Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #103871 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 528 pages

Synopsis
A facsimile edition of Costume and Fashion: Senlac to Bosworth published by J. M. Dent, London, in 1927. It was the second in a projected six-volume series that renowned costume architect and archaeologist Norris completed only four of before his death in 1950. He describes various garments and accessories, illustrates them with line drawings, demo

Customer Reviews

Yes, this is "the" Norris resource, finally reprinted!
Mr. Herbert Norris's work has long been a staple for members of the SCA and anyone else who may be interested in costume history to one degree or another. Anyone with a complete set of the original books could count themselves fortunate indeed as they were nigh upon unobtainable, until now. This book has many pen and ink illustrations of everything from shoes to jewelry to decoration and also many good drawings of construction for various types of garb--male and female. This is a book that the experienced seamstress can make use of, it does not go into construction details, it generally just shows you where the seams were! For a book originally published in 1927, line drawings were the norm (approximately 16 glossy color drawings are included in the center of this book--many apparently drawn by Norris himself--I don't recall if these appeared in the original work). If you are looking for hard historical fact--you may find this work a bit lacking. It's a quick reference work--use pictures of original sources to back it up, but I've always found Norris's drawings to be quite reasonable fascimilies. Dover claims that this is an unabridged text, however, at my first quick glance through this rather fat paperback, I have my doubts that all of the illustrations were included that are in the original volumes. This book is the original volume two of the series according to the cover text. If there's anyone out there with an original set I'd love to see a write up to see if you believe it's really unabridged here!

Good book, but I prefere original, medieval illustrations.
This is a good and fairly thorough book, going through medieval costume from ca. 1000 AD to ca. 1500.

The only problem is that it is from 1927, and therefor miss all newer research (e.g. the costumes from Bocksten, Sweden and . The illustrations are 1927's interpretations of medieval art, fairly good, but I would rather have the original illuminations.

Once a staple, but no longer...
Norris is a good look at how people in the 20's looked at costume history. At one time it was all that was available for the re-creationist and re-enactor. And now, the only reason to have a copy of Norris is for the descriptions of garments no longer in existence. Remember, he was writing prior to WWII. However, with all the great books that have been written in recent decades that include photos of extant pieces and actual portraiture from the period, I would avoid Norris until you need some light costume reading. The illustrations are very "Gibson Girl", silhouettes are all wrong and Norris was not a tailor, so his descriptions are very rudimentary. A good art book will give you better information!