While I’m still working on finishing my hair accessories A&S project, I figured I could put the first part of my walk-through on the Zöpfe (false braids). I’ll backtrack a bit to show how this stage of the project evolved over time.
When I first started exploring this whole subject, I made my first attempts with cheaper materials while I worked out the kinks before committing to more period appropriate (and more expensive) materials. So, as I did with the gefrens, I made a fake braid bolster made from “blonde” yarn I picked up at JoAnn’s. It definitely made for an interesting conversation when I asked the employee to help me pick something we considered a reasonable match.
Ta-da! Not the most flattering shot but here you can see my first Zöpfe.
It didn’t turn out too badly for a first shot, and it certainly helped me to achieve the characteristic bump at the back of the wulsthaube, it also made up for my lack of natural hair length to achieve it. I’ve seen some videos one period hairstyles done by Janet Stephens (the first was a 15th C Nuremburg Chronicle’s on Medievalists.net December 13th 2017) and it really kinda put things into perspective, from a hair standpoint. She says the recreation is speculative, but I still think it’s worth watching just to get an idea of how it was done in period, as well as with period materials and accessories such as bodkins. First off, I gotta say; I don’t know how many people are walking around with KNEE LENGTH hair like her model to do this hairstyle. Second, usually the background music is a bit too loud at times so you kinda have to tune it out. And she really digs those mesh caps, because they pop up in a few of her videos. Anyways, so what do you do when you don’t have locks for days? Well, that’s where these hair pieces come in handy. After I made my first Zöpfe I did a bit more digging and some help from the lovely Countess Kisse I met at RUM this past year, I was given a boon of PDFs, one being “Textiler Hausrat : Kleidung und Haustextilien in Nürnberg von 1500-1650” by Jutta Zander-Seidel. Within this lovely and hard to get tome of awesome German goodness was this illustration:
Der Zöpfmacher (Braid Maker)
A. Braid. Maker. What’s up.
This guy’s whole profession was making false braids for people to wear these crazy hairstyles. You know what makes this picture even better? The braids are purple. Yep. It was like the clouds parted a little beam of purpley light shone forth on this pic and a voice said MAKE THIS and I said OKAY. These future purple Zöpfe are what I ended up making for my A&S entry at Crossroads. I managed to finish one set (of three pieces) and had the other three in the various stages of progress to show how my process. I found a tutorial on Germanrennaissance.net (which has a wealth of info as well as tutes) to make mine.
Part 2 Coming soon!