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Medieval comb sizes
20 January 2026 09:28 amLet's talk about the size of this thing!
15th century reproduction comb with Scarlet Skwirl for scale. Comb made by Ezio Zanini and is correct proportion to the original. I will have it on display at my After Dark presentation at the Abbey Museum in April!
My new comb is large!
Once again, I thought medieval art was being a bit dramatic about the sized of their combs so they looked better and bigger in art, (otherwise they'd be too small to see that they're really combs, right?) but it turns out that some combs WERE that big, like this pic.
This is the head-in-a-bathtub-looking-pic all over again where people in medieval baths are shown as a head and shoulders poking out of a small barrel. I had initially though tit was representative art, but when I got a bath tub and sat in it cross legged and took a photo, it was EXACTLY what the photo looked like. So, it seems the very large comb pictures may be to scale after all. Here's another:
I'll take some comparison photos with modern combs and other medieval combs in the next few days! This image also has a rather unusual medieval mirror as well... spiky like the sun and on a stand or just with a long handle, but it's something we see every so often on later 15th century art.
15th century reproduction comb with Scarlet Skwirl for scale. Comb made by Ezio Zanini and is correct proportion to the original. I will have it on display at my After Dark presentation at the Abbey Museum in April!
My new comb is large!
Once again, I thought medieval art was being a bit dramatic about the sized of their combs so they looked better and bigger in art, (otherwise they'd be too small to see that they're really combs, right?) but it turns out that some combs WERE that big, like this pic.
This is the head-in-a-bathtub-looking-pic all over again where people in medieval baths are shown as a head and shoulders poking out of a small barrel. I had initially though tit was representative art, but when I got a bath tub and sat in it cross legged and took a photo, it was EXACTLY what the photo looked like. So, it seems the very large comb pictures may be to scale after all. Here's another:
I'll take some comparison photos with modern combs and other medieval combs in the next few days! This image also has a rather unusual medieval mirror as well... spiky like the sun and on a stand or just with a long handle, but it's something we see every so often on later 15th century art.
