The Earth Is Flat: & Other Dressmaking Conventions: 2019

Strangely, for a girl who's SCA persona is Venetian, I am quite familiar with the Elizabethan style of gloves with large and heavily ornamented cuffs extending above the wrists, but know nothing about Italian gloves. The early sixteenth century Italian gloves depicted in my source image (Titian's Sacred and Profane Love) are clearly of another style in ornamentation, at least, and required that I look at the question of period gloves with fresh eyes.

These gloves appear to be simple leather gloves in a natural beige/grey color. Just slightly above wrist-length when worn, they appear to be ornamented by turning half the depth of an approximately 2" wrist extension inside out so the former hem is now placed at the wrist and the flesh side of the leather is exposed. I believe the resulting folded cuff of leather was then slashed from the folded edge towards the wrist, perpendicularly to the fold, in small evenly spaced slashes made appoximately 3/4 inches apart.

I love it that they look like they would be really easy to make by simply reworking a pair of commercialy available gloves, but I wanted to do some research to confirm the plausibility of my interpretation before I got started making my own.

I started my investigations by looking up gloves in the Linkspages at Larsdatter.com's collection of links related to examples of Medieval and Renaissance Material Culture.

http://www.larsdatter.com/gloves.htm

In truth, I started and stopped my investigation there, because scanning the list for Italian depictions and viewing the linked materials turned up more examples than I expected, 5 of which meet my criteria for similarity of style and clarity of construction information provided. It seems folded and slashed cuffs on leather gloves were a thing in Renaissance Italy and possibly elsewhere.

Paolo CAVAZZOLA, Verona 1486 – 1522
Portrait of a lady [Ritratto di gentildonna] c.1515-17
oil on canvas
96.4 (h) x 74.2 (w) cm

https://nga.gov.au/exhibition/renaissance/default.cfm?IRN=202404&BioArtistIRN=37006&MnuID=3&GalID=5&ViewID=2

The Lute Player
* The lute-player (St. Mary Magdalene?), first half of the 16th century

http://previous.bildindex.de/bilder/mi00272a06a.jpg

TITIAN
TIZIANO Vecellio
(b. 1490, Pieve di Cadore, d. 1576, Venezia)
Man with a Glove
1520-22
Oil on canvas, 100 x 89 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

https://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/t/tiziano/10/21/06gloves.html

Moretto da Brescia, 1526
A Man

https://www.wga.hu/art/m/moretto/portr_m.jpg

Agnolo Bronzino
Florentine, 1503 - 1572
A Young Woman and Her Little Boy
c. 1540
oil on panel
overall: 99.5 x 76 cm (39 3/16 x 29 15/16 in.)
framed: 134.6 x 111.1 x 6.7 cm (53 x 43 3/4 x 2 5/8 in.)
Widener Collection
1942.9.6
On View: West Building, Main Floor - Gallery 21

https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.1143.html

Based on these examples I would speculate that in this period gloves were made to extend several inches up the arm, and adjusted to suit the wearer by folding and slashing. Whether these adjustments were made for matters of taste, fit, or both, remains to be seen, but I lean towards the last option. At any rate, I searched the internet for a plain glove in a smooth, fine, tan leather, that extended up the arm a bit. Easy peasy. The gloves I purchased had a built in lining so my first task was a bit of disassembly.

After cutting the lining away from the leather near the wrist I pulled on the lining which turned the gloves inside-out because the
the two layers were sewn together at the tips of the fingers and thumb.

I cut through the stiches and removed the lining.

My gloves also had elastic gathering the leather at the side seams to give a ruched effect to the wrist area of the glove.
I reccomend removing the elastic by cutting it along the seamline and pulling the fragments gently away. If you are lucky that will leave the original side seams intact.