Coronation Clothing - 12th-13th century

First things first, I found a general site on sumptuary which I've already posted to my Ireland Research...
[http://scaireland.blogspot.com/2007/02/sumptuary-beginning.html]

Next, while searching for Irish Sumptuary, I found the following link to the Insignia of the Holy Roman Empire that I thought was really cool.




From what I've determined, the above pic is supposed to have been the sleeve cuff of Roger II's coronation dalmatic, which was one of the 12th century rulers. The pic to the right is the coronation mantle Roger II supposedly wore. The detail alone is simply amazing and from what I've gathered, this heavy red color is the "royal purple" of this age. The site has a lot more detail than I'm going to put here, but suffice to say this pieces is red silk with gold couching.

This last picture is a close-up detail of the mantle. It makes you wonder how many people were working on this pieces and how long it took them to produce it considering the gold couching covered vitually the entire piece and it was simply used for his coronation. Could you see going to that much work for something that was only to be worn once? Or am I simply assuming that because it was for his coronation, he never wore it again. Might be an interesting avenue of research.

At this site there are more pictures of the various aspects to his coronation clothing right down to his shoes and gloves. [http://rubens.anu.edu.au/raider4/austria/vienna/museums/schatzkammer/palermo_robes_12thc/]

Part of the first site shows various stitches which were used and their definitions (or why they were used) [http://medieval.webcon.net.au/technique_stitches.html]

This next picture is of Frederick II's coronation gloves from 1220. What I find most interesting about these is that the pearls used weren't all perfect. They were mishapen and unusual and imperfect. It's more the fact that they were pearls, not that they had the perfect round shape that we seem to crave today.