The blog post with the two boys from Hartenstein got a comment with questions from Bertus Brokamp. One of the questions can best be answered with a picture comparison - the effigy of the Hartensteiner that we worked from and the reconstruction that is now in the exhibition.

Here you see the effigy and the reconstructed Hartensteiner side by side:


As you can see (and can see even better when you click the picture to get a larger version), we tried to keep close to the look of the effigy.  The pictures are roughly the same size - the two men won't match exactly due to differences in their body proportions - and they are arranged so that the two faces are on the same line, for easier comparison. Some of the differences are due to the posture of the reconstructed Hartensteiner - the length of the short mailshirt sleeves seems different because they fall back onto the upper arms while putting on the helmet, and our reconstructed guy actually wears the gloves and the sword (not in the photo yet - we put that on him after I took the picture). But the layering of the gambeson (with riding slit, you might just be able to make that out in the effigy), mail shirt and breastplate with dagged fabric cover does match the ensemble in the artwork.

The helmet is not attached to one of the chains because he's just putting it on, but it would technically be possible to hang it from one of the chains. Dagger, sword and shield are not yet in place on the reconstruction. The coat of arms, by the way, is not the one shown on the effigy: The Hartensteiner has a fish-hook as his coat of arms (black on gold background), and that's why we gave him the fancy golden fish as his helmet crest.

For those of you who can't go there (or for those who would like a little preview), here are photos of the two "guys" standing in the Hartenstein exhibition. I took my camera to the opening ceremony, but had unfortunately not checked the batteries before, so I can only show you pics from the setup procedure - which means that the pictures show only the almost-finished state, with little details missing.

First, there's the miles from around 1200. It's a knight from the Teutonic order, and there were two possibilities for him for the exhibition, the warlike outfit and the courtly one. When we set up the exhibition, the warlike presentation was chosen, so he currently looks like this:


And this would be his courtly self:


He's wearing braies, a pair of cloth hose beneath the mail, a wadded gambeson, the mail shirt with mittens attached, a tabard and then either a half-circle cloak or helmet and mail coif.
Isn't it amazing how much of a difference this makes?

And as the second "guy", we have the master of Hartenstein himself, caught in the act of donning his Great Helmet:

He's wearing braies, cloth and mail hose, a gambeson, a mail shirt, armour covered with silk cloth, knee protectors and vambraces. And gauntlets. And two helmets, of course - the bascinet with mail attached to protect the neck, the great helmet with a fish as the crest. (I hope I got all the English terms right - I'm not so used to translating weapons-and-armour terminology.) He isn't equipped yet with his shield and his sword - he only got those after the photo.

(He's cut off at the knees because there are tools and paraphernalia at his feet. He does have feet. Really.)

Today is the opening ceremony for the exhibition on Burg Hartenstein, and from tomorrow, the exhibition is open to the public.

If you are around here, why not give the two knightly guys I made and clothed a visit? The exhibition is open on Thursday and Friday afternoons (from 15.00) and on Saturdays and Sundays (from 10.00).

And if you are not in the Nuremberg area, you can see one of the guys greeting you on the official homepage of the Freundeskreis Hartenstein e.V., the association that initialised making the exhibition.

Today, the two knights for the exhibition at Hartenstein will be placed into their final spots and installed securely (so they don't gallop off in the night or, even worse, fall onto an unsuspecting visitor).

Setting up for an exhibition, for me, it's always a very exciting thing and surely a cocktail of emotions. There's a little anxiety (did I bring everything? will it all fit?), a little stress (oh my goodness I hope it doesn't all take so long to set up as this item), an amount of fun (after all, things are finally coming together as they are supposed to do), a generous measure of pleasant anticipation and hope (ah, this looks really nice here, that will be splendid once we open, I hope everybody else likes it as much) and, of course, a dash of "oh no!" (oh no, a badly done tiny spot/a little fault/a scratch already!) to spice it all up.

And altogether, I like this cocktail very much... so I am really looking forward to today's session.

Through a mail from my old Uni, I have just stumbled upon "Gradnet", an association that wants to make life a little easier for grad students by hosting an interdisciplinary and international conference, an opportunity for productive and critical exchange.

I haven't heard about them before (that's a small wonder and has much to do with both my topic and my work style, and little to do with them), but the programme of the next conference is online, and it looks quite large and quite nice.

The next conference takes place in Erlangen, from 20 to 22 November - so pretty soon - and you can check out their programme on the Gradnet website www.gradnet.de.

I probably won't be able to hop over there due to the move coming up on the next weekend, but I'd love to hear about it, so should you go there, please drop me a comment!

Making medieval garments is something nice and fun - but seeing them worn or seeing them in an exhibition is something else again. And two sets of garments are going on display very soon now:
In November (on November 13/14, to be exact), a new exhibition will be opened in Burg Hartenstein (Wikipedia in German, with picture of the castle) in Franconia - featuring two knights fully dressed, with garments that I made. One of them is the 14th century knight and lord of Hartenstein, the second man is a Teutonic Knight from around 1200.

Since the exhibition is not opened yet, I will post no pictures today - but it won't be long now... Meanwhile, if you read German, you can also pay a visit to the official website of castle and of the group organising and running the exhibition, the Freundeskreis Burg Hartenstein.

I'm back home again, up and running - and blogging (even if it's slightly later than usual due to a much-needed battle against sleep deficiencies). So what have I been up to in these last two weeks?

First, there was Tannenberg. The traditional season's end market and, like Freienfels, usually resembling something like a fair to see different craftspeople and sellers of medieval tools and paraphernalia. This year, however, Tannenberg was rather subdued in atmosphere and with much less participants than the years before. We all wondered why - maybe all the fear-mongering about bad times and recession, combined with real-life struggling of craftspeople and participants, have finally had their impact on the modern middle ages as well. Still, we had a very nice time in Tannenberg, with quite good weather - only one day of rain and drizzle, and not much muddyness at all - and met and chatted with many of our friends and colleagues.

After return on Monday, it was unpacking, drying, sorting out of things and then, for me, preparing for Hungary straight away. Since I had to finish the presentation too, Tuesday was quite short for that - but everything got packed up in time, clothes stuffed into a bag, the trusty laptop bundled up, and off I went to a wonderful and truly memorable conference in Százhalombatta, a town some thirty km from Budapest. The conference was both the EXARC meeting and the last meeting of liveARCH, a project connecting eight archaeological open air museums from eight different countries. It was wonderfully organised by the Matrica Museum and archaeological park of Százhalombatta, including lodgings and transfer from and to the airport (what luxury not to book anything beyond the flight). It was everything I wish for in a conference: lots of people with different experiences and points of view meeting for good, interesting and sometimes thought-provoking presentations, many academic discussions, common meals, excursions to both stretch the legs and see something else for a while (including something typical for the country and/or region), enough coffee breaks with sweets (yes, the local sweets are actually something I enjoy maybe too much on a conference) and more long, varied discussions. Because everything except, of course, the excursions, took place at the hotel and meals were also organised by the conference team, everyone was kept closely together, and there was no scattering to different watering holes for meals and during free time. And that is another thing that makes a successful conference, to me: Keeping everyone together so that networking, chatting, joking and discussing is made easy, because all the others are quite within reach.

And because during liveARCH it became very clear to everybody that there is one single key to good cooperation and to success with networking, perfectly summarised during one of the lectures as "communication, communication, communication", every evening the "liveARCH Social Club" was opened for having a drink and a chat or five between friends. And every evening I got to bed later and later... explaining the sleep deficiencies and, thus, the lateness of today's blog post.