We are pleased to announce that pre-orders for The Typical Tudor are now available. This new book presents a fascinating introduction to the range of garments worn by ordinary men and women 500 years ago. It draws on a wide variety of primary sources for sound evidence of clothing for the mean and middling sort from 1485 to 1603. 

The Typical Tudor builds on the authors’ previous works The Tudor Tailor (2006) and The Tudor Child (2013) by surveying the available sources with statistical rigour. Most noteworthy of these is the database of more than 55,000 garments and accessories drawn from transcribed wills, accounts, inventories and court records. The book overcomes many of the challenges of research into lower and middle-class dress by diligently cross-referencing these three categories of evidence to provide a new and comprehensive survey of historical dress for the period.

The book will be launched next year at a conference in the National Justice Museum exploring the “Bodies of Evidence” for ordinary people’s clothing. Visit our Facebook page for updates and check in here for regular announcements about the speakers, programme and venues. Put the date in your diary and plan your trip to Nottingham – home of Robin Hood (allegedly) – a Champion of the Ordinary Man and Woman! 

Confirmed speakers in the court room on Saturday 4 April include Susan North, curator of fashion at the V&A Museum; Dr Kathy Davies, author of Artisan Art: Vernacular Wall Paintings in the Welsh Marches 1550-1650; Hilary Davidson; curator of Fashion & Decorative Arts at Museum of London from 2007 to 2012 and Tarnya Cooper, Curatorial and Collections Director, National Trust and author of Citizen Portrait: Portrait Painting and the Urban Elite of Tudor and Jacobean England and Wales. The after-dinner speaker for the gala evening is Amber Butchart, presenter of A Stitch in Time, who will talk about her fascinating secret life off screen.

Take a look behind the scenes at the recent photoshoots for some sneak peeks at the garments to be featured in the The Typical Tudor.