313 (31)

285

Lace Chapes

Two forms of chape were defined at North-ampton (Oakley 1979, 262-63): Oakley’s type 1 corresponds with those having edge-to-edge seams, (the second category there, with a fold along each seam, appears to be of post-medieval datę, and is unrepresented among the medieval London finds); no chapes with overlapping seams like no. 1445 are mentioned in the Northampton report. There is apparently a greater variation in length among the late-medieval chapes in Northampton than among the London finds.

Some excavated chapes in the Museum of London (Costume Dept. collection) are still attached to silken thread, which is plaited into both tubular and fiat laces. In several instances the complete lace survives, with a chape at each end (fig 181). The available indications suggest that these particular items may be somewhat later than the chapes in this present study, but they are the ordy complete excavated laces with typologically identical chapes so far traced in this country. While a slightly later datę (?16th century) may mean that they have no direct

185 Devil with laced gown, 12th century (after Winchester Psalter)

bearing on the chapes described above, one of these previously unpublished examples is illus-trated here, because of the fixed reference point they provide. The items in the Museum’s collection include:- a group of ten laces, all approx. 30.5mm in length, and another incomplete exam-ple (no acc. nos.): examples found at Moorfields, attributed to the 16th century (former Guildhall Museum collection) - acc. no. 22491, (not plaited, but a tabby-woven ribbon) incomplete; acc. nos. 22493-4, two incomplete laces, each with a single chape, one being knotted at the free end (perhaps these originally went together as one lace): further unnumbered, complete laces vary in length between 260 and 370mm: a lace 390mm long retains a chape at one end and the other is frayed.

A gross of ‘poynts of red leather’ listed in a London haberdasher’s inventory of 1378 has been cited as the earliest traced reference to these items (Cunnington and Cunnington 1973, 108), but twelve dozen silk cords for tying on aillettes appear in a record of purchases of horse trappings for a toumament at Windsor in 1278 (Lysons 1814, 299), and a 1343-44 Great Wardrobe account mentions two corsets fastened with silken laces and points (cum . . . punctibus -Newton 1980, 25 - here the chapes seem to have been noted specifically). See also on a London agletmakere involved in a dispute in 1365 (Veale 1969, 143), a mention by Chaucer (cited in Nevinson 1977, 38), the inventory of the stock of a London glove and purse maker from 1396 (Veale 1969, 144-45), and the poyntes noted in a Wardrobe account of Richard II (Baildon 1911, 514), for other 14th-century references. A devil illustrated in the 12th-century Winchester Psalter is wearing a long gown laced at the front (fig 185) - one end of the lace, with a possible chape, seems to be shown in this highly stylised illumina-tion (Wormald 1973, pl 21 folio 18; the garment is discussed by Staniland - 1969, 10-13). Fifteenth-century continental-European illustrations depict laces, in some instances with chapes clearly visible, in women’s dress at the front of the bodice (and on sleeves?), and in mens dress attaching sleeves and hose to the body garment, and also on the cod-piece. The Marienaltar paint-ing of 1460-65 by the Master of the Marienleben (National Gallery inventory no. 706) seems to show a belt with two narrow pendent thongs at