors wear these things around during the day while in their breastplates over the years. I don’t think I’ve seen any of them smash a helmet down over the top…but maybe that is where this guy got the initial idea. OK, so it may just be an issue of monkey see, monkey do. As for actual evidence of this taking place in the 16^th C on the other hand, if there are 16^th C images of un-helmed but armored men wearing these in portraiture, my guess would be that the images in question are “I’m Showing Off My Armor” shots; the addition of the “gelbhaube”/caul as a way to enhance the overall look-at-me-and-my-pimp-gear image, rather than to indicate that the caul was part of an armor rig in some way.

Then again, I don’t know that this particular re-enactment-ism has ever been really researched.

So I put it to ya’ll; anyone out there have any details (wardrobe inventory items, images of extant woolen arming caps, narrative descriptions, etc.) that might help clarify this issue with some data?

Comments

[hsifeng.livejournal.com]

The closest I have seen to documentation on the cost of these items in the past was Katrin Kania's research into netting cauls and her estimations on the time it would take to reproduce the item she was looking at here:

http://togs-from-bogs.blogspot.com/2009/04/hairnets-part-v.html#links

Her words, "When calculating the same overall size for the tiny-meshed net, I'd need about 16 times the amount of single meshes for the tiny net (since there would fit 16 meshes into one large mesh). Which means 16 times 30 hours, that is 480 hours just for the base of the hairnet! Add to that the embroidery, which I'd guess takes at least as long (maybe one of the embroidering people can pitch in here) - that would leave you at roughly one thousand hours of work just for a puny hairnet."

As Katrin points out, in modern terms that is roughly six months of work.

*blinks eyes*

Of course, an inventory item estimating the value of one of these would be lovely. Do you happen to remember if there were any listed in the Textiler Hausrat? I could then talk to my armor friends and come up with a comparison in prices between the HAT and the FULL SUIT to get an idea of just how nuts this might have been.

The sumptuary laws are another resource; with the possible value of these items I would be sort of shocked if they weren't regulated in some way.