Something that has happened to me time and again:

I look at some medieval Thing. I sort of try to figure out how it was made. I read up on more details of the Thing, and the Type of Things. I find out that there was quite some variation, and that some of the assumptions I made when seeing only Thing are not correct.

I read up more on Type of Things. I find something about it that sounds... weird. Like "how on Earth can that work" weird. "Whyever would you want to do that with this tool/material/method" weird.

I fiddle around some more with doing stuff. I try the weird-seeming tool, material, or method. I find it works brilliantly - much better than my own ideas that I used in my first tries.

I stand there, humbled, and realise again that living a couple of hundred years later does not make anyone automatically smarter, or better at doing something that was already successfully done, and developed to best efficiency, back then.

At least these days, I've been humbled often enough and learned enough about this that it does not take me very long to try out the original materials or (possible) methods... as opposed to when I was a teenager and getting started with Living History.

In the most recent case, by the way, the Things are the lace chapes, and the Weird Thing About Them was the indication that at least some chapes (possibly not all of them, but this is a tiny detail that may be hard to see or evaluate anyways, due to several different reasons) were riveted with an iron rivet.

Now, those chapes are tiny. (I mentioned that, right?) They are made from very thin brass sheeting, so once they are bent, they are a good bit stabler than the flat sheeting, but it's still a relatively soft material. Iron is much harder than brass... but I did find that using a soft iron wire to make the rivet does work better than using a dedicated brass rivet (yes, you can get them in so tiny).



So. I stand humbled, and corrected, and will happily go on pounding the heck out of soft iron when riveting. (Very carefully, though, rather softly, and with a very small hammer. I lovingly call it my "Mädchenhammer"... my girls's hammer.)

Now what is left to do is figure out how to offer these in the shop - which kinds of bands, which lengths of chapes, which lengths of bands. (Obviously, I'll be able to make specific lengths on demand, but setting up the shop attributes for that might not work...) If you do Living History, use laces with chapes (or laces without them) and have comments for me, they are very welcome!

Here's more impressions from Lauresham:

First of all, the vinyard:

This time of year, everything was full of wild flowers, too.

Of course it's not only fields and pastures and vinyard - there are the houses as well, which I have mostly omitted until now. Here they are, finally:

As you can surely guess, one of these houses was much more important for me to see than the others - the weaving house. We spent a little time inside that, so I could get an overview of the looms, tools, and loomweights available.

The house has three looms that are permanently installed there, plus a mobile loom that can be taken to wherever it is needed and used there. The looms are used for showing weaving technique to visitors, but also to test out things.

There's also a bunch of differently-shaped loom weights available, as well as some other textile equipment. I am already looking forward so much to working with all this at the Textile Forum.

... but they are both to spectacular things. Number one: A one thousand year old sarcophagus was opened in Mainz - here is the link to a short video report (in German).

Number two is more textile-related stuff: A report about the conservation of embroidered and textile book-bindings at the British Library. These stunning book covers are definitely worth a look!

If you're interested in horses, horse breeding, or ancient DNA studies, here's a paper posted on academia.edu about ancient horse DNA - discovering two now-extinct horse lineages, as well as proof that mules were already bred and used more than 2000 years ago. (Reading things on academia.edu is free, but you need to have a login.)

Medieval Clothing and Textiles, the annual journal, is out with vol. 15 and available directly via the publisher, Boydell & Brewer, or via the bookstore of your choice, priced at around 40 GBP.

Another interesting-sounding book, but, alas, for the typical prohibitive Brill price, is "Reassessing the Roles of Women as 'Makers' of Medieval Art and Architecture", edited by Therese Martin. There are snippets of the chapters available on the Brill page as previews, but even though the book is more than a thousand pages - for 254 €, I will certainly buy neither the ebook nor the hardcover.

Also behind a paywall, but also sounding interesting - especially if you are researching medieval food and cooking: Giles E.M. Gasper, Faith Wallis, Salsamenta pictavensium: Gastronomy and Medicine in Twelfth-Century England, The English Historical Review, Volume 131, Issue 553, 1 December 2016, Pages 1353–1385. This article is available via Oxford Academic (24-hr access costs 36 €), or you could try getting it via your library.

Finally, and for free for a change: A Faksimile and Transcript of "Nature Unbowelled", a 17th century book with recipes for loopbraided laces.

One of the things on my list of things I would like to do is make a short overview article about the sources for the different kinds of goods I carry - for myself, for the crafters who make these things for me, and of course for my customers. It's one of the things, however, that are usually a) not urgent, b) not crucial for being able to carry on, and c) taking a lot more time than expected or readily available.

From time to time, though, something comes up that prods me into looking for more info, and trying to collect that, and this has happened recently. The things under my scrutiny? Pins and needles. And oh, I can tell you... it's an abyss.

As is often the case, there is a little bit of literature that is easy to find, and that does give some information. For Germany, it's Stefan Krabath's work Die hoch- und spätmittelalterlichen Buntmetallfunde nördlich der Alpen, and for Britain, Chris Caple has written a number of things about pins. In addition, some pins and needles are listed in the context of works about textiles or garments or textile/garment accessories.

Overall, though, this is a group of finds which is hard to find - and even if pins or needles are listed in some archaeological publication, there is often not much information about them. Ideally, I'd like to know the material (brass? bronze? copper? some other alloy?), the length, the thickness of the shaft, the date (which can be a real problem, as these things are typologically long-lived) and in addition, I'd like to have a drawing or at least a photograph. In many cases, there is none of this apart from the mention and a very rough date... which does not help me at all in looking for pieces to get someone to replicate.

Added difficulty: Germans like to use that "needle in a haystack" idiom, which means that it's a very good idea to put "-heuhaufen" in your searchwords (though that in turn might toss out valid results, the usual dilemma).

So I'm looking into articles and trying to get enough material together - to both write up a little info thing, and to decide on what I would like to have made (and then the next step is to find out if the metalworking people I've contacted can, and will, do it).

And this, of course, is where I segue into a bleg - if you have any nice documentation of pins (preferably high medieval, as the late stuff is way easier to get info about), please let me know - I might end up with replicas of these in my shop...

Here are a few things for the German readers among you - with one bonus English article, so I'll start with that one:

A woman from a medieval monastery close to Paderborn has been identified as a scribe through blue residue in the dental calculus between her teeth. The residue comes from lapis lazuli stones, which were used as a pigment in manuscript illumination. Here's the German-language article at Spiegel about this, and here is the full publication of the research in English.

And on to German-only: There is a special exhibition called "Verehrt, verwendet, vergessen" at the Alamannen-Museum Ellwangen, which is running until April 28. It is looking at the Alamannen in the context of politics and (contemporal) history - a very interesting topic. You can find more information about it here.

Also at the same museum: "Lebendige Geschichte", a two-day workshop for Living History people on February 16 and 17. This year, focus topic of the workshop will be immaterial cultural goods - such as music or belief systems. Another focus topic will be how to handle visitors with extreme right political views, and I think it is a very good idea to include this. If you are interested, you can find more information here - registration deadline is February 10.

Here's a short article about the earliest plant fibre technology: Splicing (not spinning). One of the many techniques that I still haven't found time to get into deeply. It's on my list, though. Very much.

If you're interested in embroideries, there's a new(ish) German book out: Christiane Elster: Die Textilen Geschenke Papst Bonifaz' VIII. (1294-1303) an die Kathedrale von Anagni. Päpstliche Paramente des späten Mittelalters als Medien der Repräsentation, Gaben und Erinnerungsträger. Petersberg : Michael Imhof Verlag, 2018. And here on Paroles d'Arts you can find a French review about the book, including some images so you can get an idea.

A very modern type of clothing - like out of a sci-fi book - is being developed: Clothing that extracts oxygen from water to let you breathe. It's not efficient enough yet to provide a human with the necessary oxygen, but I'm totally floored that this is possible at all!

Now for a bit of archaeology - a game board on stone that might be a clue to the spot where a monastery once existed.

Some more archaeology shows that cheese-making is a very old thing, and cheeses may have been connected to social status - and may have been a step in promoting the freaky gene that lets European adults produce lactase.

And some conservation issues, though rather modern ones: Plastics have become a part of our history, and they start degrading in bulk now, so conservators are struggling to keep that part of human cultural history intact.