15th century girdlepurse

At Voergaard I also made a girdlepurse.

The most interesting feature on this purse is the decoration on the flap. I have never made a purse with a decorated flap before, so this was something to try out.

The decorarions are made using an awl, but later I will try using a wooden board with some carved lines, and press the leather into those. Hopefully this will result in deeper lines.

Early 16th century ladies pouch purse

During our (Louise and I) stay at Voergaard castle I was asked by a friend of Louises to make a ladies purse.

I remembered seeing some pictures of the so-called "Pouch purses" in Purses in Pieces, so I thought that it could be an interesting project.

The pouch purse is a fairly simple type of purse. It consists of a pouch og "bag" of variable size and a strap to attach it to the belt. The pouch is drawn shut with a drawstring and the flap is held down with a sort of "button".
Smaller pouchlets can also be attached to the main pouch.

This type of purse can be seen on several pictures from the early 16th century. For example this picturen from 1500-1501 by Dürer.



And here is my interpretation of a pouch purse.



The pouch measures ca. 15 x 15cm and is made from very soft cow-skin, 0,6-0,8mm thick. The strap for the belt is ca. 20 cm long and made from 3mm cow-skin. The drawstrings and the edge og the belt-strap is made from goat-skin, ca. 1mm thick.
The glass beads are hand made (not by me though).



In the picture by Dürer the flap does not look like it is held down by stiching, so I decided to leave it. Even though the flap is not stiched down it sits well on the belt.
The weight of the purse doesn't seem to be a problem.



A close-up of the button and reinforcement of the holes for the drawstring.



And this part of the purse is what I am perhaps the most pleased with. I really enjoyed making these stiches. And I think they look great :-)



The back of the purse. The drawstrings are held in place bu a knot on the backside of the belt-strap.

And here is how to sew a strap on the edge of a piece of leather. Is also looks great on shoes!

First sew a strip of leather on to the front of the edge. Sew it on front-to-front. The distance from the edge to the stiches determines the with of the decorational edge.



Then turn over the leather strip and sew it to the backside, with stiches that doen not go through the front side of the leather.



All it takes is a bit of cencentration, and it looks great :-)

- - - - - - - - Update! - - - - - - - - -

I also found this picture from 1503. Artist unknown.

Purse from Dordrecht

Another purse finished!

This purse is also depicted in "Purses in pieces" and was found i Dordrecht (Holland).

The front compartment has its opening on the inside of the front flap. And this time i decided to make the front compartment from textile, rather than leather.
the description of the purse said thet the front compartment had been made from either chamois or textile.
I used unbleached linnen canvas.

(BTW: If you know where to get good quality chamois. Please tell me!)



The reason why I wanted to make this purse is the three pouchlets.
They are made from a single piece of leather. All the other purses I have made have pouchlets made from seperate pieces.
I think this solution gives the purse a much simpler look.





The dye that i used for this purse is the same that i used for the Nieuwlande-purse.

Thats two purses done. Now theres only two more to go :-)

Purse from Nieuwlande

Time for another purse! :-)

This time it´s a find from Nieuwlande (Holland), and based on drawings from "Purses in pieces" by Olaf Goubitz.
I can't supply you with a dating of the purse, as the author does not provide one. All I can say for certain is that it is medieval... Late medieval that is.

I decided to make this one because I really like the stabbed decoration and the shape of the girdle loops (or rather the space between them).



The binding is a typical split seam and the front compartment opens to the front of the purse rather than on the inside.

The leather was coloured using a mixture of iron and oak galls. The result is a nice bronwnish black.
After compleation the purse was greased with a mix of tallow, beeswax and pine tar. This gaves the purse a pleasant smokey odour.



On the inside are 3 small pouchlets.





And here you can see the opening to the front compartment.

The things that weren't preserved from the original are: The binding, the front flap, the pouchlets and the dravstrings.
Therefore these things might not correspond with the original purse. These parts of the purse are therefore based on guesswork - I hope that I have come close.

This is the first of 4 purses that I am currently working on. So there is more to come!

The Helgeansholmen purse

Some time ago there was a discussion at Historiska världars forum about a purse found at Helgeansholmen in Stockholm (Sweden). It is by far the best preserved purse I have ever seen, and the purse was found in a Scandinavian country. So naturally I was acking to make a "replica" of it right away.
And thanks to some of the readers from the forum, some very nice drawings and photographs were made public, so that people could have a go at copying the purse.
Especially the user "Admin" (I believe his name is Henrik) provided some nice pictures.

So I have been thinking about this project for at long time now, and finaly I got around to doing something about it :-)
And the result is by far the most authentic purse I have ever made. So naturally I am very pleased with the result.
I can't say that the purse is 100% authentic, because not all of the parts have survived (the binding, straps, lining and pockets are all gone). So this can only be my interpretation of the original purse... but I really do feel that I have come close :-)

The pictures provoded by "Admin" can be found here:
http://www.medeltidenitiden.se/material/20080909_helgeand_purse.zip

The purse can be found at Medeltidsmuseet in Stockholm. Althoug it isn't on display right now. It will be from january 2010.


Here comes the pictures:



The purse measures 25 x 25 cm, and is pretty large compared to some of the purses in "Purses in Pieces".



I made the incisions for this decoration, with a very small knife, that i made by hammering a nail flat, and sherpening it.







The thing about this purse I spent the most time, trying to figure out were the shape of the pockets on the front of the inner compartment of the purse.



The lining of the flap has been sewn with stiches that doesn't penetrate the outside of the leather. I'm not entirely sure if the lining on the original purse was made from leather. It might as well have been made from fabric.
I chose leather because it i more durable than fabric.



the inner compartment was also joined to the back of the purse with stiches that only pass through the flest side of the leather, This protects the stiches from being worn down when the purse is in use.
I suspect that the flax thread won't last very long, when it is continually being "scrubbed" by wollen clothes.

The leather was dyed with walnutshells and leaves, and greased with a mixture of tallow, beeswax and pine tar.

Here are some pictures of the original:





I really recomend that you download the pictures that i linked to earlier on in this article. They probive an enormous amount of info on this purse.
The zip-file also contains drawings of the purse and all the different parts (all four of them!).

Aditional pictures can be seen at my photobucket: http://s163.photobucket.com/albums/t306/MikkelF84/Takser/helgeansholmen/

I will also post the pattern I made for the purse as soon as I get the time to scan it.