A University of Chichester historian has been working with the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum on a seventeenth-century historic clothing project, which will be exhibited at the Museum next week.

Dr Danae Tankard, a senior lecturer at the University, received RFF-funding (Research Funding Framework) for a collaborative project to make two replica seventeenth-century outfits drawing on her documentary research on the clothing of the rural poor in seventeenth-century Sussex.

The project has been documented in a short film made by Darren Mapletoft, senior lecturer in Media, which is in the final stages of production.

Alongside her role at the University, Danae is a social historian at the Museum, working closely with the Museum’s Interpretation Department and its Historic Clothing Project.

Her project, along with the Museum’s Historic Clothing Project, features in a small exhibition in Crawley Hall running 20-26th May. The exhibition will explore documentary and pictorial evidence of what men and women wore and how they acquired their clothing. It will also look at the production of seventeenth-century clothing, including fabric, dyeing, clothing construction and clothing accessories such as shoes and headwear.

A range of replica clothing made by the Clothing Project will be on display, including clothing made to be worn and displayed in two exhibit houses, Pendean (built in 1609) and Poplar (built c.1630).

The exhibition is open from 11am – 5pm and entry is included in the normal Museum admission price.

For more information about Dr Tankard’s research please visit the University of Chichester’s website.