Clothing a 12th century Svan man - Introduction

What should a well dressed Georgian man wear in the 12th century?

This is the first of a series of posts detailing my research and thoughts on the dress of a 12th century Svan minor noble in service to the Demetre I King of Georgia. Note that a first draft of a more formal research paper with references can be found in the pages section. This series is more of an informal overview.

 

The coronation of Demetre I (fresco in the Matskhvarishi Church of the Saviour 1140 CE

 

There isn't a lot of detailed information. There is no extant 12th century clothing from Georgia. There is a small amount of extant medieval textiles found in churches in the mountainous Svaneti province but it is from alter cloths, icon covers and similar decorative church fabric not clothing. While there are Georgian illuminated manuscripts from the 12th century the illumination is mostly decorative or specifically illustrating saints in religious or classical garb not in the 12th century style.There are a number of fresco from the period. While many of them show Georgian royalty in regalia that strongly resembles the Byzantine royal garb of the time there are also ones showing the men (and in a few cases woman) who provided the money to build, rebuild, or decorate a specific church. These donor frescos are limited to showing us the fancy dress of upper nobility but they are a start. 

There is a significant body of written records from the time. However I do not read Georgian (old or modern). This leads to the obvious problem of reading these records. It also leads to problems in finding the records in the first place. The National Parliamentary Library of Georgia does have a collection of some historic documents plus works by Georgian scholars in digital format. Other libraries and institutions have materials in digitized form but without information on contents it is generally impossible to find useful information.

The rest of this series of articles will examine various parts of the Georgian costume as it can be pieced together. In general Georgians in the 12th century dressed in a fashion similar to the people around them. Yet we can see the decline in the cultural significance of the Eastern Roman Empire and the rise of Persian and Turkic culture as well as local styles.