My heritage is Dutch and I have always wondered what was the purpose of Ear Irons! To me they looked like torture! Now I know the reason for wearing them. Thanks for sharing!
They are actually really comfortable to wear these simple early style. As they are a frame that sits on your head with the ribbon, and then your muten (cap) is then pinned to the wire, it is much more comfortable than a cap tied tightly straight to your head. I have never gotten a headache from wearing a an orijzer and a muten instead of a more standard English style coif or cap.
Thank you for the great tutorial! I went down the rabbit hole on these back in 2017 and fell in love with them. I particularly love the artwork showing these in period, and your hands on section at the end.
Back in 1999 I had an appointment at the MOL to view all their headdress wires. I was most interested in the ones that were probably used for the gable hood, but they brought out the entire tray of all their "headdress wires." At that point in time I took pictures of the wires (including the ones you showed) but there was no indication at that point that anyone thought that they were for French Hoods. It was merely a tray of all sorts of headdress wires with little numbered tags, but nothing else. If they had asked me, I would have assured them that that didn't make sense except for using to hold the coif in place because they aren't the right shape or size for any of the parts of the French Hood "paste." I knew about "ear wires" because of my research at the 17th C massacre site outside of Williamsburg, VA that I had done the year before. They found "Granny" with the wire intact on her head. (There are photographs of the xrays taken with the wire intact on her skull.)
The massacre site with "Granny" is at Virginia' s Wolstenholme Towne which was destroyed in 1620 (which is part of the Martin's Hundred.) But it's closer to Williamsburg than to Jamestown.
That is neat that you got to go to the MOL and view their headdress wires! Some day I hope to make it back to Europe and visit some of the museums that I missed on previous trips.
@@LynneFairchild The folks at the MOL were really wonderful too. I had only asked to see a specific headdress wire that they had on view and any that were like it. But they let me see the entire tray that they had of all the 16th C wires. (Which is how I got to see all their ear wires too.) It was the same day that they opened a Roman era London sarcophagus and they were going to let us get in at the head of the *very* long line to see it when it was first opened. (I declined that because I thought it was unfair to the people who had stood in line so long. And Roman era isn't as interesting to me because when first opened all the things I'm interested in are not on view. I'm all about textiles, accessories and the "autopsy" of the body. Those all come later.) So if you do get a chance to go to London, make sure to write ahead to the MOL so that you can get an appointment. That's the best way to see exactly what you want. Having one accession number that you really want to see close up would probably give you access to more (as it did with me.) I wrote ahead more than 3 months in advance and even then some of the museums I wanted appointments in were full (despite the fact that I gave them an entire month of possible spots. I was in London for an entire month.)
Fascinating! This is the first time I have heard of these. Pronunciation wise dutch is pretty much spelled phonetically with a few exceptions, like a doubled vowel is is literally pronounced 2x as long as a single vowel without changing the sound, but the "IJ" has a couple pronunciations. It can be pronounced "ay", which is also the same sound as the dutch "EE", like you are Fonzy from Happy Days. But in some words usually ending in "lijk" it's pronounced kind of between an short I and the u in "buck", "uh". So "oorijzer" is "OOOOOOOOOr ay-zer" with more emphasis on the Oor. At least that is how we say it in flemish. In Holland they can pronounce things a little differently. Sometimes their "ij" can sound more like "I" "eye" than "ay". Hooghsaet would be pronounced "Hooooooooo hgh saht". The "g" being a bit gutteral instead of hard like in english and the "ae" being pronounce like "ah". The H after a g and the "ae" seem to me to be hold overs from middle dutch spelling. You don't see these in modern spellings and I only see them in names. An H after another consonant seems to be silent like "thee" ie tea, is pronounced "tay". There is no "th" sound in dutch. They do have a special "ch" sound but it's hard to describe. It's kind of like the "g" but not so far back in the throat. There are more than a few words that have an "sch" construction and they seem to be pronounced as "s-kHHH" like you are going to pronounce the K but then skip it at the last second and lean on the H with a lot of air, which gives you a ch with almost a flemmy sound. Native speakers make this sound so smoothly but I struggle with it a lot and it comes out as "skuh" or "shka" which is NOT the sound. If you see "sj" in a word it's pronounce "sh", like "sjal" is pronounce pretty much the same as the english word "shawl" and means the same thing. There are other pitfalls like the "eu" dipthong, which I have a hard time with. U, and UU have different pronunciations, and "oe" is the spelling for the english "oo". Sometimes I have a hard time differentiating between all of these but they are completely different sounds. Also technically dutch doesn't use Y either, but have had to jam it into the alphabet to accommodate french and english words. When they say the alphabet they call Y "epsilon" and pronounce "guy" is pronounce "gheee" and the typical 'y' sound is spelled with a J. So "Jon" is "yahn". They don't have english j sound either. Anyway these are the most common problems english speakers have with dutch. I struggle with pronunciation even after 6 years of living in Flanders. I hope this helps.
This was fascinating. I don't know about the pronunciation of any of the foreign words, but as a metalsmith, I can tell you that in solder, the "L" is silent. It's simply "sodder." {saw-der}. This is incredibly interesting. As an art history major ( about a million years ago) I saw these things -- and never really gave them any thought. It is only now that I have become interested in the history of clothing (and jewelry) {my metalsmithing degree was mostly doing my own modern pieces} that these things are starting to click. Thank you for this.
Dear Lynn, please adjust your pronounciation of the Dutch word with the emphasis on 'oor'. That is how it is supposed to pronounce (trust me, I am a native speaker). :-) Also: regional dress in Staphorst en in some places in Zeeland are still worn on a daily basis, including their beautiful silver oorijzers. You can find a picture here: www.borneboeit.nl/48522/nieuws/klederdracht-uit-staphorst-uitgelegd (fyi: the woman on the left is wearing mourning-colours, the woman on the right wears the regular, everyday colours.
