Brawnfire posted:

Olmec heads wore kangol hats

exquisite tea posted:

In the rare instances where the paint was preserved all those Roman statues look fukkin' goofy as hell so that's a win for entropy in my book.

exquisite tea posted:

In the rare instances where the paint was preserved all those Roman statues look fukkin' goofy as hell so that's a win for entropy in my book.

The Moon Monster posted:

Decorative taste for most of history in most cultures was what modern people would consider guady as hell. People with the money to plaster every inch of their wall with brightly colored paintings of dragons or bible scenes or gold scrollwork or whatever tended to do so. I guess when that kind of look started becoming attainable for the middle class faux-austere went more in vogue.

MokBa posted:

Sucrose posted:

Probably similar to how fashion among the European upper classes for hundreds of years was to drape yourself in an absolute poo poo-ton of fabric, until textiles got so cheap that anyone could do it at which point that fashion abruptly stopped.

the holy poopacy posted:

As I understand it, those are best-guess recreations based on and subject to the limits of forensic archaeology. There are surviving Roman paintings (frescoes in particular) that demonstrate a high degree of technical proficiency even among nobody artists, so there's no particular reason to expect that they painted their expensive statues to look like clowns. More likely the paint traces that get picked up represent a base color that probably had shading applied to produce a more reasonable effect.

quote:

“I have twice followed this regime,” Goodman reports. “The first time was for a period of just over three months, while living in modern society. No one noticed!” The second period was during the filming of Tudor Monastery Farm, when she “engaged in heavy labor and also lurking around an open fire.” This extra exertion produced a “slight smell, but it was mostly masked by the much stronger smell of woodsmoke.” The film crew, she maintains, found her aroma “acceptable.” In both cases, she observed, not only did her skin remain in “good condition” but it actually seemed to improve. As a sort of control, a colleague of Goodman’s experimented with showering every day while wearing the same clothes, unwashed, for several months, and “the smell was overpowering.” Therefore, Goodman concludes, “the 16th-century belief in the cleansing power of linen turns out in practice to have some truth to it.”

Pookah posted:

There's a British historian/re-enactor, Ruth Goodman, who specializes in making and wearing authentic copies of early modern clothing, and as a result, has some very interesting insights into to how practical and functional things that seem very restrictive to us really were.
She also spent months at a time following the Tudor-period hygiene rules - no bathing, instead using linen cloths to scrub the body, plus changing all linen underclothes every day. Part of this time was when she was also doing heavy farm-work all day, so it's not like she wasn't getting grubby.

from a slate article of her book "How to be a Tudor"

Pookah posted:

There's a British historian/re-enactor, Ruth Goodman, who specializes in making and wearing authentic copies of early modern clothing, and as a result, has some very interesting insights into to how practical and functional things that seem very restrictive to us really were.
She also spent months at a time following the Tudor-period hygiene rules - no bathing, instead using linen cloths to scrub the body, plus changing all linen underclothes every day. Part of this time was when she was also doing heavy farm-work all day, so it's not like she wasn't getting grubby.

from a slate article of her book "How to be a Tudor"

Precambrian posted:

I think this is also misread a lot—in the 13th Century, being able to dedicate the considerable daily time to hair care was a sign of leisure, and a private bath, unlike the washbasins and public baths that poor folks used, demands a lot of hauling water and firewood for only a single person's benefit. It's a lot of work before plumbing! And to do it weekly is even more time-consuming. As a result, they're both signifiers of being wealthy and having enough thralls that they could be assigned to non-productive tasks like drawing a bath. So it's less "Medieval Englishmen were smelly and gross!" and more "Our colonizers are wealthy and powerful, and can leverage that to further humiliate and belittle us." It's something the British would later turn around and aggressively use themselves, using wealth and power to create a narrative of hygiene to show moral (and racial) superiority over their colonized subjects.

BioEnchanted posted:

We have that kind of tradition in England if a shower breaks and we need to quickly clean ourselves - we call it a flannel bath (as that's what we call a wash cloth). Run some water, put soap on the flannel and wipe everything down like your polishing furniture.

The Moon Monster posted:

Decorative taste for most of history in most cultures was what modern people would consider guady as hell. People with the money to plaster every inch of their wall with brightly colored paintings of dragons or bible scenes or gold scrollwork or whatever tended to do so. I guess when that kind of look started becoming attainable for the middle class faux-austere went more in vogue.

Torquemada posted:

Isn't this attributable to the scarcity of pigments in general, as well as an extremely limited palette of colours? For example, there used to be only one purple, and it came from some mollusc in the Mediterranean, I heard somewhere.

the holy poopacy posted:

As I understand it, those are best-guess recreations based on and subject to the limits of forensic archaeology. There are surviving Roman paintings (frescoes in particular) that demonstrate a high degree of technical proficiency even among nobody artists, so there's no particular reason to expect that they painted their expensive statues to look like clowns. More likely the paint traces that get picked up represent a base color that probably had shading applied to produce a more reasonable effect.

Pachylad posted:

As one of the few people that spends roughly equal time on TVTropes and SA, it's more accurate to characterise Tropers these days as Goons not allowed to be as openly antagonistic, so they channel all that rage into be Wikipedian-style rules lawyers about the minute distinction between tropes.

Torquemada posted:

Isn't this attributable to the scarcity of pigments in general, as well as an extremely limited palette of colours? For example, there used to be only one purple, and it came from some mollusc in the Mediterranean, I heard somewhere.

Torquemada posted:

On the linens thing, my wife is a history of fashion nerd, and absolutely will not shut up about women wearing corsets next to their skin in films and tv shows. Everyone wore cheap plain relatively shapeless stays or undershirts that they could wash roughly, because outer garments were never washed, especially anything with colour or detail.

Fighting Trousers posted:

Nothing sends me into a nerd rage like women in historical movies wearing corsets against their bare skin. Yes, I get that you think it's ~sexy~, movie people, but it's no wonder actresses are always complaining about how uncomfortable corsetry is because you make them wear it wrong!

Macdeo Lurjtux posted:

There were more temporary ways to create purple dyes. There are scrolls from Rome talking about a growing concern of counterfeit purples being used by the lower classes. It couldn't be used in high society because true Tyrian Purple had a telltale smell. Part of the procedure was soaking the clothing in urine for two weeks.

Leave posted:

Is there supposed to be an undershirt or something beneath the corset?

Leave posted:

Is there supposed to be an undershirt or something beneath the corset?

Leave posted:

Is there supposed to be an undershirt or something beneath the corset?

The Moon Monster posted:

Decorative taste for most of history in most cultures was what modern people would consider guady as hell. People with the money to plaster every inch of their wall with brightly colored paintings of dragons or bible scenes or gold scrollwork or whatever tended to do so. I guess when that kind of look started becoming attainable for the middle class faux-austere went more in vogue.

HopperUK posted:

I saw a youtube video once about how incredibly accurate the costuming is in Muppet Christmas Carol. Right down to the Cratchits' clothing being about ten years out of date.

HopperUK posted:

I saw a youtube video once about how incredibly accurate the costuming is in Muppet Christmas Carol. Right down to the Cratchits' clothing being about ten years out of date.

FouRPlaY posted:

If you can dig it up, I'd love to see it