The Pouch Of Damocles

Here's where we are starting today.  And indeed where we
have been since August 2014, ahem.

I had determined that, as a sort of easy re-entry, I would finish the embroidered pouch I started nearly two years ago--and which the embroidery had been complete on for a year and a half, leaving only the comparatively trivial work of turning a flat piece of fabric into a receptacle--in time for a display next week Saturday.  I was warming up to do this in the wake of the previous post, but instead got a second round of illness that was even more debilitating.  I couldn't even knit, let alone do anything that required wit.  And, although I was recovered sufficiently to go back to work on the 4th, the work chaos (office moves + chief henchperson's last week + sundry other wharrgarbl) didn't put me in any excellent creative place in the evenings.

I had then set aside today to really get cracking, figuring that with proper application I should be able to get most if not all of the work complete.   Instead, by 2:30pm I had been a model householder, making vast amounts of food for dinner/the week, vacuumed the living room, done the dishes, and so on.  I'd even spent an hour working out, something I'd found excuses not to do all week... Finally I sat down and started thinking out the work; and proceeded to fall down a rabbit hole of fretfulness and lack-of-confidence.

Put baldly, here are the tasks that want doing:

• Close the sides of the purse with a tablet-woven edge.  This would be a four-layer sandwich: front, back, and the two layers of lining. 
• Close the tops of each half of the purse (front & front lining, and then back & back lining).  --This is a point of fretting, about which below.
• Make holes to pass the drawstring closure through.
• Make a cord to suspend the purse from.  --Also a point of fretting.
• Make tassels for the bottom of the purse.  (I haven't done this before but the technique is pretty straightforward.)
• Optional: cover some beads in silk or gold to decorate the purse sides/bottom with.  (I haven't done this either, and I'd like to learn the technique, as it seems to be a favorite in both the 14th and the 16th centuries.)

This seems tolerably clear, so wherefore the drama?  Well, put simply, I don't know how to do it Right.  We know that tablet-woven edges are found along the sides of pouches.  There are also narrow-worked edges across the top of some of the purses, which may or may not be tablet-woven edges and may or may not be continuations of the side edges.  There are also hanging cords that may or may not be continuations of the side edges (you can turn a tablet weaving into a tubular cord).  But, although I have a plethora of images of purses, in none of them is there enough detail to tell for sure what's going on; and of course no museum has bothered to explore the matter at all, because who cares about that girly shit.  Most museum descriptions don't even mention the cords or edges.

What I can tell from images:

• Patient Griselda pouch: Hanging cord splits in two, becomes drawstring cord, sides/top inconclusive.  I can vouch for the fact that this is a Goddamn nuisance for everyday use.
• Two Figures & Oak Tree pouch: side edge apparently becomes hanging cord; some amount of the top is gone, no sign of drawstring or top closure.  Not super-helpful.
• There's one here which looks like the top edges are done in a U-shape, and each end becomes a tassel; and then the drawstring goes the other way and it ends in a tassel; but it doesn't look like the sides become the hanging cords?  Hard to tell.
• The V&A's pelican pouch could probably tell me a lot, if they had a decent close-up of it.  Or bothered to describe the narrow-work in anything like the detail they did for the embroidery.  Though at least they did that much, which is still miles beyond most other museums. :-P



going from the front image
of the purse to this close-up
messed with my head.  TWO
SETS OF HOLES WAT

• And in the course of composing this very post, I came across a French purse living in Poland which has a second set of holes in the back which is carrying the hanging cord parallel to the drawstring.  And both of those are clearly separate from the stuff binding the sides and top edges--but I can't make out if the edges are tablet-weaving or what.
• One of the Saint-Maurice d'Agaune pouches definitely has a separate drawstring, and it looks like the side edges continue up to be the hanging cord, and the top edge ends are woven in where they meet the sides; but I can't tell.  (PLEASE ANSWER MY MAIL MONSIEUR PROFESSOR)

So anyways, I don't know how I ought to finish this, and I do know I'm overthinking it, because if I who am heavily engaged in this topic can't say what's right how should anyone else be able to tell me I'm wrong?  But here we are.