Laurel cloak: Mistress Ygraine of Kellswood

I answered the phone and heard Li King Lo drop into bartering mode, with flowery praises of my work and promises of good barter if I would undertake a project.  While I  generally trust Li Kung Lo, one never makes an agreement with a Chinese/Turkoman without counting ones rings and fingers before and after cutting a deal, so I pressed him for more details.  He finally told me that he wished to commision a Pelican cloak for his lady, Mistress Ygraine of Kellswood.

I think I confounded him a bit when I immediately agreed and only let him reimburse me for materials. Now if he had realized that a number of us admire Ygraine’s work enough to fight over who got to make her cloak, then I would have been in trouble. I probably would have ended up paying him for the right to make her cloak...

Laurel coat: Master Yevsha

For the Laurelling of Master Yevsha, Rose otter requested that I help her to prepare a coat in the russian style with pearl and gold cord decorations.  Working from a set of documentation of period styles of pearl and cord decorations, I drew up designs and patterns for the following coat and its decorations.  It is made of red wool, decorated with freshwater pearls and gold cord from my never ending spool.

Mistress Rose Otter did a wonderful job taking my design and decorating the back panel, the decorations I did on the sleeves and front are less impressive.

Laurel cloak: Mistress Rose Otter

When Rose Otter was being given her Laurel, none of us knew that she was apprenticed to Dame Elayne Courtney, and thus when I enthusiastically volunteered to design and make her cloak, I was handed the project. Drawing on her name for inspiration the following cloak was created. The cloak is a lovely deep forest green milton wool that I had been hoarding for almost fifteen years, the yellow leaves  and red rose bases are 20% cashmere, 80% wool and very soft and the brown base for the otters is 80% cashmere and 20% mink.  The gold trim is of course from my never ending spool of gold trim. (Ok, ok, it is only 1000 yards.)

My original otter drawing was reworked by Mistress Lucretzia Franceschina Andreini, who felt they were too heraldic and not “otterlike” enough. The embroidery on the otters was done by Mistress Lucretzia, Lady Angelina of the Wild Roses and Lady Morwenna Westerne.

Laurel Robe: Mistress Lucrezia Franceschina Andreini

My first journeyman Lucrezia Franceschina Andreini received her Laurel in costuming on the same day as her Lord, William the Alchemist received his for his work in astronomy.  Working from a pattern in Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion, and taking the decorative idea from a set of chair backs documented in The Hartwick Hall Trasures, I prepared the following gown for her out of a red cotton velvet.  The black decorations were added using a stencil and thinned black paint to stain the velvet. The pattern was then outlined using my endless spool of gold cord. The roundels are white velvet with green and brown embroidery.

Assistance was provided by Lady Christine du Pont, Lord Lionel Blackheath, Lady Ki Lin, Lady Angelina of the Wild roses and Lady Morwenna Westernne.

While we were working on hers, Lucrezia was busy with William's cape.  Working from an Albrecht Durer woodcut which shows the astrological view of the  heavens as seen by a god looking down on the earth from above, Lucretzia  embroidered and beaded his cloak with faux pearls. Though the constellations  appear "backwards," it is accurate in both the location
of the starts and the  visable magnitude of the stars, the latter indicated by the size of the pearl sewn for each star.  There is an additional star attached via a pin, meant to represent the star in Cassiopia that went supernova at the end of the 16th Century.

Also of note is William’s Laurel medallion, which is a working bronze armilary sphere prepared by Master Fryderick Eisenkopf and Lord Lionel Blackheath.  The tolerances on it are so tight that it must be oiled for it to turn.  This gave Fryderick and Lionel a couple of bad moments after they had used a sonic bath to clean it and it stopped turning. A couple drops of oil and it was working again.