An SCA Nerd

I think we're too harsh on medieval painters because this is legitimately what some poodle mixes look like

like. these breeds didn't even EXIST yet back then. those painters were PROPHETS.

Pelican Pendant

1600-1620

Enamelled gold pendant depicting the Pelican in its piety set with sapphires, emeralds and a baroque pearl, and hung with pearls

Victoria and Albert Museum

oop, but I know some Pelicans who would drool over this.

Trying to chart out a border element from embroidery in a historical context

Accidentally created Godzilla instead

Update: Godzilla removed

Then felt bad for him.

So I made a Godzilla on purpose.

hi sorry s'cuse me but were NONE OF YOU GOING TO TELL ME ABOUT BLACK BOOKS OF HOURS???

LOOK AT THIS MAGNIFICENT GOTH-ASS SHIT

EGADDDDDDD

THE IRON-COPPER SOLUTION USED TO DYE THE PAGES WAS SO CORROSIVE THAT THERE ARE VERY FEW SURVIVING EXAMPLES

THESE BOOKS WERE LITERALLY TOO METAL TO LIVE

i can't

The 15th Century invented dark mode.

I took my nephew and niece to their first event when they were… five and seven? They each picked out a heavy and a rapier fighter to cheer on (we made favors for them to give as part of the Plan to Keep Little Kids Entertained™). They interpreted this to mean that they were to LOOK AFTER these fighters and spent the remainder of the day taking them water and sharing goldfish crackers with them.

You don’t know happiness until you see a little kid hand a Knight an Uncrustable and have him devour it gratefully.

#congrats your children reinvented squires (via @roach-works​)

I have no idea what an Uncrustable is but it sounds suspiciously magical and along the lines of Incorruptible and I hope the knights are more grateful than shocked when they begin to realise they’re no longer ageing

Uncrustable

Okay now that sounds like a superhero team

Uncrustable is just if you are friends with hippies and don’t end up owning at least 1 pair of harem pants

I am both an hyppie and immune to harem pants because I can’t stand elasticated ankles, so I’m not sure where that puts me on the spectrum - perhaps I’m crustablequeer

Also now I picture a disappointed child turning to a knight who has behaved in a manner unbecoming to the code and refusing them treats, murmuring “sirrah, you have proved yourself uncrustworthy”

"Women could be found working on construction sites, if only occasionally, including in specialized roles such as carpenters and masons. The research is found in the article, “Appropriate to Her Sex?” Women’s Participation on the Construction Site in Medieval and Early Modern Europe,” by Shelley E. Roff.

She surveyed a wide variety of records from throughout Western Europe, including tax records, inventories of wages paid on construction sites, and municipal accounts, and discovered numerous instances of women working alongside men on construction sites as far back at the 13th century. Most of these women were employed as day laborers, carrying out tasks such as moving water and building supplies around the sites, digging ditches and serving as assistants to bricklayers and stonemasons. For example, in the Spanish city of Seville during the 14th century, women were hired to dig trenches for the foundation of a new city wall, while at the nearby city of Toledo, one or two women were hired each day for the construction of the city’s cathedral, where they gathered lime and worked on the roof. Meanwhile in the French city of Toulouse, almost half the laborers working on the Perigord college site were women. Ross also finds several examples from England and Germany.

Roff notes that previous historians have seen many examples of women working on construction sites in their research, but they had believed that these were just abnormal exceptions caused by economic crises, or because the male population had been killed off through war or disease. But her new study suggests that women construction workers were more than just odd occurences. She explains that “the expansion of urban centers starting in the thirteenth century set off a trend of increasing female employment for day laborers and in the crafts, which only began to contract on occasion for women working in the crafts in the sixteenth century with ensuing economic crises.”

She also notes that in almost all accounts surveyed, the women were paid at a lower rate than the men, which would make the “a cost-effective solution” for site supervisors looking for ways to reduce expenses. The women who took these jobs would have come from society’s poor – those women who could not maintain their households and families just from their husbands’ (if they had one) income.

Roff also finds records showing women taking part in specialized building trades. In London in 1383, Katherine Lightfoot is recorded as the supplier of 2,000 painted tiles for bath in the King’s palace. Meanwhile, tax records from Paris during the years 1296 and 1313 reveal the existence of two female masons, a tiler and a plasterer. These women were not poorer individuals, rather they were the wives of male craftsman, and in some cases their widows. The 15th-century French writer Christine de Pizan noted in her book The Treasury of the City of Ladies that craftswomen, “should learn all the shop details so that she can properly supervise the workers when her husband is away or not paying attention.”

Women workers could be found on the medieval construction site, Medievalists.net

Happy Birthday SCA!

Face of a man who died in 1361 during the Battle of Visby in Swedeп, one of the wildest of Eυrope.

More: https://artifactsmuseumhistory.blogspot.com/

Today I am thinking about weaving.

I can knit and crochet, but those crafts didn't exist in Roman times. Any historically accurate Roman cloth must be woven. So when a little potholder loom jumped into my shopping basket for 50 cents, it felt like a sign I should learn.

One potholder that was 50% yarn and 50% weird gaps later, I looked up a tutorial, and realized why the damn thing was 50 cents. I needed a better, more adaptable loom. And, because I am a cheapskate and slightly loony, I decided to make one instead of buying it.

So, how does this thing work?

First, you string the warp threads up and down, around the pegs. Here, I made a zigzag shape. Then, you use a needle or shuttle to weave more yarn over and under the warp, horizontally, back and forth. This produces woven fabric.

Some looms weave from the top, some from the bottom. This Greek urn shows two weavers working from the top. The left weaver uses a rod to compact the woven fabric upward, keeping it even and sturdy. The right weaver is passing an oval-shaped shuttle through the warp threads to form another row.

Most Roman looms would have looked like this, with the finished cloth at the top. Unlike my looms, these are warp-weighted. That means you keep the warp yarns taut by hanging weights at the bottom, rather than through a bottom row of pegs.

Warp-weighted looms also have a big advantage over my little potholder loom: you can easily create multiple sheds.

A "shed" is a temporary gap between lifted strands and non-lifted strands. Instead of having to go over and under each strand individually, you raise the entire shed, then pull the shuttle or needle straight through. This saves lots of time! Then, to weave the next row, you close the shed, lift up a different set of threads to create a new shed, and send the shuttle/needle through the other direction.

On a warp-weighted loom, the sheds are opened by loops called heddles (H), which are attached to a heddle rod (G). When the rod is down, shed (1) is open (middle diagram). When you pull the rod up, shed (1) closes and shed (2) opens instead (right diagram). Most warp-weighted looms also have a pair of forks you can rest the heddle rod on, to free your hands.

Here, there are three heddle rods and sets of forks, the heddles are white, and the warp thread is red. This gives you four different sheds, and the potential to weave very complex patterns indeed. Not bad for a device invented over 6500 years ago!

I liked the multiple heddle-rod design so much, I tried incorporating it into my DIY loom, too. I've tested both yarn and paperclips as heddles:

I actually got both sheds and heddle-rods working, too. Which is pretty cool for a lap loom - every other lap loom I found only has one shed, so you have to go over-under the individual threads on alternate rows.* More time-consuming. However, the sheds here are narrow, and I'll need a smaller and smoother shuttle to pass through them smoothly. This wouldn't be an issue on a warp-weighted loom, where the warp hangs freely downward, and can move more flexibly with the heddles.

Anyway. I may get a "real" loom at some point, but I wanted to build one first, and I think it gave me more appreciation for just how resourceful ancient weavers were. They created technology, clothing, and artwork out of very basic materials, and civilization depended on these skills.

Now, I need to go finish the...whatever the hell it will be. Big thanks to Wikipedia and to the lovely Youtubers who make this craft easier to learn. I think it'll be a lot of fun.

(*Edit - found out a rotating heddle bar can make two sheds on a lap loom! Exciting!!)

A meticulously deep dive into making a personalized pattern for a tunic or dress.

And her PDF

Much more info and time stamps are on the video description if you open it via youtube

The amount of detail she goes into is outstanding!

St. George and the Dragon (1516) by Vittore Carpaccio (National Gallery of Art)