I am returned home from a wonderful and lovely time outdoors with friends - time spent paddling in warm, clear waters, swimming, reading, having lovely food (both homecampsite-made and dining out), knitting some socks, looking at the lush greenery, making oodles of bad puns and generally relaxing a lot. It was not only wonderful, but also a much-needed recharge of my batteries.

I spent the first day back going through 300+ emails, and one of those is the reason you get a blogpost today already instead of tomorrow. If you have read German academic books, chances are that you have held one published by de Gruyter in your hands. It's one of those typical academic publishing houses that have a very good reputation, but can be extremely pricey.

De Gruyter has bought up two other academic publishers, namely Akademie Verlag and Oldenbourg Verlag. To celebrate this, they are granting free access to the ebook versions of all the current titles of both publishing houses. The books are in German, but if you read German and need a book from their programmes, this is your opportunity.

Free access is possible until August 31; you find the titles of Akademie Verlag here and those of Oldenbourg here. And if you visit the site, have a laugh at some of the ebook prices they offer - the printed and bound version costs 19.80 €, while the ebook is priced at 198.00 €! (I wonder why... don't they want to sell ebooks too?)

I will admit it: I'm one of those who only look into books for the piccies. Well, old books, that is. While I can read Middle High German well enough to get most texts once they are transcribed and can read some very little Middle English (and thank you, Chaucer, for your tweets!), I have yet to read a manuscript in its original state.

Every time I run across a digitised manuscript library on the internet, I do a little happy dance (yay! More accessible manuscripts, and more manuscripts that will be there for posterity even if something dire happens - remember the archives at Cologne?) and then... I do a search.

I look for the search terms "spindle" and "wool" typically, both in English (if there is an English archive version) and in the archive's native language. Sometimes I'm lucky, other times I'm not.

I was not lucky in the St. Laurentius Digital Manuscript Library from Lund - but if you are looking for pics of nice medieval manuscripts, with pretty initials, you will really like this page. There's 64 digitised manuscripts from the 9th/10th century to the 16th century, and they are worth a look if only for the initials. (At least that's what I think.)

While I'm at links to libraries online: Umeå University has rare old books digitised as well, accessible via their "special collections" page. It was very slow for me, but if you are looking for an old print - you might get lucky there.

Oh, by the way: There is a lot of work still to be done on the Cologne archive material - the city has an info page about the damages and the work being done here (German only, but there's pics).

First of all, food: There's a new transcribed recipe on Medieval Cookery, so if you've always wondered how you should cook your Bruet of Almayne - here are several options.

Good food is one of the ingredients for a nice evening of games with friends - if you are looking for a nice medieval-style game board for backgammon and nine men's morris, take a look at Niklas' latest blogpost (in German, but there are pics).

If you're rather looking for a more intellectual pastime, maybe you would prefer to learn the language of the Vikings? There's a new book out there to teach you Old Norse and Runes, with a second volume for deepening your knowledge and reading skills forthcoming soon. (You can also look at samples from the book here.)

Speaking of books and Vikings, Marianne Vedeler has a new book coming out titled "Silk for the Vikings". It's available for pre-order at Oxbow books.

And if this has totally stressed you out now, and you need to relax, the Daleks will help you:

Time for some tablet weaving stuff! (In my next life, I will manage to get more time for tablet weaving. And for napping in the sun.)

First of all, a blog post about an Estonian shawl, 13th/14th century, with a tablet-woven border.

Cathy thinks about the Køstrup find, which also has a tablet-woven border. (There's a link to another post with pics in there, should you want to look at brownish textiles.)

And the final tablet-weaving-related bit: Maikki Karisto & Mervi Pasanen have published a book about Finnish tablet-woven bands, called "Applesies and Fox Noses". It's bilingual in Finnish and English, and if I understand correctly, at least a good part of the patterns are taken from original Finnish bands, including medieval ones. The book is available for pre-ordering here, and it's scheduled to come out on June 20.

Writing a book can take you into unexpected directions - such as researching English medieval furniture. After hunting for it for quite a while, I can tell you that there seems to be even less material about it than about German medieval furniture (and that's not much).

So I spent the day yesterday partly in the library, hunting down books and checking them and checking out some more of them, resulting in a very heavy bag of books to carry home. So heavy, in fact, that I had the sudden urge of sweetening the load by buying some sock wool... sock wool does not count, right?

Today's agenda, thus, has more books on it - books that I need to at least skim to see if there is something useful in there. If anyone here has a hint on where to find a good, current book or article about English medieval furniture in the timespan of about 1000 to 1350, it would also be much appreciated!

Not so very long ago (as in just a few hours), I did have a different idea about what to blog on than semi-random work-related stuff, but it has miraculously evaporated from my brain. Which is, at the moment, a tiny little bit addled by having heard construction-type noise for all of this week, with the extra serving (as in: in close proximity to me) yesterday afternoon and today. (We're getting new windows set in, which is lovely and very nice, but obviously connected to some work being done.)

In work-related news, I will be hunting for evidence of medieval furniture in England. Also: preparing for two short on-event workshops that will take place when I am in Herzberg, and I'm very much looking forward to this. Also on my list of things (exciting and nice things) to do: get an overview about our paper and workshop/practical session offers for the Textile Forum and update the website. I have been drooling over some pictures already this morning, and I can tell you - I'm really, really psyched about this.

Finally, and also Forum-related: You can actually pre-order our first volume, "Ancient Textiles - Modern Science", aka the European Textile Forum Proceedings. It's a collection volume of the last years, and not every paper given is in there, but it's a very nice variety and a good spread over times, materials and techniques. We hope that it will be successful enough to lead the way to a second volume in the future.

If you read French and are looking for medieval embroidery examples, this forthcoming book might be of interest to you:

Sur, Francois. La chape de Saint-Louis-d'Anjou :
Trésor textile du XIIIe siècle de l'opus
anglicanum. Basilique Sainte-Marie-Madeleine,
Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume. Paris: Horizon,
avec l'Association des Amis de la basilique
Sainte-Marie-Madeleine de
Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, 2013. 28cm., pbk.,
112pp., 110 illus., most in color. ISBN: 9782757206898
Available June 2013 Shamansky

Summary: Investie du poids de l’histoire et de la renommée d’un personnage à la destinée hors du commun, la chape de saint Louis d’Anjou reçut l’onction d’un classement au titre des monuments historiques le 31 mai 1897. Ce tissu brodé aura eu les honneurs de cinq expositions de renom, entre 1867 à Paris, lors de l’Exposition Universelle, et 2012 quand il se confronta au parement d’autel des Cordeliers de Toulouse, antependium de semblable facture. Ménageant son aura de relique, elle a certes cessé d’être honorée en tant que telle, mais, par le truchement d’une vénérabilité de plus de sept siècles, elle y a graduellement surajouté la dimension de trésor d’histoire et d’art. Tout est paradoxe dans la vie de Louis d’Anjou. Fils de Charles II, comte de Provence et roi de Sicile, il a passé toute son adolescence en captivité. Dans les forteresses du roi d’Aragon. Il est étroitement surveillé par des gardiens sans grande humanité. Ayant recouvré la liberté à 21 ans, il entreprend aussitôt de répondre à sa vocation religieuse. A Montpellier, quelques jours après sa libération, il veut prendre l’habit des Frères Mineurs. Ce choix répond à son idéal. Comme les disciples de saint François, Louis entend vivre dans la pauvreté la plus complète. Il ne s’agit pas seulement de ne rien posséder, mais encore de vivre en mendiant et de parvenir à un détachement du monde qui fasse accéder aux plus hautes vertus, en allant de l’humilité à la plus fervente charité. Avec une ténacité étonnante pour son âge, il persiste et finit par obtenir du pape Boniface VIII une prise d’habit secrète. Quelques jours après, le 30 décembre 1296, il est sacré évêque de Toulouse par le pape lui-même. Ce compromis lui permet de prendre l’habit publiquement au début du mois de février suivant. Il est prince aux fleurs de lys, il est évêque, il est franciscain. Il vit cet incroyable paradoxe avec lucidité. Cette réponse permet d’expliquer comment un franciscain épris de pauvreté peut avoir dans son trousseau une chape qui est un trésor. Ce somptueux vêtement épiscopal, il ne l’a pas commandé lui-même, car il faut plusieurs années pour le réaliser. Or, Louis d’Anjou est décédé le 19 août 1297, moins de huit mois après sa consécration épiscopale. C’est un cadeau, don de ses parents ou de Boniface VIII. S’il l’a portée, c’est en public pour faire honneur au culte. Dessous, il avait gardé l’habit qu’il tenait de saint François. L’oeuvre d’art est restée, témoignant d’une sainteté qui va au- delà des apparences. L’apparition en Europe des premières chapes brodées de ce type fut une révélation. Les vêtements liturgiques ornés de broderies anglaises étaient réellement les plus beaux cadeaux que l’Angleterre pouvait offrir à un prélat : ils captaient la lumière et spiritualisaient les gestes de l’orateur. Les motifs de la chape font écho à la liturgie médiévale qui vénère la Vierge Marie. Les scènes bibliques ne sont pas seulement décoratives mais aussi destinées à créer une enveloppe spirituelle. Broder est un art qui consiste à réaliser à l’aiguille un motif ou une décoration sur une étoffe préalablement tissée. Sur son textile opaque, le brodeur traduit l’impression de lumière et d’éblouissement. Les broderies de l’opus anglicanum sont caractérisées par une ornementation rehaussée de perles, pierres précieuses ou semi-précieuses.

(h/t to MEDTC Discuss list, where info including summary were posted.)