Fifteenth Century Italian "Split Loaf" Headress

Inspiration:  Piero della Francesca's frescos of the Queen of Sheba venerating the True Cross c. 1443

Front view

Date begun:  08/18/01

Side view

Back view

Stage 1.  The straw base.  The base was formed from the crowns of two $0.99 straw hats I bought at Michael's.  These are the "decorative hats meant for making decorations of some kind.  The straw plaits are sewn together and were easily taken apart.  The excess straw plaits can be wetted and re-shaped for other projects.  I used small amounts of the leftovers to make the two triangular "bridges" between the two "bumps".  The straw "bumps and the bridges were sewn together using cotton quilting thread

Stage 3:  Keeping it on my head.  This proved to be a little trickier than I first thought.  The first time I wore it, I wrapped a strip of white silk around my head on the assumption that the white edge you can see in the fresco is a band of fabric bende in Italian of the type you see on other ladies in the fresco.  The silk was too slippery and my hat went sliding around at the slightest provocation.  On my next wearing, I tried cotton bende. Cotton  worked much better!

Stage 2:  I covered the straw base with black stretch velveteen stitched into place.  The interior was lined in black plain cotton fabric.

It is my belief that the original headresses were made from felt wet-formed or steam-formed over a hat block..  Men's hats at this time came in many fanciful shapes which we know to have been made of felt.  It seems likely to me that the same technique was used

Notes and Caveats:
My "loaves" are shorter than the ones in Piero's fresco.  I made them a little shorter because I think they better suited the shape of my face.

This page was last updated 09/30/01