A set of embrodiered silk clothes, made up of a kirtle, a gown, and a cloak

Inspiration and sources for the cloak

This outfit all started with me reading the so-called Möttuls saga for a presentation I did at Leeds Medieval Congress on materiality in Arthruian legends. Möttuls saga, the Tale of the Mantle, was probably based on the Old French Le Cort Mantel, and was adapted into Old Norse  by a  cleric known as Brother Robert, probably of Anglo-Norman origin, for King Haakon IV of Norway (1217–1263).

The Norse text can be found in its entirety here.

The tale is about a wondrous cloak which tests the fidelity and virtue of the woman who wears it, and the story in the Norse version is rather comic and somewhat bawdy. The cloak is very beautiful; made from red silk and is gold embroidered all over with leaves. it is held together with cloak ties and if the woman wearing it is virtuous, it should reach all the way to the floor. A man brings the cloak to the court of King Arthur and demands that all women at court should try it on.Unsurprisingly all but one of the women at King Arthur's court fall short in this test; the cloak is either too short or too long, and often both at the same time, indicating, according to the tale, in which position the woman had been unfaithful.

So much about the story, but when I worked with this material I felt a very strong urge to have such a cloak, though without the magic. Silk cloaks are not unheard of in medieval Scandinavia, I found three in Norwegian documents when I did my PhD dissertation:

* One, is in a woman's will from 1349, and it is made from blue silk and has skillmala, an unidentified type of ornament. Link to the document.

* One, from 1353, has no mention of colour, but was lined with ermine and edged with sable and also had lade, a word that means woven or embroidered trim. This is a man's will, but it also contains items of women's clothign, so the cloak may also be a woman's cloak. Link to the document.

* The latest one, is in a document dividing posessions between a brother and a sister on the occasion of her wedding in  1366. This cloak was given to the woman, was green, lined and edged with ermine and had gold ornaments made in Norway (norröna). These were probably cloak clasps, since bezants, the metal ornaments so common in medieval fashion were usually silver or gilt silver. Link to the document.

Cloaks from this period were semi-circular - one such cloak was found during excavations in the church of Leksand in Sweden. The cloak, which is dated to the 12th or 13th century, was made from a diamond twill wool and had a border of woven trim along the straight edge of the semi-circle. This cloak was probably long enough to reach to the wearer’s feet in the back ( Nockert, Margareta: ’Textilfynden’,  in Tusen år på Kyrkudden, red. Birgitta Dandanell, Falun 1982). Weaver and textile artist Kirsi Manni has recently made a reconstruction of the Leksand cloak. It is this far only published in VÄV Magasinet, nr 4, 2023, but you can see it in a Facebook post here.

The fabric and the embroidery

I chose to follow the description in the courtly romance and bought a silk taffeta in red shot with pink. Plain red would of course have worked as well, but I found this taffeta at a reasonable price.

I started with embrodering the front border, using "gold" thread, with a strip of metal wound around a yellow thread, which I am couching down with yellow silk, green silk embroidery floss, and white sewing silk.   I started it in September 2019, got severe burnout, and took it up again in Spetmber 2023

Finished border, October 2023

As you can see the cloak isn't semi-circular yet, I added the lower part later.

I started with embroidering lfowers all over, and then designed the foliage after all the flowers were there. I use fabric paint to make white dots  where the flowers should be. Since I was going to handle the fabric a lot I wanted something permanent.

The whole cloak, with all the flowers, December 2023

Then I started on the stems , again I drew the shape first with pencil and then with textile paint.

I used split stich, and all the six strands of teh silk floss, to make it fill better/faster.

Then I added the leaves.

All of teh embroidery was finished in December 2023, and with some serious pieceing of  thrifted silk taffeta shot in blue and green I manage to make a lining for it.

The cloak is closed with ties and has brass ornaments where the ties are connected. I might change them for something fancier later.

Adding a  kirtle and a surcoat

With the mantle finished, insanity struck me, and I decided that I wanted a whole set of clothes from this silk taffeta. 

While people were exceedingly fond of contrasting colours in the Middle Ages, coordinated sets were also common. I have written about that here and here, discussing the phenomenon in general, and the trosseau of Isabella de Bruce from 1293. Matching cottes, surcoats and cloaks are also commonly seen in early and mid. 14th century art, in this post I delve deeper into that.

The kirtle was finished in January 2024, and  is made with gores in the sides and one at the back. Silk taffeta is a really stiff material compared to most wools, and doesn't drape well, so it looked really wrong with just side gores. Luckily I had enough fabric to add another gore at the back.

The sleeves are embroidered with gold and silk. Embroidery along the sleeve seam is very common in early 14th century Italian art, for example this painting by Giotto from 1304-06

I decided, again going Italian, that the surcoat should be split at the sides. I have written a long post with documentation about surcoats with split sides here. 

It is embroidered with  flowers all over, and like the kirtle it has a smaller version of the front borders from the cloak at the cuffs, but also around the neck. Although I originally planned to have the same borders along the open sides I dedcided against it in the end and just added two rows of couched gold thread, similar toi what I did at the neck of the kirtle. I had put some of the embroidered flowers too close to the edge. It was all finished in September 2024. One year after I started it again, or five years after I did the first 90 cm of the border on the cloak and then put it all away,

And here ends the Tale of the Mantle. All I need now is to wear it at an event.