UK Trip Summary - Part 1 (With Pictures)

Warning: This will be a longer than normal post. :)

We've just returned from over two weeks in the UK, with stops around England and a couple of days in Dublin. There were lots of stops at museums to see all kinds of stuff, so I'm going to try to capture some of the most interesting things I saw, with pictures where possible. This is part one of the post. Part two will capture the second half of the trip, which includes the Reenactor's Market and Dublin, among other things.

Eventually I'll probably post my artifact pictures somewhere (possibly on Pinterest), so I'll add an update here with a link when the whole collection is available.

London

We'd hit a lot of the major museum stuff in London the last time we were there, but it's London so there's no shortage of things to do. :) The V&A was a bit of a bust because we went on the night they were open late but almost all of the medieval galleries were closed, so we didn't see much. I did get a picture for Her Excellency Catherine of a woven towel with pelicans on it. Otherwise a lot of our time was shopping and such.

Item #487-1884 - Towel dated 1400-1600
from the V&A

The highlight for London from a history/museum perspective was probably the British Library. The collection of documents on display is epic! Sadly, no pictures are allowed but the British Library has an extensive online photo archive of the collection so that's OK. Scribes should definitely check it out.

Portsmouth

Portsmouth and the Mary Rose museum were on the agenda last time but we missed it because of a flat tire. As a result, we were really excited to go there for a couple of nights this time.

The Mary Rose museum is awesome and one of the best designed museums I've been to. They actually have the remains of the ship as the heart of the museum, and you can watch people working on preserving the ship. The museum is then setup parallel to the ship so you are walking through what would have been at that section of the ship as you walk the various levels.

Of course, for me the highlight was seeing the Purser's section, and the stick-purse. But there were tons of other leather items as well, ranging from jerkins, to shoes to arm guards and knife/sword sheaths. The collection is really huge and a goldmine of items.

The remains of the stick-purse at the
Mary Rose museum (item 81A0806)

We also did a tour of the HMS Victory, which was Admiral Nelson's flagship during the Battle of Trafalgar. It's post-period for the SCA but very cool none-the-less.

HMS Victory at the Historic Dockyard
in Portsmouth

Weald & Downland Museum

After Portsmouth we drove to an open air museum near Chichester. This is where they filmed a large part of the Tudor Monastery Farm series, so it's really cool because you see what the living conditions and layout of various buildings might have been.

Lots of really neat things here. We learned about a period fruit crop I'd never heard of before. It's called a medlar and is related to the quince (Here's a nice web site reference about the medlar). We also had a lovely conversation with one of the volunteers named Tina, who showed us where they make all of the period garb they wear (and they are really hardcore about the accuracy of the details of their outfits).

Some of the medieval buildings

Merchant's shop (left-hand
building from previous picture)

Early 17th century craftsman's cottage

Early 15th century home. This is
the main hall.

So many ideas about stuff we could do here. It's incredible seeing some of this stuff, especially if you've watched the Tudor Farm series.

Oxford

Oxford was probably one of our favourite cities on the trip (although Portsmouth was up there too). We were only there for a day so we had to squeeze some stuff in. On Mistress Keja's recommendation, we made a stop at the Ashmolean Museum, which was really good. Lots of pics of artifacts were taken, and we just happened to be there on November 5th, which meant it was particularly cool to see the lantern used by Guy Fawkes. 

Guy Fawkes' lantern,
as seen on the 5th of Nov

The other really neat thing they had was a major collection of fabric samples from the Middle East and India, which I'm sure a lot of people will find interesting.

India from the 13th - 15th century
(Ashmolean EA 1990.146).

We also stopped at Oxford's science museum, where we saw some period clocks and timepieces. But the highlight for me there was Einstein's chalk board. It's just a chalk board, but still.......

At the end of the night we took a guided tour of the Bodelian Library, which dates to the late 16th century.It's massive and epic and no pictures are allowed. :( But totally worth the stop, especially since we were the only people on the tour so we basically had a private tour guide.

After Oxford we drove off into the Midlands for our next stop, visiting with Robert the Blue and Lerthan and our trip to the Reenactor's Market. I'll capture the second half of the trip in my next post.

Gift for Robert the Blue and Lerthan (With Picture)

I haven't posted much to the blog lately for a couple of reasons. One is that we were in the UK for a few weeks on a vacation/research trip, so you can expect another post shortly about that. The other reason is that I was working on some things that I didn't want certain people to know about. :) This is one of those things.

As part of the trip, we were staying for a few days with some friends who moved to England a couple of years ago. When they left I had just finished working on my Ealdormere award badge patterns, and RJ had talked about wanting some belt badges for his awards (he has a Maiden's Heart and a Scarlet Banner).

I figured since we'd be seeing them I should probably do up the badges finally, and that I needed to do the same for Lerthan as well. I haven't yet figured out the engineering I want for the belt loops but I figured if I brought the raw badges they could applique them or use them for something else as well.

Here's the picture of the sets of badges that I did up.

The best part is that little Maggie (who's not so little any more) apparently really liked that badges and wanted to know why she didn't get one. So, I've now been commissioned to do a badge for Maggie with a rainbow on it. :)

QPT Update - Two months out

I'm making good progress on my QPT project with just under two months to go until the event (but three weeks of which will be a write-off since we'll be on holidays).

Three of the four pouches are completely done except for the drawstrings. The fourth is about half done. I've been making good progress since I can do the hand sewing when I'm watching TV (only jabbed my thumb a couple of times so far).

Once that's all done, I just have to take care of the braided handle and assemble all of the pieces. I still haven't been able to get the leather-braided knot to work for the end of the handle but I'll keep trying.

I'm not entirely happy with the way that the back seam of the pouches look, so I may adjust that when I do the final project for Spring A&S. I'm hoping the slightly thicker veg-tan will allow me to use a butt-stitch on the back seam instead of having to overlap to the two pieces of leather to sew them up. But for now it will have to do. (On the bright side, it gives me something to talk about if the judges ask me what I would improve).

I'll also have to take some time to finish-up my documentation. I did most of it a while ago but I'll need to adjust the section on the actual construction of the piece since I'm only presenting my full-scale mock-up at QPT.

On a sort-of related note, I've also signed up as a possible judge for QPT for the first time ever, so I'm rather nervous about that.

I'm less worried about the one category, as I've signed up as a judge for juggling/tumbling. Not sure there's likely to be many entries there but given I've actually trained at a circus school and used juggling to help make money for university, I'm pretty confident I can give some solid tips . I also did some initial research on period juggling equipment when I first started in the SCA so I've got some knowledge there as well (Oh god, now I'm thinking of doing an A&S project on period stilt walking - I need help).

I've also submitted my name for leatherworking and any leather dye projects people may do. That has me a bit more nervous, but I suspect its the usual feeling of not feeling like you know enough to really be commenting on other people's work. But, I've got pretty good knowledge of research materials and sources, so even if my actual crafting skills aren't that great I'm sure I can make some research suggestions at least.

Slow but steady wins the race - AKA the latest stick-purse update

Now that I've finished my surprise for Kersteken, it's time to really crack down on the stick-purse if I want to have something done in time for QPT.

Last night I resumed stitching up the parts for the stick-purse. What I can conclude is this is going to take a while. I was joking with AElfwyn about QPT and I said that it was going to take me about 50 hours of work just to do the full mock-up that I'm planning to enter (the proper purse with the good materials will be for spring A&S). I was joking at the time but now I'm starting to wonder if I may have been more accurate than I thought.

I've got all of the body pieces cut (call that about an hour of work already). Right now I'm working on sewing the pouchlets to the main pouch bodies. I'm about half done the first one and I've easily spent over an hour doing it. It's getting a bit easier as a get better at the technique but it's an odd stitch and hard to get things lined up correctly so the stitches are relatively even.

So, at the current rate it's going to take me between 5-8 hours of work (with four bags on the purse) just to attach the pouchlets. I suspect that's actually the largest chunk of time for any individual step, as the rest of the stitches are fairly straightforward.

The good news is it isn't something I have to do in the basement like the rapier sheaths, so I can take it with me to A&S days and such to work on it. I'll be heading out to fight practice tonight to be social but I'll be trying to finish the half-done pouchlet tonight at least.

For those wanting to see what I mean by the stitching on the pouchlet, here's my original test design post with pictures. Because you're coming up blindly through two layers of leather, and because the rectangular pouchlet piece needs to be sewn in a circle, it's a bit of a challenge to get everything cleanly done.

A Gift for Kersteken (with Pictures)

I haven't posted in the last few weeks because I've been working on a secret project, and didn't want to even hint at it because I didn't want a certain someone to guess I was working on something for them.

Now that we're all clear, here's what I've been working on.

This past weekend at Feast of the Bear in Toronto, a good friend was inducted into the Order of the Pelican for her service to the realm. Not only is Kersteken super deserving of the honour, but she's also a local fencer. In fact, she's one of the first fencers to get authorized that I had helped to teach. As far as I can tell, the only time you won't find her on the rapier list at an event is when she's in the kitchen, doing entourage or otherwise working (it seems like she's always working, but also always on the rapier list - maybe she has a clone. That would explain how she gets so much done).

Anyway, I decided that I needed to do something special for the occasion. That of course meant making her a rapier sheath.

I had to do a bit of plotting though, so I tricked Kersteken into letting me know how long her rapiers are. It went something like this:

Me: Woe is me, one of my swords is going to need to be replaced soon. Maybe I should look at getting a longer rapier. Kersteken, you use a longer sword don't you?

Kersteken: Go longer for sure! I can bring my extra one next week to practice so you can try.

Me: Cool. How long are they? I think my current one is 35 inch.

Kersteken: 41 & 42

Snort! Done and done.

Then I contacted Master Brand, who was able to track down the artwork for her personal heraldry (I don't think I'd ever even seen her personal heraldry before so this was neat).

I wanted the sheath to have the pelican badge on it. Of course, if you followed my badge carving project a few years ago, you'll know I didn't do that one because its insanely detailed. And this one was going to be really small, only a couple of inches high, so the cuts are all really small and finicky. That meant the first step in making the sheath was to figure out the badge.

Here's a pic of my practice attempt, which I think isn't bad:

I then carved the pelican on a band of leather (I didn't want to carve it directly on the long piece for the body of the sheath since I only had the one piece long enough to make it - no second chances there). Here's the finished piece painted and ready to be attached. BTW - Good call by Avelyn to use the mustard to mark the little beaks on the chicks so it's more obvious what they are!:

Once that was done, it was on to carving her heraldry onto the sheath, which was comparably easy. :) Biggest challenge was figuring out which parts to raise and which to push back into the background. Here's the tooling pre-painting:

And here are some shots of the main body piece before I started sewing it up:

Finally, here are some pictures of the finished piece once I glued and stitched up the join and did all of the touch-ups on the edges and holes. The band at the top is proportionately thicker than I usually do because I was concerned about making the pelican any smaller. But since Kersteken uses a much longer blade than I usually work with (this is designed to fit a 42 inch rapier), it is relatively proportional.

Overall I'm quit happy with how it turned out. There are some things that I would do differently next time, but I'll keep them to myself (although I've talked with Mistress AElfwyn about what I'd change). The most important thing is that Kersteken (I guess that should now be Mistress Kersteken) really, really liked it.

Now back to your regularly scheduled stick-purse updates. :)

Time to make some hay (well not literally) - QPT planning

Seems like not long ago I was at Kingdom A&S presenting my research into period leather dyes, but here we are only a few months out from the next Queen's Prize Tourney. So, time to great cracking if I'm finally going to have something to show for all of my research into the stick-purse.

Incidentally, I actually finally found some leather that should work for the final project. It isn't chamois like the original, but it's pretty darn close and completely period appropriate. It's 3/4 oz milled veg tan which means its much softer and more flexible than the 3/4 oz stuff I've found to date. Should work just fine, and its tool-able and dye-able if I want.

But before I go there I'm going to do up a full-size, complete mock up for QPT to get input on the design and construction. I'm going to use my garment weight pig skin (green since that's what I had the most of). I'll use veg tan on the handle and draw strings, and test out my period dyes to make sure they don't bleed on each other when I weave the handle braid, and I'll use my linen thread to make sure its strong enough for the project.

If you haven't been following the saga of the stick purse, I've been blogging about it for a couple of years now, ever since I pegged to the idea of making one after reading Purses in Pieces. Here's a link to the keyword so you can read back about the various starts and stops of the project. (warning, there's almost 40 posts over the years, so budget some time). :)

Ideally I'll be able to get some tips on the construction from some experts at QPT and then apply it to the finished bag, using the good materials, for A&S in the spring.

Where I am on the work:

This weekend I did a bit of prep work. I cut out the main body pieces for the four pouches and started attaching one of them to a bottom round made of veg tan. Then I remembered that I should probably attach the pouchlet first, so I put that on hold and will try to cut out the pouchlet pieces this week in a different colour (probably brown).

I have the wooden handle piece measured and cut out so can probably start working on that any time, although I'll have to decide what colours to use and make up some small batches of those dyes. Maybe yellow and black, or green and yellow?

Research into who did leather dyeing

Trying to flesh out (haha, get it) my understanding of who was responsible for the dyeing of leather.

The period leather dye recipes are found in books with a mix of other skills. The manuals include fabric dyeing recipes but also recipes for how to tan leather, make parchment and a variety of other skills.

So, who did the actual dying? Was it done by the people who processed the skins (the tanner or currier), was there someone else in the process (dyers guild or a leather dyer) once the leather had been prepared, or was the leatherseller or end craftsman the one who dyed the skins?

Based on the way the recipes work, it seems like they would be used on whole skins, not just painted on smaller pieces of leather for a specific project. Given the nature of the recipes and how they are documented, I suspect it wouldn't be the seller or end craftsman, but rather would have been delivered already dyed for their use - really not that much different from how we get our leather today.

It probably varied by region but I'll start my research with London given their structured guild system and reasonably good records (despite the 1666 fire).

Some research links:

English industries of the Middle Ages, being an introduction to the Industrial history of mediaeval England
https://archive.org/stream/englishindustrie00salzuoft/englishindustrie00salzuoft_djvu.txt

Contains a reference to "leather-dyers" as an industry as it indicates they were banned from dyeing certain types of low quality skins.


History and antiquities of the Worshipful company of leathersellers, of the city of London: with facsimiles of charters, and other illustrations
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=2zVOAAAAYAAJ&rdid=book-2zVOAAAAYAAJ&rdot=1

e-Book copy of a resource about the leathersellers company in London. Could have useful information about how the industry was structured. May reference dyeing of leather. Will need to look through it carefully.

The Art and Mysterie of the Currier

http://www.curriers.co.uk/Art%20&%20Mystery.pdf

Information on the historical role of the currier/leather dresser, which mentions that once curried the leather could be dyed or stained. No mention of who did the dyeing.

Craft Guilds in the Early Modern Low Countries

http://books.google.ca/books?id=r27gwgLydGoC

A book on the structure and impact of craft guilds in Neatherlands as early as the 11th century. For when I expand my research beyond London.

Craft-guilds of the thirteeth century in Paris

https://archive.org/details/craftguildsofthi00millrich

A book from 1915 on the craft guilds in Paris in the 13th century. It mentions the tanners, the leather dressers and the curriers as three separate guilds in Paris as early as 1160.

York’s Guild’s Names in the 15th Century and their Translation into Spanish

http://www.ual.es/odisea/Odisea05_Mouron.pdf

Section 2.1 discusses the translation of the names of guilds that dealt with leather. This gives some ideas of the leather-related guilds that were operating in York. Also a list of names at the end of the document.