Curtching Experiment

 Well, I took the plunge and made an attempt at the curtch!

Highland Wedding at Blair Athol, 1780 by David Allen

This was the painting I settled on to really study. It's a detail from Highland Wedding by David Allen, but other genre paintings from around the same timeframe feature a similar way of wearing the curtch, namely David Wilkie's Penny Wedding of 1818. This one worked for me though, so I worked from it.

I think her curtch is three layers. I say think, because there's no extant evidence available online anywhere...trust me, I have looked. I am working from the thought of wearing multiple layers of cap when I do 17thC living history stuff, but also veil wearing in the late medieval period, and also what/how modern veil wearing folks do. It's a best guess at this point, but it's my working theory and I wanted to see how well it would work.

I began with a forehead cloth found in the Manchester City Galleries collection Accession #2003.100/2. This one is from the mid 17thC, and the latest extant artifact of it's type I could find.

This is a tidy bit of using up linen pieces, and really could be from the scrap bin. For mine, I cut a rectangle from an old shift that I have been repurposing, and cotton 1/4" tailor's tape. In about an hour, I had a forehead cloth. I kept mine plain, without lace. The other pieces I used for my layering were my lappet cap and a square of hemmed, lightweight linen to use as the actual curtch.

I started by putting my hair up in a secure fashion to support my layers.

My bun has a cheap, dollar store hair support in it, I don't make thick enough hair on my own.

The next step was to add the forehead cloth...

I crossed the ties at the nape of my neck, then up around my bun and tied on top. Not pretty, might need a bit more fussing at this stage, I am not sure.

Then came my lappet cap, anyone who has done any late eighteenth-century living history likely has, or has seen one of these, they are ubiquitous...

So, I donned my cotton neckerchief from Burnley and Trowbridge, a gift from Laura and Angela that was perfect for this impression, don't you think? And added the final layer, the curtch itself. A large square of hemmed linen, folded into a triangle. I pulled folds from the ears and pinned with a small ring brooch at my chin, that's it, that's all for pins. Pierre played with folding my front points back over my shoulders to give two different looks. I am wearing my blue wool gown, surprised that everything still fit after a year of Covid and not being dressed.

So the verdict is, this works! It gave me the same look as the lady in the painting above, and in other genre paintings I have seen. It Did Not Move! The entire night of me moving around, cooking, doing dishes, eating, and all that. I say the experiment was a raging success!

Now to write a paragraph for the dissertation...