I'm participating in an Instagram challenge initiated by the group Hochwaldkelten - and today, they are asking about the favourite place for (or of) Living History.

Uh. That was a really hard question for me, and got me thinking very hard about all the things I did in all the places that I did them... which were many, and varied, and about all of them were utterly wonderful and I have fond memories of them. Of sitting in the train, and in the car, and even in the plane or the airport, travelling to an event or a conference or a museum or a research project, with all the anticipation involved. Of hotel rooms and hostel rooms and pensions and the homes of friends and colleagues, where I stayed for a while. Of sleeping spaces on floors in open air museum houses and of my own medieval tent and one time even in an old jail cell. Of museums, both the parts open to the public and the places behind the scenes, the depots and cellars and staircases and offices and - very important, of course - the break rooms and tea rooms. The markets and fairs, with all their hustle and bustle and the challenge of fitting everything into the space provided, which is different every time. The workshop places and demonstration places.

So, so many different places. So many wonderful meetings with colleagues, with friends, often times both. So many wonderful teaching experiences, and demonstration sessions, and getting close to actual medieval objects.

In the end, though, I ended up posting this as a picture of my favourite place:



Because this part of the floor in our place has seen so much action, and so many things, and when it gets involved, something fun is about to happen. This is where I set up work tables for larger projects that need a table, or where I sit for works like weaving the Egtved skirt.



This is also where I take photos of things for my documentation - like the Bernuthsfeld tunic reconstruction:



or the reconstruction of this late medieval fabric:



The cat, of course, was not sent off to the museum along with the cloth.

So in the end... that's my favourite place in regard to work, in some way. How about you? What's your favourite place for Living History, or for crafts, or both?

 

As usually when I've been away for a few days, there is plenty of things stacking up that need to be de-stacked and processed and done and so on. So I'm trying to get back on track, whittling the mails down to the usual stack sitting in the inbox (where everything sits that still needs some action), plus all the usual suspects of ton the to-do list.

Also there's a private lesson to be given this afternoon, which I'm looking forward to - but which I also have to prepare. So instead of something dep and interesting and whatnot, you are getting a picture of the Bernuthsfeld man's reconstruction legwrap, during the process of giving it the holes and patch that it has on the original:



It's actually not that easy to fake usewear traces. Holes are rather easy, but as soon as you are trying to have different usewear patterns, it really does get more complicated.

I'm back home, my colleague is back home, and the Bernuthsfeld Man reconstruction is home, too. He has a lovely spot in the OLME in Emden now, right at the end of the exhibition part about the find and the time, so you're getting a look at the original finds, then information about research and the context of how life was in the 8th century, and then, at the very end, he's waiting for you to look him in the eye.

To our great delight, the museum people were just as happy with how our reconstruction turned out as we are, and there was immense interest from the press. We got covered by several papers, such as the Sächsische Zeitung, the General-Anzeiger (behind a paywall, but you can see a pic), and the Hannoversche Allgemeine (again, paywall but a visible pic). We even made it into the TV news!

But obviously, you're waiting for a picture right here, right? Here you go:

[caption id="attachment_3694" align="alignnone" width="294"] Our reconstruction, in the setup that he can be seen in at the museum.


We thought long and hard about how to dress the figurine in a way that shows all his equipment, including the small cloak/blanket he had, and still shows off as much as possible of the tunic. Because while the small cloak would also be interesting to show in action, it will cover up quite a lot of the main piece:



So we decided to wrap it up, tie it together with the wool cord he also had with him, and hang it on his belt. The belt actually had a spot where something heavy obviously hung for a good long time, or very frequently; we placed the blankie-pack in that spot, and you can see what happens in the next two pictures.



The belt suddenly sits at a bit of an angle, and everything looks a little more lifelike of a sudden. Also the worn spots at the tunic coincide exactly with the places where the belt sits and rubs against the cloth... to our great delight.

So now he's in the museum, and if you're in the area, go visit him in the Ostfriesisches Landesmuseum Emden. And if you do so, say hello from me!

 

Well, not completely destroy - but it is finally the time to finish the Bernuthsfeld tunic by adding some bits of usewear, mounting it on the shiny new figurine and then setting it up in the museum. Which means I'm off for exactly that until Tuesday late at night, so you'll get the next blog entry on Thursday next week.

I'm all excited to see how the ensemble will look - and I do hope the museum people will be just as delighted with the outcome of the tunic reconstruction as my colleague and I!

 

Not only is the sweater coming along and almost finished, the Bernuthsfeld tunic is, too!

The last reconstructed patches have gone in (or on, depending), and the only things left to take care of are the still not completely clear finish of the neck area as well as the hems at the bottom and at the sleeves. Otherwise, it is finally done - and most of the bits that looked dodgy or not quite as they should at some stage did fit together beautifully at the end.

That was a lot of rough stitching with wool yarn, I can tell you! The result, though - I find it rather nice. It definitely is something way, way out of the ordinary way people dressed in the Early Middle Ages.

Here's the reconstructed tunic from the front, as it looks now, with the yet unfinished hems and neck:



And this is the view from the back:



So that is as good as done, too. Whew!

Work on the shirt is progressing - it's a rather simple one, oriented in measurements on the tunic reconstruction, and sewn from hand-woven linen. The cloth has a charmingly large number of weaving faults, which is rather nice for a shirt to fit a probably quite poor man, though my stitching is the usual - I realised too late that I might have done larger, sloppier stitches.

It's fun and a nice feeling, though, to do "proper" seams and hems for a bit after all the many very coarse seams on the tunic itself - which means I'm quite enjoyng myself.

There was a slight, um, complication while cutting, though, in form of not very helpful furry help:



Usually Madame doesn't care very much about my textile shenanigans, apart from having to sit on every bit of fabric that happens to lie on the floor, but she was especially enthusiastic today, and actually attacked the dangerous moving cloth...It did lose its attraction enough after a while, though, so I could go on and finish my work. Everything is lined up for assembly now, and seams will be kept as simple as possible, so it should be finished soon.

At least re-use - that is, after all, what was done with the Bernuthsfeld tunic. Case in point?



Patches 35-38, our numbering. (Did I mention we gave out new numbers for the patches, as not all of them are covered in the drawing that Hahne did?)

You can hopefully see that there is a light diamond twill fabric and a darker diamond twill fabric, and the lighter one has its own seams, done in a different hand than the main tunic makers' one (which is the rather clumsy overcast stitch around the patches). There is also a proper hem at the bottom of the light fabric, which in turn is stitched to the darker fabric, which has its own proper hem at its own bottom.



So my interpretation is this one: The light diamond twill fabric was once a kind of garment, sporting said seams and hem. At some point, it was worn down so much or had gotten out of fashion so completely that it was taken apart, and the still-okay bits were used again, to make a new garment (maybe a child's tunic) out of the light fabric together with the darker fabric. The two are not the same, but rather similar, so they'd work nicely together.

The colour difference in the original today is not quite as pronounced as it is in our reconstruction, which is partly due to the difference in the base colour of the fibres in our fabrics being larger than in the original and partly due to our decision to make the fabrics a bit more different in order to clearly show that they are two different pieces with different history.

In any case, here we have a beautiful example of re-using fabric not once, not twice, but three times as part of a garment - first, the lighter fabric on its own, then together with the darker one in a garment, then as a big patch in the Bernuthsfeld tunic.

(Also it was really, really nice to sew the proper seams and hem in the light fabric, and an amazing contrast to do this sandwiched right inbetween doing some Bernuthsfeld overcast seams!)