20 000 little holes – a silk hairnet from the 1350s

15.11.2018 by Rotschopf in Clothing, Material culture, Textile work

3 years. That is how long I brought this stupid project along with me on every holiday and every event, doing a few loops at a time, then loosing motivation again, throwing it into a corner and picking it up again some time later. Now it is finally finished with a bit more than 20 000 knots.

The material is real silk from Marled Mader of Archäotechnik Textile Fläche, which I warmly recommend to buy for all your netting, embroidery, knitting and weaving projects. The thread size is 40/2 NM, but the originals are often made with even finer threads. The silk is dyed with Reseda/dyers broom.

I started with 50 loops per row and after 3 extention rows, the final rows counted 400 loops each.

You can see that there is also some smaller mistakes and unregularities in the net. I hope that most of them will still resolve over the wearing time because the loops still slightly move and will even out a bit.

I am not particularly fond of the middle part, where the start loops are held together. Although many of the originals show a fairly lazy finishing of the middle part, I am still thinking about how to finish it in a more esthetic way.

All in all it was not that much work. I calculated 40 hours in total at a rate of 7 seconds per loop if you just kept on knoting. But I probably won’t make another net in that fine loop size, the work is just too much for one project.

A bit more information on netting can be found in this article of mine.

It is bound with a fingerlooped silk nestle at the moment, but I intend to make a tablet woven edge for the net as in this extant hairnet from the Germanischen Nationalmuseum Nürnberg.

And I will also embelish it with embroidery since there is loads of extant originals that have that. It can be a very simple design as in the net from Germanisches Nationalmuseum, but also in a Bling-Blingy was, as in this find here which at first sight is pretty unspectacular, that is embroidered with gold -and silverthread (use the Zoom function!). How amazing must that have looked when the metal thread was still polished and glittery??

But for now, I am just happy with what I have and that my citzen’s wife has a suitable underpinning for her veil and the next project for more accessories for her is already in planing.

 

 

 

Zum Weiterlesen: 

A men’s hair net from the 14th century

Filet knitting or netting explained

Some ressources on netting

My pinterest collection on the topic

Related Posts

The following posts might interest you as well:

A new straw hat

After finally being lucky and finding new hat-straw at a reasonable price online, I could work on my favorite craft again, making hats. I did work quite a bit at the Medieval days Bad Windsheim, which I was invited to by German friends of mine as the “Newbie” of the event crew. I made a […]

A pearl in the fisherman’s net – a new hairnet adventure

In general I don’t really feel pretty in my historical costume. My impression is a simple one, my clothing is practical and made after historical sources. That is about as much as it needs to be and my modern esthetics needs to give. Everything for the hobby! But when I have to package my hair […]

Filet knitting/hairnet making

I just wanted to give you a little glimpse on a technique which is fairly new to me and which I am about to try out for the first time, filet knitting or netting. Unfortunately I could not find a lot of information about the technique in its medieval form. I was very impressed by […]