Living History

There's an online symposium about "Thy Father's Instruction: Reading the Nuremberg Miscellany as Jewish Cultural History by Dr. Naomi Feuchtwanger-Sarig", hosted by the Goldstein Centre, on September 14. It's to celebrate a book launch and starts at 18:00 Israel time, so you might want to check your timezone if you'd like to attend; it's free but you will have to register. Read more about this on the Centre's website, where you can also register.

Not online, and not free, but well worth it if you're in German Living History and interested in the topics covered: the Nobilitas-Akademie. Nobilitas is a group to preserve old crafts - which means they also organise crafter's markets, or events at museums that involve historical crafts. They also try to spread knowledge, and help people exchange knowledge and network, and one of the possibilities to do that is their Akademie.

It takes place in a castle-turned-youth-hostel, and this year's academy is on November 11 to 13. There's talks about medieval cooking, fighting, Cisterciensians, technical knowledge of the Middle Ages, and more. Apart from the presentations, there's time to talk and network with the other participants, and the last time I've attended, there was also some medieval gaming. Check out their programme on the Nobilitas website, where you'll also find their registration form.

AUG

Home Again!

work-related textile techniques and tools Living History museums

I'm home again after the absolutely wonderful weekend at the Archäotechnica. It was lovely to have a museum event again after such a long pause due to the pandemic. I got to meet old friends and get to know new people, and realised how much I missed all this.

My work space was in the cloister, where I had very good light, but not too much of it - at least most of the time; on Sunday around noon, I had a bit of direct sun, and it was very hot and very bright and hard to see what I was doing.

I also realised that I have a very, very hard time stitching and speaking at the same time. So even though there were very few and very short breaks only, the amount of stitching that got done was... well, let's say that there was no danger at all that I'd run out of embroidery work.

The gold in the picture is the result at the end of 7 hours of demonstration time - not at all to be confused as the result of 7 hours of embroidery time!

A demo situation is always different from a proper work situation, even if the technique you demonstrate is one that needs very little attention. Your main focus, as a good demonstrator, will always be on the people coming and asking questions, or watching, and not on your work piece. So you stop things to explain, you work slower if necessary, you demonstrate mistakes or point out possible problems (in some cases making them happen on purpose), and your main aim is explaining things and not having a perfect piece at the end. (The gold embroidery quality is also not what I'd reasonably expect from myself as the result of a normal stitching session.)

Even when I'm doing a very low-demand technique such as combing wool, or spinning, I can feel a difference in how the work goes that I'm doing on a demo as opposed to doing it as work. (It's fascinating, really.) In my experience, there's techniques and things that need little or no brain, and little or no attention, and they are best suited for demonstration purposes. With these techniques, I can look at the people passing by, make eye contact, and talk to them without interrupting the work. Spinning would be one of these; netting also works very well in my experience.

Techniques that need no brain, but focus on the work and attention are the other group of techniques where a demo is possible. These, which include anything involving stitching, are more difficult - as soon as you look like you are concentrating on something, quite a lot of people have qualms to ask something. I've had a lot of "may I ask you something" questions this weekend, and I am actually considering putting up a sign next time that says some thing like "do ask me things, that's what I am here for". I do try to stop and look up at my surroundings when I am demo-ing a high-focus technique, but it takes more effort from my end to demo this successfully and with similar amounts of interaction than a low-focus technique.

The third group are techniques that need attention and focus as well as brain power. These are right out for demo purposes in my opinion. I just cannot give a proper impression of how something demanding is done and concentrate on getting the hows and whys across to visitors at the same time. So I'd never do a demo on complicated tablet-woven patterns, for instance. That requires all my attention, and I'd either not talk to people or weave with lots of errors and very badly.

This is also something that I explain to museums and event organisers when we're discussing possibilities for demonstrations. Usually we then find a technique that fits the event and that is suitable for a good demo. After all, a demo of the coolest and most astonishingly complicated technique serves nobody if it's just not working properly for the public.

Have you done demonstrations? Are your experiences similar?

MAR

Crossdressing! Well, Sort Of.

togs from bogs Living History medieval wardrobe

There's currently a challenge going on in Instagram for Women's History Month: IG 14 from Austria has set out a list with a keyword for each day in March, and ask people to post something Living History or women's history related.

Today's topic was "gender", and, well... here's a picture of me crossdressing, sort of:

I made that dress after Herjolfsnaes 42 (in Norlund's counting) way back, a long time ago. A good while later, having looked at more surviving garments, I realised that middle gores are a men's thing, and not to be found in women's dresses.

Why? You need middle gores in the front and back to keep a riding slit closed when not in use (and there are no riding slits without gores in any archaeological find). This changes the silhouette of the garment. That change, and the status associated with the riding slit, may be the reason why there are also men's tunics without a riding slit that still sport a middle gore, such as the tunic found in the Bocksten bog in Sweden.⁠ That, to me, makes a lot of sense. The dresses without a middle gore, by the way, make a slimmer seeming silhouette, and slenderness was - as we know from medieval epics - one of the aesthetic ideals for women.⁠ So this, too, does fit the picture nicely.

The dress, by the way, is very comfy and nice to wear, but would be the same without the middle gores. They don't really add anything (apart from some width...)

FEB

Ponderings on Patterns.

togs from bogs work-related reconstructions Living History

From time to time, I get asked if I have a pattern for this or that piece of clothing - to which my usual answer is "No, because there were no patterns in the modern sense used in the Middle Ages". Exceptions may apply for items such as hoods, where it's easy to take the pattern from an archaeological find, and which fits a range of head, neck, and shoulder sizes, and not-really-fitted garments such as high medieval breeches, which are rather huge and don't need a lot of measuring.

For dresses and other fitted items of clothing, though, such as hose? In my opinion, it does not make any sense to offer a pattern in the modern sense for these - because their construction, as it can be reconstructed, did work completely different. To get a result close to what the original garments were, it makes much more sense to follow the procedure that was probably used for the originals than to try and use the industrial, post-19th-century approach to clothes, in graded sizes on paper patterns.

Generally speaking, for the historical construction of garments, you take some key measurements and transfer them to the fabric straight away. It's not even necessary to have a measuring tape for this, you can do it with a piece of string (measuring tapes are a rather late invention as well, at least I was not able to find any evidence for them from earlier than the 17th century). Your building bricks for the garments are geometrical shapes, which means they are easy to cut out of the fabric, and final tweaking takes place straight on the body. In case of the more involved, very tight-fitting garments used in the late Middle Ages, or in case of really expensive fabrics, this cut-then-fit approach can be done first on the lining, and then the lining fabric used as a template for the upper fabric.

The huge advantage of this approach (apart from being much closer to the original method, and thus much better suited to get results that look and fit more like the originals fit their original wearers)? Different body shapes pose a much smaller problem than when you have graded pre-made patterns. Human bodies are quite different from start, and they tend to take on even more different shapes if weight is put on, which is definitely an issue today (it would be interesting how many overweight people there were in the Middle Ages, but that's an entirely different topic and not really relevant for now and here). These very varied ways on where extra fat is stored is one of the reasons why it's much harder to find well-fitting garments for people that are overweight or adipose; some people carry most of the extra weight in the legs, some in the butt, some around the middle, and these differences make for very different shapes, so basic pattern grading will not work properly anymore.

So I'm always a bit to very sceptical when I see "patterns for medieval dresses" somewhere. In my personal experience, a lot of the patterns will not work properly, because - as explained above - the approach is just too different. It's especially, um, "interesting" if the pieces in question have not been published completely yet... as is the case with the Lengberg bra. Apparently this skirted bra has been turned into graded patterns which are now available at a site called Reconstructing History. Apart from the fact that if you use the search engine of your choice to look for reviews of patterns from this place, you'll find a lot of people telling you that they are badly documented, badly graded, and come with not-so-great instructions, I can tell you that the members of the Lengberg research team do not endorse this pattern. It was produced without their co-operation or consent, and they do emphasise that it was made without direct knowledge of the original garments or their patterning.

The Lengberg research team is working on a publication on the garments, and as far as I know, they are also going to make their reconstructions as accessible (and re-tailorable) as possible. I know that patience is hard... but it's probably very well worth it here.

OCT

Well, so much for plans.

Living History health

So much for planning - I had planned to post something here yesterday, but things happened. More specifically: a root canal happened.

I had woken up with some dull kind of a toothache on Monday, which was solidly in the "it's not too bad to ignore, but annoying" category. Since that had not gotten better until Tuesday morning, I did decide to do the grown-up thing and call my dentist. To my sort-of-delight, I did get an appointment right that morning, and it was quickly resolved that the tooth must have died a quiet death a while ago, as there was no nerve action in it anymore. (That, for those of you lucky enough to never have had such an experience, is done with a super-cold stick that is touched to the tooth. A living one will complain quickly, which is not pleasant. A dead one will not complain at all, which is even less pleasant on a different level and in an entirely different way.)

So the dead tooth was duly opened, the pus was drained, it was cleaned of most of the decayed nerve tissues, X-rays were taken, and I was sent home again with a provisional filling and a new appointment for the proper cleaning. All in all, I'm obviously not happy with pain and having to have dental treatment, but even though there is no good time to have something like this (apart from, obviously, "never" due to not needing it), my timing is impeccable. There's so much action going on these weeks that I could have done far, far worse in finally feeling that pain - at least this week, I'm at home, and though it is sort of mangling my schedule a bit, things are far from really bad. Which brings me to the final two fun facts.

Fun fact number one: After this procedure, which is basically taking away some of the issue that causes the pain (as it drains the infected site), there was much more pain than before. Though the tooth is well and truly dead and thus incapable of causing pain, the surrounding tissue is very much alive, and it seems to have woken up by the preliminary treatment... resulting in a very definitive signal that it was not content with the situation.

Fun fact number two: I spent Thursday to Monday at the Dannenberg Convent - a Living History camp close to a castle ruin (now partly restored). "Tannenberg" was one of my first yearly events, and I was there many times. I'd skipped it the past few years, due to a number of reasons, but this year was their 25th anniversary and, at the same time, the last time the event would take place in its old form. So I spent four days with friends in the rain, and we broke camp and packed up on Monday. That dull ache in the tooth, and some accompanying light pounding that came with exertion, was with me all through my treks up and down the meadow, as I was carrying my stuff back to the car. It really, really heightened my appreciation of being able to get up out of a comfy warm bed on Tuesday, grab the phone, place one call, hop on my bike for a short trip across town, and then get 21st century state-of-the-art dental care, followed by some rather safe and fairly quickly acting 21st century painkiller pill. Yes, there was medical knowledge and medical care in the Middle Ages, too, and it was sometimes a lot more sophisticated than people expect, but it was still a very far cry from dental X-rays, modern drills and modern painkillers. Which reminded me of one of the things that Living History does to its participants: It does remind us both that not all modern things and modern ways are good (or better than old methods), and not to take all good modern things for granted.

JAN

Stuff (mostly German)

Living History archaeology conferences

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.

SEP

Shoes.

things that I don't want to be without Living History

You know about that thing about shoes that women are supposed to have? As in buy a lot of them? Happily this is not the only thing that defines gender, or I'd be very, very male indeed. (My shoes have to fit, and they have to be practical. And preferably last a long time so I don't have to go shoe shopping again soon.)

There's one shoe-ish exception to my usual "meh" stance, though - and these are medieval shoes. For reenactment or living history, shoes are one of the tricky bits. Modern shoes don't cut the mustard at all, as they are constructed absolutely differently, and the materials aren't right either. Going barefoot is of course an alternative (though we don't know how common walking barefoot for grownups would have been, and I've also read interpretations of shoe finds that hint towards shoes having been very, very common) but not a very viable one for every modern person in every weather.

Which means shoes are one of the checklist items when trying to gauge the overall quality of a Living History performer or group.

Years ago, in the course of trying out lots of different techniques, I actually made a pair of medieval turn-shoes myself. It took a fair amount of time and I did have fun doing it. The resulting shoes were useable, but far from good quality in regards to the fit (and also in regards to the materials, which were sort-of-suitable leathers I had lying around at that time). It did make me appreciate proper shoe-making work, however, and wish for shoes that fit properly.

Fortunately I have a friend who makes medieval shoes for a living. I've worn a pair of nice, low-cut shoes that Stefan made for a few years now, and am still deliciously happy with how they look. However, they are not very warm, and they do not fit over warm socks, so now I have a pair to change into when it gets colder:

They fit over warm socks, and this type of shoe is one that runs for a rather long time. They also have that lovely smell of new leather shoes, and the neat stitches that I love so much in Stefan's work.

Now I'm looking forward to cooler evenings on events!

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