[SCA-AE] Norris (was Re: minor period nazi)

[Jeannie Caffro]

Myfanwy makes a good point about Norris not citing sources, but his Tudor book at least is available, unlike most of the portrait books that I regularly work from.  The better source is Janet Arnold's book, although it is limited to the pieces she has actually looked at and drawn patterns for (most of which are not French).  The one book I have that is specifically on French costuming is out of print, is written in French, and deals with the later 1600s generally, so it won't help (the fashions had changed entirely too much).  
   
  But the Norris book is better than some of the other generic overview books; it deals specifically with Tudor fashions, and once you have an idea of the correct sillouette, you can hunt down portraits of the French royalty to see what they are wearing - the main differences are in the hats and sleeves.
   
  Madeleine
  

Ruth Morrisson <myfanwy at nauticom.net> wrote:
  Greetings from Myfanwy!
Norris is both a good and a bad source. I'm not as familiar with that 
volume as with the Medieval one, but he has a really bad habit of 
redrawing stuff and not necessarily saying where it's from. Try 
looking at the medieval one sometime -- his picture of the women in 
that really famous picture from the Luttrell psalter, wearing heraldic 
sideless surcotes, makes them look like 20s-era chorus girls!
Ironically, a quarter of a century ago (i.e., back when I joined the 
SCA) people kept hoping that Dover would reprint the series to make 
them affordable; by the time Dover did, Norris was no longer considered 
the best available documentation.