1657 Ralamb Costume Book

February 4, 2007 11:22 PM

The Rålamb Costume Book. Illustrations of Turkish officials, various important occupations and just plain folks, obtained by Claes Rålamb, Swedish ambassador to the Ottoman Court, in 1657. More about Rålamb and Sultan Mehmet IV.
posted by mediareport (10 comments total)

Via Armchair Aquarium Annex.
posted by mediareport at 11:24 PM on February 4, 2007

awesome. Thanks.
posted by anastasiav at 11:27 PM on February 4, 2007

Nice post mediareport. One of the big city parks in Stockholm is called "rålambshov" - the court of Rålamb. I never knew who he was. Now I do.

Pity the Turkish writers spelt his name wrong - Ralamb. The letter ö in the Turkish alphabet was taken from Swedish, so you'd think there wouldn't be a problem using other Swedish letters.
posted by three blind mice at 12:03 AM on February 5, 2007

This is wonderful! I live near Rålambshovsparken (the one three blind mice mentioned) and a street just parallel to mine is called Rålambsvägen, so I've looked him up (it's a curious name), but never to this extent. My afternoon is saved! Thank you, mediareport!
posted by soundofsuburbia at 2:07 AM on February 5, 2007

Can anyone explain why the Standard Bearer would have the pole go through his skin?
posted by onhazier at 7:41 AM on February 5, 2007

Wow, onhazier, I totally missed that.
posted by mediareport at 11:29 AM on February 5, 2007

Onhazier, I believe it was the penalty imposed due to his gratuitous corpulence. As standard bearer, he would have had an obligation to remain lean and attractive.

I jest.

Great post. Were the oil paintings of the hunting party/procession mentioned in one of the articles linked to? Does anyone know if they are available for online viewing?

Thanks in advance.
posted by Azaadistani at 12:00 PM on February 5, 2007

Cok guzel, mediareport! Tesekkur ederiz.
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:37 PM on February 5, 2007

Azaadistani, there's a book of the hunting party paintings (it also includes the costume book pictures), and a couple of tiny glimpses at the Pera Museum site. They belong to the Nordic Museum in Stockholm, but I don't read Swedish and only a teeny bit of the site is in English, so I couldn't find them there. soundsofsuburbia, if you or anyone else wants to dig around and post any results, that'd be cool.

UbuRoivas: Yes, exactly! (I mean, is that Turkish? The translation site I found didn't recognize it.)
posted by mediareport at 4:17 PM on February 5, 2007

mediareport: cok = very, guzel = beautiful, tesekkur ederim / ederiz = thank you (there are supposed to be all sorts of umlauts, cedillas and other kinds of diacritical marks that I don't know how to type...their absence may have screwed up the online translation)
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:10 PM on February 5, 2007