The more you look...

I've been looking, again, at headwear in medieval women - a thing I already did what feels like ages ago. Back then, I ended up with a reconstruction on how to do a barbe and fillet that I found satisfactory. I also looked at headscarves or kerchiefs or however you want to call them.

There's so, so many of these images in manuscripts that it's probably impossible to look at them all. Many of them show similar styles, with some rather typical arrangements of the ends of the headwear, and typical arrangements of the folds - so it seems like there were a few more or less common types, or common (or similar) ways to arrange the cloth on the head.

In some cases, you can see very nice regular folds on the forehead and at the sides. My interpretation of this is sewn-in folds - which will form a rectangular piece of fabric into something more bowl-shaped so it will fit (and sit) nicely. I've sewn folds into my headcloth for a long time now, and it really works very well.

But then, there's also images like this:

The image is from the Evangeliar Heinrichs d. Löwen und Mathildes von England (Cod. Guelf. 105 Noviss. 2°), and there's a lot of similar headdresses in there. Which makes me wonder... what material was used? How would you get folds like this? How are they fixed? Is that cloth tucked behind one ear, or is it just coincidence? So many questions.

Some trials may have been going on here... I've not arrived at a good solution yet, though.