Apron Research, 16th century

I need an apron for my Tudor attire, and decided some research was in order. Aprons are mentioned in The Tudor Tailor, but without much detail about construction (but with some great data on color).  The period image in the book shows a white half apron, of which the waistband is completely obscured.  So, I started look around for additional sources. The Medieval Tailor's Manual gives instructions for a basic rectangular apron, encased in a self-fabric waistband.  This would be easy to make, but I wanted more information about how aprons were actually constructed before starting.

Objectives/Research Questions

• What kind of aprons appear in period artwork? Are they half aprons (covering from the waist down), aprons with bibs (over the bodice), or a mixture?
• What shape do the apron 'skirts' take (rectangle, rounded, half-circle)?
• How full are the aprons? How is this handled at the waist (attached smoothly, gathered, gauged)?
• What is the waistband made of (tapes, cord, fabric)?
• How is the apron fastened (ties, cord, buttons)?

Paintings and Illustrations

These are my main sources of information, particularly occupational/genre paintings showing working people. With thanks to several artists named Pieter, and all the meticulous limners producing Books of Hours in the early 16th century. And everyone who scanned them!

Brugel's Prudence includes at least two women and one men wearing half-aprons [click link for larger image]. The women's waistbands are hidden by their arms, but we can see that the top corners of both aprons are fluttering free, not attached to the waistband. It's not certain that the center is sewn to the waistband versus being tucked into it, but whatever the form of attachment is, its occurring at the top center of the apron 'skirt'.

Prudence (1559) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Bruegel's paintings give more apron-wearing figures, and in color.  In The Peasant Dance, we see a child wearing a blue/green half-apron that covers the front and sides of her skirt. Beside her, a woman wears a white half-apron, with either a black waistband or a black belt over the waistband; the corners for the white apron are loose, and appear to almost meet in the back, while a purse hangs from the waistband/belt over the apron:

Detail from Bruegel's The Peasant Dance (c.1567).
Via The Atheneum.

Another woman in the same painting has a white apron either attached to a dark band or to a very narrow cord (the waistband itself disappearing from view):

Detail from Bruegel's The Peasant Dance (c.1567).
Via The Atheneum.

Wedding Dance in the Open Air includes many women wearing white aprons. Those in the foreground show the same attributes as the other Bruegel aprons: white, rectangular half-aprons with disappearing bands and loose back corners. These aprons appear to be attached smoothly to the waist (whether band, cord, or somehow tucked into the bodice), with no gathering or pleating of extra fullness:

Wedding Dance in the Open Air (1566)
Via The Atheneum.

Brugel's Children's Games, shows more of these half aprons with free corners, as well as two possible bibbed aprons. Two of the green half-aprons:

Detail from Children's Games by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1560)
From The Atheneum.

The child on the viewer's right appears to have a white pinafore (or bibbed apron with straps) underneath her green half-apron with the corners flowing free. Another detail from the painting appears to show such a garment without the half-apron over it:

Detail from Children's Games by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1560)
From The Atheneum.

Pieter Aertsen's paintings show blue and white aprons much like Bruegel's. Again, most of the figures as posed in ways that obscure the waistbands:

The Fat Kitchen: An Allegory by Pieter Aertsen
From The Atheneum

Aertsen's 1563 A Kitchen Scene has a child wearing a white half-apron, and an adult woman possibly wearing a white bibbed apron with a belt over it.  Another long, white, rectangular half-apron appears on a background figure in Market Scene (1560-1565), and more half-aprons in the background of Peasants By the Hearth (1560).

Aertsen's two paintings of female cooks show some better apron detail. In the one, the cook's dark apron has free-hanging corners, and a narrow band around the waist continues past the apron skirt. In the other, the front apron material is bunched, as though under tension, and the apron itself clearly has no waistband visible at the center front. It's possible that this apron doesn't have a waistband all around, but instead has ties or a partial waistband connected to the skirt piece, and extending around the back (this could be true for both aprons--we don't see both front and back on any one figure).

The Cook (c.1559) by Pieter Aertsen
From The Atheneum

Cook in Front of the Stove (1559) by Pieter Aertsen

From The Atheneum.

Aertsen's The Pancake Bakery (1560) has a brown apron which also appears to have this top-front wrinkling and no visible waistband; it also has a blue version of the Bruegel probably-bibbed-apron, this time worn by an elderly woman. For more Aertsen apron-fun, see Market Woman (1567); Farmer's Feast (1550) has both women and men wearing aprons, with one of the latter wearing his tied in front. Preparations for a Feast (c.1550-1575), shows two women working in a kitchen wearing ruffs: the woman in the foreground has a gathered apron, with a fairly narrow tape or fabric waistband, with the woman in the background also has a relatively wide fabric or tape waistband:

Preparations for a Feast (c.1550-1575) by Pieter Aertsen
From The Atheneum.

The most clear image I've found of a wide-ish waistband, is actually in the c.1500 Book of Hours of Henry VIII. The June illustration shows two women raking hay:

Detail of haymakers (June) in the Hours of Henry VIII.
From the Morgan Library and Museum.

 Both women wear rectangular white aprons, as well as coifs or rails over their hair and sleeve-less kirtles (one back-laced and one front-laced) over long-sleeved smocks. The blue-clad woman's apron appears to have a waistband; the woman in pink's apron has a waistband tied in the back. The bow appears to be in the waistband itself, which is either of fabric or wide white band.

The January page also shows a woman wearing an apron. Only a faint white line is visible for the waistband, suggesting a narrow tape or cord.  Although the woman's back is almost fully to the viewer, no bow is visible.  If not a neglected detail, this may suggest an apron tied in front.

Detail of woman before a fire (January) in the Book of Hours of Henry VIII.
From the Morgan Library and Museum.

In another illustration from the same book, a shepherdess spinning in the foreground of the Annunciation wears a rectangular, white half-apron with no waistband visible.  Like the haymaker in the blue-kirtle, this could be depicting a style where the apron is sewn smoothly to the waistband, rather than being gathered (or otherwise put on full).  Alternatively, we could be dealing with an artist's stylized version of a garment.  The figure's arm covers her side, obscuring a hint of the waistband there, but her posture requires that the white square 'apron' be attached somewhere.

The Annunciation, from the Book of Hours of Henry VIII.
From the Morgan Library and Museum.

Another apron appears in the illustration of St. Nicholas, but the figure's waist is completely obscured.  Like the others in the book, however, this apron appears to be a white, rectangular half-apron, and likely is attached to a band with little or no fullness.

In the Bruges Book of Hours, we get more white, rectangular half aprons.  The milkmaid in the foreground of April, again, has an obscured waist, but her apron appears to be put on with some fullness, resulting in a series of vertical lines/pleats down the front.

Detail of milkmaids (April), the Bruges Book of Hours
From the Morgan Library and Museum

July's laundress has an apron with a very narrow waistband (tape or cord), which may be tied behind her.  Like the Bruegel and Aertsen paintings, this apron has loose front corners: taken together with the others, I suspect we're seeing an apron where the lower portion sewn flat to a narrow waistband at the center front (though it's not impossible that we're seeing a separate piece of cloth only tucked in at the center or with two attached ties making an incomplete waistband).

Detail of a laundress (July), the Bruges Book of Hours
From the Morgan Library and Museum

A Parisian book of Hours from the 1510s also shows a woman in a rectangular, white apron, attached with slight fullness to a fabric or wide tape band:

Commerce, from a Parisian Book of Hours, c.1511-1520
The Morgan Library and Museum.

Les abus du monde has a female figure wearing a white, rectangular half-apron (this time with the waistband hidden by a lamb) which also shows vertical lines indicating some fullness at the skirt. A French Breviary (c.1511) in its November occupational scene of slaughtering hogs, shows yet another white half-apron. Again, there is little to be clearly seen of the waist, but it appears to be another waistband (this time with the apron extending around the wearers' sides--it does not meet in the back, but appears to cover her at least half way around). No fastener is evident, though the apron appears to be attached to the waistband with slight fullness.

A few more very narrow waistbands. This one from Lucas Cranach the Elder appears to have a contrasting waistband. I had considered the possibility of a belt worn over the apron, but given how many of these have shown up without any particular evidence for a belt (other that waistband being different from the lower apron), I suspect it's just a two-color apron.

Detail from Old Man Beguiled by Courtesans
by Lucas Cranach the Elder c.1537

Bruegel brings us a few more very large aprons, including some that nearly meet in the back. Another is large enough that it almost looks like a skirt instead of an apron, but is definitely thrown back up towards the waist):

Detail from Netherlandish Proverbs
by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1559

This 1530s painting detail shows a front-tied apron, with metal aiglets on the ends of the cord or narrow tape ties (just like points).

Detail from Portrait of A Lady Spinning
by van Heemskerck c. 1531

A post-period (c. 1645) sketch in the VAM shows an apron swagged up, as though tucked into its own waistband.

Surviving Garments

An original Italian apron, unfinished, is trapezoidal in shape and has no waistband. (I love the marking on the upper right for the incomplete drawn-work)!  The VAM has a late (1580-1600) 16th century English apron: it, too, is apparently unfinished. This rectangular, white, linen half-apron was decorated with embroidery, cutwork, and lace edging. [Edited to add: more detailed measurements and pictures are available here. The band is described as a linen tape.]

Conclusions

Almost of the examples observed were half-aprons, covering the dress below the waist only. Two adults and two children appeared to have bibbed aprons (one in blue the other three in white). 

The shape observed in all cases was rectangular. In some examples, the whole top edge was joined to the waistband; in others, only the center of this edge was attached, with the top corners hanging free.  Aprons were observed which covered the wearer's front, the front and sides, and almost all the way around the body.

Few of the apron had appreciable fullness. Most appear flat to the waistband; in some cases, moderate fullness was observed, allowing the aprons to fall in vertical 'pleats', but without sufficient detail to tell flat (knife/box) pleats from gathering or gauging. The skimpy material suggested light gathering, or spaced pleats would be effective. There isn't a lot of detail to tell from, but where the aprons have fullness, it appears to start below the waistband, suggesting these were fixed to the band, rather than made with a tape run through a casing.  Two of these were also aprons with more substantial waistbands, so gathering the apron's skirt into a waistband could be linked to the wider waistbands.

Some of the illustrations had obscured waist areas; a few showed the waist with no apparent band (possibly cords/tapes that blended into the surrounding garments due to small size or matching color). Bands constrasting in color from the rest of the apron were observed.

Where waistbands were visible, cords or narrow tapes were most plentiful. Aside from the one haymaker and Madame Commerce, there's no appreciable waistband width in any of the illustrations.  There sometimes even seems to be no waistband at all.  My hypothesis is that this was achieved by either sewing narrow tape or cord flat along the top of the apron (in some cases, excluding the corners), or by sewing cord/tape ties to the corners of the apron (or a few inches in from the corner), to create a partial waistband in the back only.

Most aprons had no visible fasteners; the only method observed was tying the waistband (often in back, occasionally in front). The extreme narrowness of many waistbands suggests tying as a more practical method than using buttons or hooks.

Considering the technology level, the apparent use of cords and tapes doesn't surprise me: when you're weaving by hand, making a narrow piece of tape is a lot less work than weaving more of the wide yardage, then cutting and hemming it. This not to say that no one ever used fabric to make an apron waistband, only that as a hand-weaver, I find it more labor-intensive.  Most of these aprons seem to be fairly smoothly set into the waist band. A few showed sufficient fullness for the apron front to fall in soft folds from the waist, with only a couple showing intense vertical folding suggestive of gathers.

It's possible that some of these aprons were in two pieces: a rectangular cloth tucked in or folded over a narrow band at the waist. The shape of these aprons seems to always be rectangular, though one trapezoidal example was found (unfinished). In some cases, only the center top edge is secured at the waist, leaving the corners to dangle.  In other cases (the woman on the right in the detail from Netherlandish Proverbs), the dangling corners may actually be the bottom corner of the apron thrown up towards the waist; in others (such as the two children from Children's Games), the corners are clearly the upper corners of the apron, which are not attached to the waistband.

The paintings show both white and colored (blue, green, brown) aprons, with white dominating in the manuscript illuminations.  The Tudor Tailor mentions black, white, blue and green aprons appearing in text sources.


Note: I was looking at women's aprons here, but several of the books of hours show men wearing aprons to work (as do Brugel's paintings). Even Jesus gets a white apron in one Book of Hours.