Recreating the felted riding cloak of Stephan Praun III was a exciting and challenging project. The cloak was a typical Spanish riding cloak of 1571. Museum featured few woven one, the Praun’s one was felted and the only one who survived and it is in exhibit in the German National Museum.
I had to felted a sheet of wool, then cut lay down the pattern like the Alcega’s draft. Cut the pieces. Doing the embellishments was fun and learned a lot. All of the embellishment, braids, buttons, tassels are dyed in dark teal ”bleu canard”, it was a very uncommon color at this period.
The process, I overdyed the silk by starting with the weld, then overdying it with woad. Dyed the buttons, braids, tassels and strings. Then I followed the sewing direction of tailor Mathew Gnagy in The
Modern Maker, vol 2.
Full Documentation, Including Additional Pictures
This is fantastic! Beautiful work, and I love the dye color you achieved for the braids. I also really enjoyed reading your documentation; it’s so interesting to learn about the historical context of this cloak. Thank you for sharing!
This is stunning Chellah
It makes me so happy when people are able to correspond with museums on objects in the collection. I really like the wonderful attention to detail here and the amount of work you put in to recreate this. In Trimaris this would be awarded what we call a “Non Pareil”, an award given at our A&S competitions for projects that could be indistinguishable in a museum. It is THAT good. I hope to see it in person someday!
-Magistrissa Anna Syrakousina, OL. Trimaris.
This is so beautiful! I loved reading the history of the extant item and the process you went through to make the cape. The felting process and your experimentation with different tools was particularly interesting.
Beautiful work! I was fortunate to see the cloak displayed at St. Eligius, so I know how lovely it is, and now I have a chance to read the documentation in detail. Your dyed trim is my favorite color of blue! Thank your for sharing your project with us.
This is a great project! Seeing it in person was even more impressive than the photos.
It’s very rare to have a specific item and to know who it belonged to. Having a portrait with him wearing what may be the same cape is even more rare. A wonderful find to work from and beautiful work as well.