Planning the next project - Islamic filigree book covers

For those who've been following the saga of the stick purse/leather dyes over the years, you'll know I tend to pick major projects that will take me several years to complete. That's largely because they usually require me to learn new skills along the way. Since the stick-purse is nominally done (I say nominally since I plan to keep fiddling with the dyes as a background activity), I need a long-term new project.

I'm now officially at the starting line to start what I am dubbing "The crazy, what the heck are you thinking, Islamic filigree book cover project" (Trademark pending). I'll call it the CFP for short (Crazy Filigree Project).

I've contacted the Curator for the Islamic collection at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, where I first saw these crazy books. She's shared with me a paper she wrote on how they were done, along with some really close up pictures of some examples. While the pictures are super helpful, they've also showed me that this project is even tougher than I thought. Not only did they do cut-work/filigree patterns in the leather that are typically ornate for the illumination of that period, but there's leather tooling on the leather, in spaces that are only a few millimeters wide. I have no idea how they managed it, but its scary fine detail.

Here's an example from another source. This is a book from the 15th century. The area that's blue has actually been cut out of the leather and is showing the silk or paper that was placed underneath. The red lines that swirl through the blue is the leather lacework pattern that's left behind from the cutwork.

http://islamic-arts.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/dpc2125-176.jpg

So, lots to do:

• Research more on period Islamic/Persian book styles
• Acquire both bookbinding equipment/supplies and knowledge
• Work on my filigree and bookbinding skills
• Develop filigree pattern for the cover(s)
• Fail several times, probably by cutting the filigree wrong, or slipping with the knife and cutting off chunks of filigree
• Swear a lot
• Figure out if I want to add to the complexity by using my period dyes (I'd put money on yes cause I'm that kind of crazy)

I'l probably need to work on this in stages, like I did for the stick-purse and dyes, so several rounds of entries at QPT before the final thing is entered at Kingdom A&S.

I think for this year my goal will be to do the background research, and to work on my bookbinding skills. So for this fall's QPT, I'll try to make my first complete leatherbound book, which I can enter and get advice.

If I'm really productive I might be able to do some sample filigree work on a flat piece of leather, maybe as a scroll blank or something. I'm not going to try to get to that small a scale for my first attempts, but it's a cool enough technique that I bet some people would love it, especially Middle Eastern personas.

The other thing I could do is develop another round of badge patterns but using cutwork instead of standard leather tooling. I bet those would look sharp.

Thoughts about Future Kingdom A&S Entries (Part 2)

Here's part two of my post about Kingdom A&S. This one's just about what I've learned about why I enter Kingdom A&S and what I'm looking for in the process. I'm posting it because I figure I can't be the only one with these feelings and so hopefully it will help other people work their way through it. Happy to discuss here or on Facebook or even in person.

If you read part one of this post, you might ask if it was such a good day, the caliber of entries was high and my project went over well, why wasn't I jazzed following the event. That's an excellent questions.

Here's what I've figured out, and where I'm going from here.

As an A&S Minister I was super excited to see people geeking out about their work and being able to show people what they can do. And I can safely say that my feeling off had nothing to do with any expectations personally about prizes or awards because the feeling started pretty much as soon as I was done my judging. Hopefully it didn't overflow into the discussions I was having with other people, I tried really hard to be encouraging and to provide good comments.

I don't enter these things to win prizes (good thing too since I'm just not at that level compared to some of the really awesome artisans in the Kingdom. In the past, I've entered experimental projects like the leather dyes and the stick-purse, which have generated really good discussions and those have been the ones that I've been really excited about.

So after thinking about it for a while, here's what I came up with: I need to be more selective about what I enter into QPT and Kingdom A&S type events.

1) This year I felt like I SHOULD enter since the event was in our barony and I'm the Baronial A&S Minister, so I put together a project because of that, rather than because I was super excited by the research. I thought I came up with an interesting concept by recreating my original project from five years ago, but it still wasn't the same caliber as my previous two projects from a research perspective. The bottom line is it felt more like I was just showing what I had already learned, rather than actually learning anything new.

2) I think the other thing I've noticed is that people at A&S tend to gravitate towards stuff they know. I do it too. I may look at the fibre arts or illumination projects and say "oooo, that's impressive", but I'm unlikely to stop and have an in-depth discussion with the artisan because it's not something I know. I know enough to tell between an advanced effort and a beginner effort, but that's about it. Same thing goes for leather projects. There just aren't as many people interested in leatherwork in Ealdormere as most other arts, and so I don't find many people stop by to chat (unless its something so obviously awesome like Lucrece's book that everyone wants to see it). They see shoes or a purse and can appreciate the aesthetic from the perspective that we all need accessories to go with our garb, but the geeking out doesn't seem to happen as much and I think that's where I get my fun out of the event.

Solution

Given the above, here's what I think I've decided:

1) At least for A&S (QPT may be different), I think I'm going to try to avoid both entering and judging at the same event. I think judging entries on the day tied up so much time I wasn't able to be around to chat about my project with people, and since that's where I seem to get my energy from I think that its important to dedicate some time to that on the day. Given the following points that probably means I'll be entering fewer projects and judging more often at this point. I think that's OK.

2) When I'm deciding to enter a project, it needs to be something I'm going to learn something new out of. So that means either I start entering beginner projects in other areas, or enter different kinds of leather projects. That also means I need to work in advance much more than I did this year, since its going to involve more hard core research and skills development.

3) If I'm entering leather items, they need to be projects that add to the collective knowledge base like the stick-purse and the dyes, rather than just showing off what I can do. I also think these types of projects cross the boundaries better so more people will find them interesting, rather than just people who do leatherworking.

4) Tied to point #2, I need to take advantage of QPT like I did with the stick-purse and leather dyes. Use the full A&S cycle by entering mock-ups at QPT and final projects at A&S, incorporating the input I received.

So, thoughts? Agree? Disagree? Do you have a different perspective? Readers here have been seeing my various projects for years. You see what I get super excited about. Does this sound right, or am I thinking about it wrong?

Kingdom A&S - Thoughts on the Day (Part 1)

I started typing this as one big long post and it was just way too long. So, part one will be just about the day and then I'll move my thinky thoughts to part two.

Kingdom A&S was a really busy day, with entering my girdle purse and judging two other projects. Avelyn was in the kitchen most of the day helping Emelote and John with feast prep so I didn't really see her all day except for occasional runs to the car to bring stuff in for them.

When I wasn't being all judgmental or being judged in turn, I was running around taking pictures. I always feel a certain responsibility for it at local events, but especially when Erik or Alex aren't at the event. I'm the third stringer but I think having pictures is important.

I came away from the event decidedly not super jazzed up, which is unusual. Normally after QPT or A&S I leave feeling all eager to work on new projects and do stuff. This time that wasn't the case. That's why this post is a week after the event - I've been analysing my mind-set to try to figure out what's off. I'll talk about that in part two of this post.

Event Overall
My initial observation was that the caliber of projects overall was really high. When I compare to my first A&S experience (which was really what I was doing all day) I think people have been really stepping up their game.

HE Lucia tried a couple of new things this year, and it will be interesting to see what lessons learned come out of it. First, there were no categories or levels (beginner/intermediate/advanced) for projects like in previous years. That meant everything was judged on the same basic criteria. There were then sponsored prizes for different things, rather than winners of each category. The sponsor set the criteria for the prize and handed them out during the day so it didn't bog down court. I honestly didn't hear a lot of discussion about the change at the event, so I'm not sure how it went over or if there were glitches as a result. It's interesting though because you had prizes for very specific things (best 16th century thing or best thing made from or bearing the image of a sheep), so the mix of prizes was definitely different.

She also introduced an online system for judging forms, which I think got mixed results. In my case it worked fine once I figured out that the wifi signal was too weak in the basement and moved back upstairs. Based on discussions I heard on the day, some people loved it, but I did hear some grumbling. I think some people found it a challenge to find time to fill out the online forms when they were judging upwards of 5-6 projects over the course of the day (and its hard to type extensive comments on a little phone keyboard for many - I brought my bluetooth keyboard and tablet so had an easier time of it).

I also was able to get on the Vigil list early for Marguerite so got in right away. I had made a gift for her and didn't want to be lugging it around all day. :) I bought a bunch of glass jars, and Avelyn did up a bunch of fancy labels for me. We filled them with all of my key leather dying pigments and supplies. My favourite was the jar of rusting metal! I put it all in a basket along with a bunch of leather pieces and bound it all up with some garters/buckled leather straps. The trick is she's only allowed to use them to experiment with leather dying (I had to put the qualifier in because they are mostly the same pigments she uses for her "alchemy"). I gave it the title "Things to help the newly sprouted Laurel to continue to grow". :)

I couldn't get a clean picture of the contents of the basket since it kept closing but here's the basket itself:

Projects I Judged
I was tagged with judging two projects this year. In all there were only four projects related to leather (including mine) so I basically was judging two-thirds of the available projects (the third project was Lucrece's book and was so far beyond my skill level there would have been no point).

Both of the projects were impressive in their own way.

The first project was a pair of early-period shoes (as well as a set of wooden lasts used to make the shoes). Shoes or finicky things to make in the first place, throwing in making a set of wooden lasts on top of it was really neat.

Here's a picture:

Given the hard time I had in sizing the pair of shoes I attempted, the fact that they seem to fit is really great. It'll be interesting to see if they settle in when he's wearing them or if the seams cause any issues.

The second project was an experimental project to re-purpose an old sheepskin coat into three-fingered mitts. In the end the project didn't end up working out, but we think that may be because of the materials, rather than any fault of the artisan. Certainly the research and conjectural concepts were sound. This was only the second time she'd worked with leather so I'm really pleased at the work she was able to do and she's definitely on the right track!

Here's a picture:

My Project
I've already posted pictures of my finished project on the blog, so I won't get into the details of the purse too much here. After I did my spiel on the day about what I did, why I did it etc, the conversation with the judges kind-of went into the related area of period leather dyes and whether the recipes in the Plictho are accurate representations of what was being done, or if the Master dyers would have held things back to keep their secrets. We also talked about whether the iron black recipe would have been commonly used in the period, since they had more industrial dying processes available by then.

Based on the discussion on the day and the comments in my judging sheets, there were only a few things I could improve, including:

• Some tweaks to my documentation (in particular the pictures I chose to use from the artwork)
• A period buckle rather than something I bought at the leather store

Overall the judges seemed to be quite pleased with the end result, and with my process of getting there. I'll call it a win. :)

Coming up next: Thinky thoughts on future entries into Kingdom A&S

The Big Reveal - Kingdom A&S Girdle Purse (with pictures)

This past weekend was Kingdom A&S so I can now post the pictures of my project - which I've been talking about for some time.

Quick summary for those who may have missed it. I decided that since this year is five years since I first entered Kingdom A&S, and that the event was back in our Barony the same as it was that year, that I would recreate my original project. I thought it would show the progress I've made in the past five years and might help people who may not be so confident with their first attempts (because looking back on my first entry all I can think is "What was I thinking?". :)

That year I made a new type of purse I'd never tried before, a basic kidney purse. The first 5-6 posts in the Kingdom A&S tag will give you the story on that original purse.

But of course, I couldn't just do the same pouch. I upgraded the complexity of the pouch, add better finishing and decorative techniques and used historically accurate materials (with a couple of exceptions I'll talk about later).

So, without any further ado, here's a picture side by side of the two finished pouches:

As you can see from this top view, there's a few major differences that you can see. For one, the stitches along the top forming the flab and connecting the various layers of leather is significantly cleaner. The white trim I think really makes a huge difference and makes it pop nicely (the trim was a suggestion from one of my judges for the original pouch). In Purses in Pieces, Goubitz also shows that many of the purses had buckles and straps, which I like since it will help keep things from falling out.

What you can't necessarily see as well from this angle is that there's actually a double pouch on the new purses.Underneath the black pouch you can see, there's a second pouch with two small pouchlets on it. This is a totally documentable design and added a lot of complexity (and storage space) to the purse. Here's a picture of the second level of pouch .You can also see the draw-strings on the pouchlet on the right, I hadn't yet done the one on the left.

Materials-wise, there's a big difference as well. The original pouch was commercially bought chrome-tan leather in a black-ish colour (turns out I was pretty close to what was produce-able in period, so that's kind of nice). The new pouch is dyed black using my vinegar black recipe from the Plictho, same as I used for previous projects.All of the stitching was done using waxed linen thread on the new pouch, as compared to artificial sinew on the original.

For the white leather, I had to make a substitution for cost/availability reasons. Goubitz indicates that pouchlets on these purses would usually have been made using either chamois leather or fabric.Given that I can't find chamois that isn't the super-stretchy auto detailing stuff, I made a substitution to use alum tawed leather, which is period appropriate. But (and there's always a but), it would have cost me $400 to ship a skin of alum tawed leather from the one place I've found it in the US - thanks to the crappy Canadian dollar right now. So I used some chrome-tanned white pigskin that I had on hand, which is almost identical to the colour, texture and thickness of the alum tawed leather.

Here are some in-progress pics (pics with red leather are the prototype that I made of the design, which Avelyn will be using).

Next post will be more about the day at the event.

Quiet day at Practicum

Oops, noticed I wrote this but never posted it. Guess its been busy. :)

It was a fairly quiet day for me at Practicum. I didn't have time to pull together any classes to teach this year because of my surgery recovery. Since there weren't really any classes that interested me (it was a Norse theme this year and I tend to do later period stuff) I decided to setup an all day leatherworking workshop.

Of course, this meant basically packing up all of my books, tools and gear and moving it from my basement to the site, which filled several bins. I needed a dolly to haul it all in.

I essentially spent the day working on my Kingdom A&S project and people could pop by, try out tools, flip through my leatherwork library and ask any questions they might have.

I was able to introduce a newcomer to leather tooling and stamping (and they got to take a scrap of leather they stamped back home with them) but other than a few good chats with a few people who had some specific questions it was mostly me doing my thing and people popping by to visit between their classes.

I was able to line up a few judges for the Baronial Championship at Break the Back (thanks all who've volunteered so far) and talked to some people about their entries.

I would say I'm about half done the work on my Kingdom A&S project.  I have to sew on all of the trim pieces and then do the final assembly. It's going to be tight since I also have to do up the documentation for whichever project I end up entering. (Note since this was written I've almost finished, just a few last pieces to do and then the documentation).

There were two highlights for me, both at court.

First, I was able to witness His Excellency Giovanni being elevated as Ealdormere's first member of the new Order of Defence peerage. Giovanni and Lucia were Baron and Baroness when I started fencing (or maybe Xristina was Vicaress at the time but they were certainly my first Baron and Baroness). One of my first really positive memories of fencing at events was my first Pennsic (and I think their first as Baron and Baroness) when they asked me to represent them as Baronial Rapier Champion until they could hold a tourney ( I wound up being their champion for more than a year). I was severely outclassed at the Champion's tourney from a skill perspective, but I think I held my own in the Q&A and swimsuit portions of the competition. ;) I didn't win one bout in any of the three tournaments I entered but I wore the Hare proudly. Of course, the next year was the famous "I want that bunny dead" incident during the town battle. You can ask Lucia about it, she tells it better than anyone else (and the myth keeps growing with every telling, as all good stories do).

The second highlight, and with all respect to our new Master of Defence, perhaps the biggest highlight, was seeing my Lady Avelyn totally gobsmacked as she was called into court and inducted into the Order of the Wain. She was only there because she'd written the text for an award scroll (of course) and wanted to see it presented (she was aiming for a record puns per inch of text). But I guess the surprise was on our new Ladyship. :) It's so well deserved, even if she has trimmed down the number of officer positions she currently holds from the previous high of 7 simultaneous positions.

Update on Kingdom A&S

I'm making some good progress on my Kingdom A&S project and with still over a month to go I'm feeling more optimistic about getting it done. I have a back-up plan in place just in case, since I want to make sure I enter something, but fingers are crossed I can get my project done.

My goal is to decided in the next two weeks whether I'm going to get the pouch project done in time, so I can start on pulling together the documentation. In both cases I've done all the research and written in down in various places, I just need to drop it into my usual format with pictures etc.

So here's the update on progress. For those that missed it, I posted about the concept here.

For the past few weeks I've been working on the mock-up. It's now done. In general, the main pieces all worked out the way I was expecting. I need to adjust the size/shape of the pouchlet pieces to give more slack to them so they will cinch better. Otherwise the main things I've learned have to do with the order of assembling the pieces. Some of the steps became super time consuming and challenging because I'd already assembled some of the pieces.

I made the mock-up using good quality leather that's almost exactly the same weight and flexibility as the stuff I'm using for the final, so everything should translate well. I'm giving the mock-up to Avelyn, it's a nice red and white so will work well for things where we want to show Kingdom/Baronial colours.

The final piece will be made from the same veg tan I used for the stick purse, dyed using one of my period dyes The trim and pouchlets will be done using some lightweight white pigskin I have. It's modern chrome tan but the feel and colour is almost identical to alum tawed leather (and doesn't cost $400 a skin, which is a plus).

I have progress pictures oft the mockup and will take pics as I work on the final project, but you'll have to stay tuned until the big reveal after the event (I know, I'm such a tease). :)

New throwing axe cover for Baroness Christiana (with pictures)

So this one has been a long time posting but I couldn't share it publicly until the big reveal for Her Excellency Christiana. She was elevated to the Order of the Pelican over a year ago now at 12th Night in January of last year. At the time I promised to make her a fancy throwing axe cover. Unfortunately, last year was not a fun year for us at home so I've fallen way behind on my backlog of promised projects. I finally got this one done in the fall but because I haven't been to many events in the southern part of Ealdormere this year, we haven't really crossed paths. Fortunately, Lady Augusta came up for a visit for Feast of the Hare in November, and I was able to send it via Talfryn courier. She delivered it to Christiana at Wassail.

I had the advantage in making the pattern in that Christiana and I use the same type of throwing axes. HE Percival also sent me a tracing of one of her axes, but in the end I just used one of mine as a 3D model.

It isn't necessarily a period design, but I think the technique of wrapping leather around an item and making a case/sheath is probably period appropriate. I did try to search out some period axe covers but I didn't really find much. Maybe a future research project?

In any case, the first picture below shows the pattern shape I settled on based on the shape of the axe. I tooled in the Pelican on one side and then did a series of small winged snails along the front flap (Christiana's primary charge in her heraldry). 

I had a hard time settling on a main colour because I wanted good contrast and was concerned if I used red the little blood drops from the pelican would be lost. In the end I used two different reds, a darker read as the main colour (which is a bit like a brick-red) and then a brighter red for the blood drops. It doesn't pop as much as if I used a contrasting colour but the white snails and pelican sure do, and it is Ealdormere after all so there has to be lots of red.

I then folded the cover around the axe and laced the bottom and the edge using artificial sinew (I thought about using waxed linen thread for authenticity but thought the artificial sinew would be more durable given that a sharp axe would be sliding in and out of the item). This is the pelican side of the cover on one of my axes.

Here's the back with the flap tied down using leather laces. Next time I'll have to rethink the closing laces as they get in the way a bit this way when you try to put the axe in or take it out. It's a bit of an awkward design, so there's room for improvement in the engineering. You'll also notice there are only four snails on the final piece while there were five in the picture above. I had to modify the size and shape of the flap once it was assembled, and one of the snails had to be sacrificed. That'll teach me not to do a mock-up of a new design.

Here's the final piece fully assembled, just before it went out the door. I'm hoping she likes it. :)