TT can be summed up as "really really really good theatrical how-to with an excellent bibliography", as far as I'm concerned. There's too much in the book that is actually 100% made up by Ninya, and while it's based on her research, it's all really her conjecture at the end of the day*. I took a class on 16th c. headwear and at one point I had the uncomfortable task of asking where the teacher got her info from on one particular style of headgear that I happen to know A LOT about (guess which one), and hadn't run across anything in my research that looked remotely like what she had made. And her response was "Oh, I got it out of the Tudor Tailor." I somehow managed not to *facepalm* right there.
So, while there's stuff in TT that *is* what's in PoF, there's also stuff in there that was developed by Ninya over the course of her career to streamline difficult and fussy bits of costumes, and/or redacting based on really super minimal amounts of info and which she will readily admit she basically invented. It's something that, if you're starting out on Eliz/Tudor costuming and you think you're really going to get into it, you want to comb it for the footnotes and bibliographical info because there's a lot of useful stuff that isn't in a diagram. But the stuff that is diagrammed is only going to get you so far. It is what it is.
*Caveat: This is basically what we all do, at the end of the day, obviously. We take the tiny piece of info we have and we try to make sense of it as best we can. But I think there's a big distinction between doing the legwork yourself and trying to formulate a working hypothesis on your own, versus just copying it out of a book because it's in print and somehow that makes it ResearchTM. And lest anyone think I'm picking on Ninya, I'm not. I've had people come up to me and announce with great enthusiasm that they made X thing EXACTLY LIKE MINE. It's actually pretty creepy.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2010-06-06 06:07 am (UTC)So, while there's stuff in TT that *is* what's in PoF, there's also stuff in there that was developed by Ninya over the course of her career to streamline difficult and fussy bits of costumes, and/or redacting based on really super minimal amounts of info and which she will readily admit she basically invented. It's something that, if you're starting out on Eliz/Tudor costuming and you think you're really going to get into it, you want to comb it for the footnotes and bibliographical info because there's a lot of useful stuff that isn't in a diagram. But the stuff that is diagrammed is only going to get you so far. It is what it is.
*Caveat: This is basically what we all do, at the end of the day, obviously. We take the tiny piece of info we have and we try to make sense of it as best we can. But I think there's a big distinction between doing the legwork yourself and trying to formulate a working hypothesis on your own, versus just copying it out of a book because it's in print and somehow that makes it ResearchTM. And lest anyone think I'm picking on Ninya, I'm not. I've had people come up to me and announce with great enthusiasm that they made X thing EXACTLY LIKE MINE. It's actually pretty creepy.