Mongolian Headwear

My persona is a Welshwoman, and my husband's is a Mongol. As you may have guessed, this was highly unlikely to ever have happened in the Middle Ages. Yet, that's the SCA, in a nutshell. Therefore, when we won Crown several years ago, we looked around at all the other reigns and said, hmmm...there've been a LOT of 12th-14th century European reigns out there. Most of them are, in fact. Let's do something different: let's do a Mongolian reign!

Suddenly I had to have a lot more garb, because my Mongolian garb at that point consisted of one navy linen del and one peacock-pattern fabric del that wasn't even particularly well-made or period. I had no Mongolian headgear at all. Furthermore, my head is kinda small, and the crowns of our kingdom are not made for small-headed people. I needed padding, fast.

I started doing research on Mongolian garb and headwear, and found some really interesting stuff.
Most of it is questionably period, because the only real sources you can find for Mongolian clothing are paintings from the Yuan Dynasty and the Ilkhanate, and clothing from the 19th century.
Some of the sources I used then are not available online anymore that I can find.

Pretty consistently, I found that Mongolian headdresses involved a beaded felt "hat" with dangly beads hanging from it. That would work perfectly for padding as well (the above piece is from the National Museum of Copenhagen)

I used felt as a base, and then covered it with fabric. I have made four of them, red dupioni silk, gold dupioni silk, white habotai silk, and black linen. I tried to go for neutrals as often as possible to make them able to match whatever I had on. The only exception was the red, but as my kingdom's colors are red and gold, red goes with a lot of what I made for that year's garb.
Mongolian beads tend to be silver, coral, pearl, and turquoise. In the cases of the coral and pearl, it would have been more expensive because those are found in the ocean, and Mongolia is land-locked.

The first sets of beads I made were mother of pearl and carnelian, because I could afford them. Later on I made a set in pearl and coral, but the problem I ran into with the coral is that it so frequently has major flaws in it that, if you want to make a nice-looking set of beads, you have to cull over half of the beads you buy.
I also made a set in "lapis" and "turquoise" (mostly faux).

Because I wanted to make only a couple of "hats" but have lots of options as far as beads, I decided to make the beads detachable. In my research, I found some good illustrations of Mongolian ornaments, and among them was a set of silver pieces that attached together. The top one was an eight-spoked wheel with a red stone set in the center. The bottom one was a Mongolian knot. The top one resembled my kingdom's symbol, and I knew I had to use it.

I commissioned them from a wonderful metal-artisan in our kingdom, and had them set with carnelian. The bottom piece has four loops, each of which has a jump-ring through it. All of my beads attach to the jump-rings. I attach the metal pieces to each of the head-pieces with small jump-rings so they can be moved from one to another.

 

I can't seem to mess with the orientation of these photos, but you get the idea. The black one is currently holding the metal attachments. The black one and the white one have cabochons added, which is something that all of the Mongolian headdresses I've seen have. Mine are not as elaborate, partly for lack of time. They are attached with seed-bead bezels.

 

This year I also made a boqtaq, which is a medieval Mongolian hat specifically worn by members of the nobility. It was traditionally made of birch bark, covered with silk, and sometimes had a feather sticking out the back. There are numerous paintings of court ladies, particularly khatuns (Mongolian queens), wearing boqtaq. The problem is, there are very few extant ones, and the ones we have are mostly flattened and don't really resemble hats. It's hard to figure out how they were made.

Honestly, I winged it based on a picture of Chabi, and my knowledge of costuming. My version looks okay, but is not made traditionally, and the more I research, the less pleased I am with it. That said, I do enjoy wearing it.

 

(image from wikipedia)

 

 

I wanted to make it work with the head-gear I already had. If I made a second one (which is one of my goals for this project), I would make a head-piece for it specifically so that it could be attached permanently. Right now, I pin it to whatever is already on my head, and that is not the best solution, or the most accurate.

 

I searched around and eventually decided to use a haberdashery material called Sinamay, which is basically a straw fabric. I cut it into vaguely hourglass shapes, sewed them together, turned it inside-out, and then pressed the seams and sewed the last seam together. Then I covered it with gold dupioni silk (all of the pictures of boqtaqs show them made of red silk, but I didn't have any, and besides, gold is neutral enough to go with a lot of different outfits--my proper boqtaq will be red silk).

 

There is a flat bit on top that I made by sewing together two rectangles of silk and turning them, and then attaching them to the top of the hat. I would recomment in future tacking the sides down a little to keep them from flying off in different directions in high winds. Then I decorated the front and back with pearls and peacock feathers. I would probably decorate the front fabric before attaching it to the hat next time, as sewing through the center of the hat was a pain.

My boqtaq has a flare at the bottom as well as the top, to make it possible to pin it temporarily to various headgear. Pictures of boqtaqs show that they are tapered at the base, and then sewn with pearls to the headpiece. I will do this instead when I made another. The pinning works okay, but it is still a little wobbly. I also think it sits at too much of an angle on my head: images of them in period show them standing straight up.