Sunday 21 October 2012

Elizabethan Era

My research for the clothing of 16th century England started by looking at the Tudors and Elizabethans, and sites about them:


the-tudors.org.uk
elizabethan-era.org.uk


Tudor Clothes for Poor Men

The Sumptuary Laws were designed to limit the expenditure of Tudor people on clothes and to maintain the social structure of the Tudor Class system! Wool, linen and sheepskin were the most inexpensive materials and fabrics to produce and therefore limited to low status clothing of Poor Tudor men. In 1571 a law was passed which decreed that everyone over the age of 6 years old had to wear a woollen cap on Sundays and on holidays in order to help England's wool trade, of course, royalty and the nobility were excused from obeying this law. Another interesting fact is the taller the hat the more important the man - poor men wore woollen flat caps. The following table lists the Tudor clothes for Poor men as dictated by the Sumptuary Laws or Statutes of Apparel.



This website also gave a list of colours poor people could wear: Browns, beige, yellow, orange, russet, green, grey and blue (but the deep Poor indigo but dyed with woad.)

Elizabethan Village Life

 Elizabethan Village Life was extremely insular as their village provided the majority of requirements to be self-sufficient. 
The village houses consisted of half - timbered buildings with thatched roofs and were surrounded by countryside and woodlands. 

After a visit to the Forum Library, I found many useful books on Elizabethan clothing and lifestyle.


Daily Life in Elizabethan England 

written by Jeffrey L. Singman, 1995

Chapter 5: The Living Environment.


"The houses of country folk were based on jointed frames of oak: instead if nails, which would be too weak, the timbers were carved with tongues (tenons) and slots (mortices) so that the whole frame would fit together, with the tenons secured in their mortices by thick wooden pegs. Ideally the frame would rest on a stone foundation, since prolonged contact with moisture in the ground would eventually cause the timbers to rot. However, the cheapest sorts of structures simply had their main posts sunk into the ground."







Clothing






Other

In the chapter entitled "entertainment" were a number of songs that have survived from the Elizabethan era. I could use these as bases of any tunes or music I have for my animatic.


Elizabethan England
written by A.H. Dodd, 1974.


Other books



 


 







Braun and Schneider (1975) Historic Costume In Pictures. First ed. Dover Publications, New York

These are some images taken from Braun and Schneider's Historic Costume In Pictures book that displays illustrations of dress from different time periods all over the world.










No comments:

Post a Comment