Engravings of Swiss clothing styles from the 1630s
How to admire one another in a good year
Guildmaster and servants
Maidservants: fast mouth-work, slow housework
Schoolmaster, teacher-assistant and student
Noblewomen and their maidservants going to church
The marriage court made up of a board member,
a clergyman and a member of the local council
a clergyman and a member of the local council
Local aristocrats
A good woman beats the wine out of her drunken husband's head
Bridegroom and nobleman
Young fellows
A woman mourning her husband
Wine merchant (street crier)
A sexton and a heat controller (or fire stoker) announce a public auction
Peasants heading for the market
[All the images were spliced together from screen shots; the first image was slightly background cleaned; click through on any for an enlarged version]
Hans Heinrich Glaser (1585-1673) was an engraver from Basel in Switzerland who is best known for two volumes of fashion illustrations he produced about a decade apart. The first, from the 1620s, was copied from other illustrators.
Glaser's second book - 'Basler Kleidung', the subject of this post - was published in 1634 and remains a well regarded historical source for Basel's 17th century clothing and culture. The illustrator also exhibits a wry sense of humour at times, obviously.
'Basler Kleidung' (~Basel Fashion) is available online at the e-rara site of Universitätsbibliothek Basel (note the thumbnails link at the top of the page).
There are a couple of biographical sources around, both of which become impenetrably mangled by the online translation: One; Two.
I am grateful to typographer/designer Nina Stössinger for help with the caption translations. And, by some extraordinary coincidence, Nina is working on a project this year that includes images from this book. The odds for this must be just astronomical.
Previously: costumes.
Tangentially related: Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands at The Morgan Library [VIA].