Photos for guidance only. Please contact me directly to order to discuss time-frame, your preferred colour and posting, particularly if you are overseas.
Think of this shop as more like a shop window from which you can place an order.
*Important information on Shipping/Insurance: due to the deceptively light weight of silk you may not wish to risk inadequate shipping/insurance for higher priced objects like girdle belts and hairnets. Please contact me and I can research the best and most cost-effective options.

Silk Lace long Kirtle five-loop ('round braid') - (approx 120-150cm long, colours currently available in stock pictured: grey and woad-dyed blue. Laces (five-loop round or flat) can be made in custom lengths and to your chosen colour. Please contact me for bespoke commissions.

A plain monochrome and period-accurate hand-braided lace for multiple uses both decorative and practical; on clothing and purses, as ribbons, wax seal appendages etc. Especially useful in sets for lacing 15th century hose to doublets, as no reliable evidence exists for lucet-made cords during this period.

Provenance: Museum of London braids 146-149 from London deposits of the late 12th to early 15th centuries and 'most of the braids from London appear to have been monochrome' and 'no dyestuffs have been positively identified' p.140 Textiles and Clothing c.1150-1450 Medieval Finds from Excavations in London, Crowfoot et al

*Additional note on aiglets and belt fittings: when working on commissions, what I do is to supply the silkwork but on request, I can also make aiglets of copper alloy, or send a period accurate buckle and strap-end from a reputable UK maker - at cost - ready for fitting with rivets.

Although we know that silkwomen made various types of braids, girdles and ‘corses’ (belts); we don’t have evidence as to whether these came as finished items (with aiglets, buckles and strap-ends) or whether the purchaser had to take them to a girdler to have these fitted. And there was a Girdler’s Guild. In St Eligius in His Workshop https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/45... (also known as The Goldsmith and the Young Couple) by Petrus Christus (Flemish, 1449: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) a sample short-section of wide girdle can be seen - look at the shelf in the goldsmith's shop, with a buckle, strap-end and three decorative mounts. A sumptuous red girdle lies across the counter spilling into the viewer’s space, and seems to be waiting its fittings.