For our November museum visit, we headed to the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World for “Madinat al-Zahra,” their exhibit of artifacts from the tenth-century capital of Islamic Spain.
This is a culture that I don’t know particularly well — Islamic, but two thousand miles west of the Middle-Eastern settings we typically think of.
Continue reading Museum Visit: Islamic CordobaFor use at a demo at a Brooklyn gaming store, I put together a set of printable game boards with accompanying instruction sheets.
Three of these are attested to antiquity or the medieval period, while the fourth is a modern synthesis that combines features from several period games.
I am indebted to Lady Chana Freidl the Maker, of the Barony of Bhakail, who did something similar for a demo in their area.
You can download the set of four printable games below.
In my continuing quest to (not actually) deliver a perfect lemon to the vicereines of Østgarðr (see also, and also), I cast around for a reasonably-simple period-esque project and found the inspiration right at my doorstep, in the bounty of my sidewalk garden.
Lemon balm is a citrus-scented member of the mint family, which grows in profusion in the bevy of containers that are home to my tiny greenspace — in fact, it grows so aggressively that I need to cut it back frequently to keep it from crowding out the other showier plants, and it was while I was trimming it that I realized I could put it to a productive use.
Continue reading Lemon-Balm OxymelFor our April museum visit we headed to the Grolier Club, an exclusive club for antiquarian book dealers and collectors, for their exhibition “Judging a Book by Its Cover,” which includes a number of impressively-bound fifteenth-, sixteenth-, and seventeenth-century volumes as well as more-recent items.
It was interesting to be reminded of the historical separation between printing and binding, with many books being printed and sold without covers, which their owners then paid to have added by other specialists. There were also numerous examples on display of books which had been repeatedly rebound — for example, to replace attractive but less-durable cloth covers with harder-wearing leather panels, or to combine several small books by different authors into a single larger volume.
Continue reading Museum Visit: Elaborately-Covered BooksWhen we first began to focus in on a specific historical time and place to study, we began with the eleventh century — one thousand years ago seemed like a nice round number, and as our primary interests run more towards humble handcrafts and the rustic lives of regular people than to aristocratic finery, there seemed little incentive to draw us to the later centuries where elite life became ever more elaborate.
However, as we delved further, we kept finding new threads which pulled us to earlier and later periods — the clothing styles of the bronze age, the intellectual pursuits of the renaissance, the cross-cultural contacts of the Roman empire, and a dozen other fascinating avenues of study.
But trying to understand the full sweep of fifteen thousand years of human history was an obvious impossibility, so we settled on a compromise — we’d retain 1,000 years before the present (YBP) as our “home base,” but would also select a scattering of additional points in time to “visit.”
As currently envisioned, these points are spaced evenly every two hundred and fifty years over the last two thousand years, and then in larger increments back to the re-establishment of human populations in the British Isles following the last ice age.
The resulting timeline, displayed below, gives us a dozen moments in time to focus on: somewhat narrowed from the vast scope of all human history, but still an embarrassment of riches.
Following my presentation of lemon succade in court at Barleycorn, I knew I would have to find a different type of citrus for our next encounter.
A search online turned up a number of vendors with round pillows or seat cushions that were screen-printed to look like giant slices of fruit, and indeed several of the offerings included lemon designs.
Having procured two such cushions, I ferried them to Bear’s Inn this weekend inside a large sack, and stashed them out of the way until our provincial court was almost finished. When I removed the herald’s tabard and begged the vicereines’ indulgence for a moment of personal business, they quickly guessed what was up, and called for the baronesses of An Dubhaigeainn to join them in court as witnesses.
Continue reading A Pair of Plump LemonsOur February museum visit was a trip to the Morgan Library for an exhibition on the intersection of money, merchants, and morality in medieval Europe.
It was interesting seeing evidence of the tension caused as the post-Roman and early-medieval way of life was disrupted by the reintroduction of coinage, long-distance trade, and a market economy that set the stage for the modern world.
Continue reading Museum Visit: Money and MoralityAfter the amusement of The Great Yak Quest (2019–2022), nothing could have pleased me more than to be assigned a new quest just one year later — an opportunity for shtick which I look forward to milking for as long as possible.
As a result of a misunderstanding following some perfectly innocent asset-pricing research — asking representatives of a neighboring barony how much they would be willing to pay for one of the province’s fine cantons — I was called before their Excellencies of Østgarðr in their Pennsic Court and tasked with bringing them an exceptional citrus.
For presentation at Barleycorn, I figured I would offer them a succade, or candied lemon peel. This method of preserving the intense flavors of citrus fruit beyond its natural season appears to have developed in Asia, and was transmitted from the Middle East to the Mediterranean in the fifteenth century or so, reaching northern Europe by the sixteenth. As a result, this seemed to be an appropriate gift for the vicereines, who are Renaisance-era Florentines.
Continue reading A Lemon for the VicereinesOur April museum outing was a return to the Met Cloisters to view the gardens in spring bloom. Our party of eight was mostly locals from Appleholm, joined by one of our friends from the other side of the city.
Although there were the usual array of art and artifacts on display, as well as a special exhibit of household furnishings, the highlight of the trip for me was the outdoor spaces of the gardens and surrounding cloisters. The combination of inside and outside space, both enclosed and open, provides a wonderful sense of in-betweenness that we rarely encounter in the modern city.
Continue reading Museum Visit: Springtime GardensOver the last year, I’ve written a growing number of blog posts about administration, policy, and governance in the SCA. It seems the topic has a lot of lasting interest for me, and I expect to write more about it in the future, but it felt odd to have these cluttering up our household website which is otherwise focused on historical research, person development, and camping gear, so I’ve created a separate website and migrated these posts over to it.
If you’re interested in these kinds of “business side” topics, you’ll find that content over at CreativeAdministration.org.