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| Photograph © P Glover |
| This mid 16th century outfit, made for a guest at a Tudor fancy dress party, involved some detective work! It's based on a sketch of a portrait in 'Tudor Costume and Fashion', by Herbert Norris. The portrait is of a young man called William West, Esq., and is dated to 1551. In the book the painting is attributed to The National Gallery in London. Naturally, this made life much easier, as it's so much more simple to work from an original illustration, rather than to a 3" tall re-drawing. However, my client and I both contacted the gallery, and we were each told that they had no record at all of the painting in question, or even one of a similar title, or of a sitter with a similar name. They did however suggest that it was possible that the painting had been lost during the blitz (the book was written pre-war). Of course, I was not satisfied with that, so I made a determined search of the online databases of the National Gallery and The National Portrait Gallery. Still nothing. So I tried the 'National' galleries in other nearby countries. Still nothing. I finally decided I'd have to put up with using the little re-drawing as my source. Sometime later, and before making the outfit, I was searching the online database of the Tate Gallery in London, working on another project. It occurred to me that I had never checked the Tate for the William West painting. You guessed it! There it was. It had been wrongly attributed to the National in the book, when it had been in the Tate all along! So, using the print of the portrait that I obtained from the Tate Gallery, I finally set about making the outfit, which consists of a red silk shirt, black woollen doublet with red silk sleeves, and trimmed in gold, black velvet long trunkhosen and canions, and a black velvet cloak and bonnet with large white plume. Unfortunately, I do not have a better picture of the finished outfit, but I must thank my client for kindly supplying the above photo. |
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