I mentioned the hose rabbit-warren, right? What I did not mention is that I am also trying to tag, sort, and order all the images that have not been tagged, sorted, and ordered yet (and no, you do not want to know how many there are). Some are doubles that I can delete, some are easy to sort as a chunk (party photos, for example) and some... well, some are tedious.

One of the images was without a caption, date, tag or anything, and it has been hanging out there since it was used as one of the images in my thesis. The original manuscript is the Codex Vindobonensis 1857, or known today as signature Cod. 1857 HAN MAG in the Austrian National Library.

Back when I was writing my thesis, there was digitisation going on, but it had not progressed as far - so in some cases, the way you'd get to see pictures was through facsimiles. They are intended to be as much as the original as possible. For the thesis, I thus took the image from the book in the library in Bamberg; if I remember correctly, I requested the scan, got it on a CD, and used the image.

So picture my surprise when I wanted to tag this image today and thought the nicest and easiest way would be to find the entry for the now-fully-digitised manuscript in the Austrian Library... and found this:

This is... clearly not the same guy. First thing, my copy apparently got flipped at some point so I have the mirror image. And then - the position is almost the same, but the face is quite different; the hands are different. The folds in the garments are different, with the shirt or braies especially obvious. The leg position is a little different. And the points, the whole point because of which I was using this image, are different too. They are  much darker and much more obvious in the facsimile version.

Now I am really wondering. Wasn't the facsimile supposed to look exactly like the original? Was there a second version of the manuscript? But then, why would the images be so close and yet different? How much egg do I now have on my face because of this? Questions over questions. I'm now planning to go back to have a look at the facsimile at some point to see if at least the flip only happened with the scan transferring to me.

And this, dear readers, is why one should never fully trust anything but the original itself, no matter what. Sigh. Also it's why digitisation is The Thing, because it means there's at least a few less steps inbetween - it's digitising the object, and then you can look at it, and if it's high quality you can look at it right down to the level where you see the pores in the parchment. So if you're pointed to a re-drawing*, or a reconstruction without access to the original... be wary.

*Re-drawings, in German "Umzeichnung" used to be a really big thing in archaeological publications, as you don't need a good quality image to use for your print prep and, even more importantly, you don't need to go and ask for publication rights. I don't know whether it was just laziness, or whether it was much more difficult than it is today (it was surely more involved than shooting an email!), or whether it was a cost issue either in printing the image or in procuring the rights, and it was probably a mix of those with varying proportions of the individual ingredients. Anyways this means that a lot of older archaeological publications are full of image references to show things related to the find in context, rendered as a little black-and-white line drawing (which admittedly was much, much easier to print in the text part). If you see these, I heartily recommend trying to find the original before believing all of it. Quite often, a digital image is available today with a little use of the search engine of your choice, and you can see how it really looked... because even if you try really hard, and do really well, a line-drawing will still be an interpretation.

Sometimes, well, things sort of line up. This time, they lined up to lure me down the hole into that extensive rabbit warren that is late medieval to early modern legwear (men's legwear, that is). 

The things that lined up were a) the Alpirsbach project, b) the currently ongoing clothes-like-in-a-picture project,  and c) the almost-eternal updating and translating of the thesis project. 

The latter would greatly benefit from some more details in regard to the legwear reconstruction and development, both in the theoretical part and in the (very short, I know) practical results part. The first is skimpy as there was next to nothing known (now I know of a little bit more), and the latter is superdupershort because, well, it is toward the very end of the book and I was running out of time, and even more running out of steam.

There's this classical thesis writing timeline, you see. You start out and you're told that you should do it within three years, and at the beginning, that sounds like forever and a day, and you start, and suddenly the first year is over but well, you made progress and starting out is always a little slower, and then suddenly you are nearing the three-year mark but there is still so much to look into and tweak and to study and to read and to try and then you are close to year four (four! When did this happen!) and in some instant of painful insight you realise that really the only thing you want now IS TO FREAKING FINALLY GET FINISHED WITH THIS THING THAT IS EATING YOUR LIFE AND WILL NEVER STOP DOING SO UNLESS YOU MAKE IT STOP BY HANDING IT IN AND NO I WILL NOT LOOK INTO THAT BOOK AGAIN I WILL JUST DELETE THIS REMINDER RIGHT NOW HERE YOU GO CHAPTER DONE. Phew. 

This may be a little dramatic, but at times, that really was how it felt. I was told about this timeline before (as probably everybody starting out on a PhD is). And I did what everyone in that situation does, just like every author has to be convinced that their new book is the hottest shit ever and will sell like nothing else, and every editor has to listen to this and nod quietly and think to themselves "yeah, yeah", I was told about this timeline and I nodded quietly and I thought "yeah, yeah" and then, suddenly, well, see above. 

The legwear, at that point, was still sort of basic ideas and outlines only, and it did get elaborated on enough to pass, but, well, see above. By now, I have realised that there is enough material and open questions about just the development of male legwear throughout the centuries that it would easily merit its own PhD, so I won't be able to cover it all, but I'd like to have a little bit of extension to the short chapter in the updated version.

There's several stages in the development - at first, the hose are just getting longer but with no cut-out necessary for the crotch yet; then they have to get even longer and need some kind of crotch solution; then they cover the front as well, needing something to cover up the gap between the two leg parts. At some point, the two hose get joined by sewing them together, and that is probably only the butt first, and then there's the codpiece at some point getting added to both cover up the front (where previously breeches and shirt may have been seen) and also offering possibilities to have the construction a little easier in the lower butt and lower crotch area.

However... this hose development goes hand in hand with the shortening tunics in male fashion, and plenty of men in the not-so-fashionable strata of society just go on wearing the mid-thigh to knee tunic, and the old-fashioned legwear going with it. The other guys, well, we don't have a lot of finds, and we do have a good bit of images but they have this maddening tendency of only almost showing the bits with the crucial information. Argh.

So now I find myself pondering pattern developments (at least I have one new idea! Yay!), folding up little bits of paper, drawing on any sheet that is in reach while some question comes up, and even thinking of making small fabric mock-ups. Plus spending quite a bit of time staring at men's butts and legs in medieval art. Which is, admittedly, also kind of... fun.

Sometimes you run across the saying "publish or perish" in regards to academic settings. I have my issues with that phrase, but I am always delighted when colleagues publish their work - because then it's out there, and accessible, and that is a very, very good thing.

So, putting my money where my mouth is, or rather trying to live up to my own ideals, I do try to publish my stuff as well. It's not always worked out, and sometimes it turns out a little different than expected, but one of the important bits is that it's there somewhere and people can look for it and read it and then, most important thing in my opinion, they can get into contact and start a discourse if they so like.

All this is mainly the preamble to let you know that I've published an article together with my dyer colleague Micky Schoelzke, and it's out now in an anthology published by Springer, and they even sent me fancy pictures and instructions on how to promote it. I will, in fact, use one of them here: 

Of course, I will also give you the link to the book page that they provided me with. I would have preferred, actually, to provide you with a kind of affiliate link that would earn me 30% provision of the book price in case you'd buy that book via the link provided, but alas, the marketing company they are working with has decided that my website is irrelevant to the advertising needs of Springer, and so I cannot get a link, and cannot get money from it.

This is, in one perspective, not a big deal, as chances that people would go off and buy that book en masse are, well, slim, so I'm not having the feeling that I will be missing out on a lot of money here. I'm a little miffed still. (Mostly, probably, because I got dismissed as irrelevant.) Springer (just like Brill, and DeGruyter, and so many other notable academic publishers) is not best known for their cheap books, whether print or ebook. I'm all for books that are fairly priced, which is rarely really cheap, as there's a lot of people and a lot of work involved in making and selling a book. However, Springer does not pay any of their academic authors (at least not to my knowledge) and also not their editors. Basically, writing and editing for them is done for free, for the pleasure of having a book published. There may or may not be payment to the publishing house involved in some cases; I know that I have heard about at least one of the bigger German publishing house names taking quite a sum for publishing a PhD thesis about a decade ago, so I might be outdated, and things may be different there and now.

But the thing that remains is: These houses depend on the writers handing their work in for free, on peer reviewers working for free, on editors working for free. Then they do sell the books at a price that's not, well, very low, and while they do offer that 30% provision (that's not more than a bookshop would get as their cut, by the way) it is, as I have found out, not so easy to access it.

The whole system depends on people either being paid for their writing, editing, proofreading, and reviewing work by their academic employer, so a university or other place of work; or they depend on these people doing the stuff on their own time, unpaid. In both cases, I think it's not entirely fair (but especially not in the second one). 

Books are not a get-rich-scheme anyways, and no author that I know (who has done authoring work and is not just dreaming of becoming the next Rowling, income-by-books-wise) is expecting to get lots of money from their work per book. It would be nice, though, to get at least a little, not just because money is nice and, well, rather useful if you want to keep on living, but also to have more of a feeling of being paid and appreciated, and not just... useful. Even if you're irrelevant (to the publishing house, like me). 

Rant over. If you get your hands on the book, any which way, I hope you'll enjoy it!

A good while ago by now (I can't believe how time flies!), Gillian Polack and I co-wrote "The Middle Ages Unlocked". A few days ago, we got asked if we'd contribute to an article about co-writing at Artshub, an Australian website, and of course we said yes. There were a few questions to answer, and it was lovely to re-visit, in my mind and memory, those wild and fun times writing the book together with Gillian. 

The finished article is now up at Artshub, and you can read it here. I really enjoyed it - it's a very good one, and if you are thinking about co-writing something with somebody, you will definitely find some interesting advice in there (even if I say so myself...)

The year is winding down, and while there's a list of things still to do before 2022 ends, there's only one larger and hard-deadlined item left on the list, with a "finish before winter break" tag on it. That is a really, really nice thing... and I very much enjoy the feeling of winding down and slowing down a bit too.

The one item? I have (not too foolishly, I hope) agreed to write a little article about tablet weaving. It's actually two, but one is finished, and there's only one left to do... so I've made some photos, and something vaguely resembling a plan, and there's an outline, and hopefully there's an article soon.

The really fascinating thing about this is that every time I look at the topic, there's another little aspect that I can see. Especially when I try to explain something, or describe something. This sharpens the eye in a way that nothing else does. There's a German idiom that more or less says "you learn when you teach", and that is really true. (Well, provided that when you teach, you try to explain things so that the audience understands them, and not just teach the motions and rules to be learned by heart and followed... because then, you will learn nothing.)

For the tablet weavers among you: The two middle images show the same setup and were woven the same way - only on top, the tablets are threaded alternatingly s and z, and on the bottom, all are threaded the same way. Like all of you, I know that the s and z are important and will change how the black and white line up. But I still find it amazing how much the alternate threading changes the line-up and the optical impression of the band. 

It's hard to believe, but it's blogiversary day again. And, even harder to believe, I am actually remembering to write about it on the very day itself!

Back when I started this, in 2008, I started out writing on the blogspot platform, and stayed there until 2015 - which was when I made a new website on Joomla, pulling everything together in one spot. 

There's been a lot of writing over the years, and there's been a lot of years since 2008. This blog is turning 14 today. FOURTEEN. Please excuse me while I am not believing this for a while. 

I've tried to find out how long the average lifespan of a blog is, and it seems to be somewhere around 3-4 years, but that's from an older blogpost... somewhere. Anyway, I think everything over ten years makes any blog some kind of dinosaur. In a similar line of thought, these days, I sometimes feel like I'm very old-fashioned, still doing a blog, while so many others have switched to (mostly) Instagram, or are on tictoc (I am so old I haven't even visited that yet), or somewhere that I haven't even heard of. While I'm also on Instagram, the blog is still my main thing. It's easier to search through the old entries than Instagram is, and for the instances that I feel like writing a lot, it's better suited to that.

Though admittedly, a lot of the entries are short, and sometimes it feels like I've written about everything at least once. From time to time, that means I sort of run out of steam, and wonder about whether I should stop or not - but then there's this link or that interesting article or something I feel like I need to rant about, and on it goes.

And then, from time to time, I get an utterly nice email telling me that someone stumbled across this blog, and found so many interesting things there... which always makes my day, and is the best reason for me to carry on a while longer. So there we go.

Blogiversary! Coffee and chocolate for celebration!