Going Byzantine Egyptian – Tunic

Part of my SCA reentry is that I am now interested in an entirely different area of history and arts. Additionally, much of my previous garb is worn out, doesn’t fit, or both. I no longer enjoy those clothes. As a result, I need to make some new ones that do bring me joy!

So, what should I make and what part of the world do I want to look at? I considered this for several months. Ultimately, I wanted to do something related to my craft interests. I am working on learning about historical basketry from northeastern Africa, and there are many well-preserved extant specimens from Egypt. Those are the techniques I am focusing on. As a result, it made sense to do something Egyptian.

I looked through time periods, art, and textile/clothing information and chose the first millennium CE (AD) as a loose window to start. This included late antiquity, early Byzantine, and early Islamic period in Egypt. That is when I discovered “Coptic tunics” with little tapestries as decoration and the excavation/looting of several burial sites, particularly those with early Christian cemeteries. This chapter by Tashia Dare in History of Applied Science & Technology: An Open Access Textbook gives a good overview of Coptic Textiles: https://press.rebus.community/historyoftech/chapter/coptic-textiles/

Coptic tunic: making choices

These tunics are your basic T-shaped garment with variations in the shaping of the neck opening and the sleeves. For brief discussion and example recreations, see Making Late Antique Clothing https://visualisinglateantiquity.wordpress.com/2014/05/16/making-late-antique-clothing/. There’s a great article giving an overview of the basic structure and showing how a tunic with the narrow sleeve style would look being worn here: Egyptian tunic from the 7th-8th century. Process of conservation at the V&A. https://nationalclothing.org/africa/67-egypt/474-egyptian-tunic-from-the-7th-8th-century-process-of-conservation-at-the-v-a.html

The designs I found most interesting mostly dated from around the 4th to 8th centuries CE. Many of these are woven all in one piece, but there are also examples of 3-piece construction where the top is a single piece and the front and back portions of the lower body are separate pieces sewn to the top with the seam hidden inside a waist tuck (a common method of shortening or fitting a tunic to a specific person without having to cut the fabric). For more on this, including a case study with excellent visuals, see Kwaspen, Anne, Reconstruction of a deconstructed tunic, in “Egyptian textiles and their production: ‘word’ and ‘object’” by Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert (2020). Zea E-Books Collection. 86. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook/86

Across the extant pieces I viewed in digitized museum catalogues, the embellishment consists primarily of vertical bands running from the shoulders down toward the feet (clavi), neckline decoration, bands and woven squares/circles along the sleeves and bottom of the body, and decoration and shaping of the sleeve cuffs. I noticed there are often lines of reinforcement in either the same color or a contrasting color to the base fabric running along places that will receive a lot of movement, such as along the sides of the armpit and where the sleeve transitions to the body.

Here are some examples from the Louvre of the general shape and style I decided to aim for:

What I Used, and Why

I decided to buy nothing to make this outfit — my supply stash is already larger than the space I have allocated for it, and I have plenty of good materials to choose from. I ended up making a lot of substitutions and improvisations in order to make everything using items I already had. (This ended up inspiring the “Buy Nothing” Project Challenge described in a previous post.)

Base structure: Although the examples above are all made with relatively neutral colored base fabric, there are plenty of examples of tunics made with dyed wool in a wide variety of colors. I chose a wine-colored linen to simulate this look. Since I would be cutting it to shape rather than weaving it to shape, I decided to use a spool of linen weaving yarn to ply up for cordage I could sew on to simulate the edge treatments incorporated during the weaving process. Likewise, I would have to sew in linen yarn for the reinforcing lines that would have been added during weaving, for which I chose a thicker, light pink color to contrast with the wine fabric.

Clavi: I needed to create something that looked reasonable for the clavi, and I didn’t want to do simple, solid stripes. I decided the most feasible option to evoke the feel of coptic weaving without actually fully weaving new bands was to use embroidery on dark wool that I would cut into strips to fake a brocade or flying shuttle look. I also had enough of the wool to do additional bands/blocks for the bottom of the tunic and the sleeves, which can be added later as I have time/desire to complete them.

Neckline: For the neckline, I decided to do a straight line opening edged with cut strips of woven fabric from a thrifted vest, which extended past the end of the neck opening out to the shoulders. I also chose some stash yarn to make into cord to sew along the edges.

Sleeves: I needed something for the sleeve embellishments, so I pulled out an unstitched woven silk tie in gold that I had been saving to cut up for trim. To edge the cuffs, I could use some of the linen cord made for edging the fabric.

Fringe: Finally, I wanted to make fringe for the bottom hem. I dug through my yarn options and settled on three colors that would do, and then I came up with a plan to weave up a plain tapestry band with twisted weft fringe hanging off one side. I wanted to get the look of the fringe at the bottom hem of some of the tunics, but I could not clearly see the weave structure of the fringe, so I decided to “wing it” and see what happened.

Details…

I will do separate posts on the process of constructing each of these tunic elements. A lot of the work was preparing the embellishments to go onto the base structure, so I ended up focusing on those parts first. It was nice to have a garb project with so many portable handwork steps. I also accidentally did way more research for this than I originally intended because the garments and accessories are fascinating, and there is a wealth of extant pieces spread across many museums. It looks like I will have to make a few more tunics to play with different design elements. And while I’m at it, I’m going to see how this tapestry weaving thing works out. I think I will enjoy that much more than other kind of weaving I have tried.

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