Some pouches and purses of the St Thomasguild part I

The kind of medieval pouches shown in a previous blogpost, as well as those described in the catalogue of medieval textiles from the treasury of the St. Servatius church in Maastricht, the Netherlands (see photo below) did inspire Anne to make some pouches as well.

A 14th century pouch made from four pieces of Italian lampas silk (red/green/white with gold threads) with red pompoms. The pouch was made from four downward tapered segments, of which two were cut out from the same repeated pattern (birds and other animals). The leather lining is connected to the outer fabric with the seam covered with a green braid. The attachment and closing cord of the bag is also made of a green braid. The pompoms are attached to the side and bottom of the pouch. 16 cm height, 18 cm width. Image from the book Mittelalterlichen Textilien von St. Servatius in Maastricht by A. Stauffer.

Annes version of this pouch is smaller (7 cm height, 8 cm wide) and made of embroidered silk. Blue silken pompoms are attached at the four corners, as well as at the drawstrings. The inside is made of a cream-coloured silk. We would like to place some remains of St. Thomas (or fragments of his clothes) inside the pouch, like that of the reliquary pouch from Maaseik (Belgium), but have not found some yet. Early next year, Anne will visit India and perhaps she can locate a something of him (for instance, a brick from the palace that St. Thomas built or a tooth from the dog who brought the hand of the cup-bearer that offended St. Thomas at the wedding feast).

Different views of Annes pompom pouch.

 

Six textile fragments and a small leather purse: the contents of a reliquary pouch from the shrine of Johannes Nepomucenus from the St. Catharina church in Maaseik, Belgium. The pouch (right) and fragments (left) are dated between 1200 and 1400. The pouch itself is made of silk and measures 11 cm (height) by 9 cm (width). At the sides are small metal beads or pearls. Photos from KIK IRPA, Brussels, Belgium.

Another small purse (also 7 cm height by 8 cm wide) that Anne made of some leftover red silk with a cream-coloured pattern. The inside is the same cream silk as the pompom pouch. The drawstring consists of two colours of silken embroidery thread, and made as medieval rope (but using a cordless power drill to speed up the process).

Annes second pouch. you can clearly see the holes at the top of the pouch through which the drawstring goes.  

The pouch closes by pulling the string simultaneously at the opposite sides.

The Maastricht brickstitch pouch with silk stitching on linen ground. Yarn colours are red (now beige), bright blue and gold-plated silver. Inside of the pouch is red taftsilk. Height 9 cm, width 14 cm. Image from the book Mittelalterlichen Textilien von St. Servatius in Maastricht by A. Stauffer.

 

The following green and red pouch is based on the brickstitch pattern that is found on a reliquary pouch (dated around 1300) in the Maastricht treasury. A handout of this pattern (used to embroider the pouch) can be found at the excellent Medieval Silkwork blog. This pouch has been Annes first attempt at brickstitch embroidery. The pouch measures 10 by 13 cm, while the actual brickstitch area is (twice) 10 by 10 cm. The inside and the border are made of red silk. The pouch closes with a two-coloured drawstring, made the same way as described above. The pouch now holds a collection of embroidery yarn and utensils. An interesting post on medieval embroidery yarn and the modern equivalents is also found at the Medieval Silkwork blog.

Annes version of the Maastricht brickstitch pattern pouch. Both sides are embroidered with the brickstitch pattern.

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more new projects

 following up on some stuff from the previous post, and getting some other new projects underway.  happy to clear the decks a bit and make room for some new stuff.  we hung the big mirror yesterday, all 13 5" of it.  it was interesting as the building is old, the floor and ceiling or both out of level and when we hung it up level, it was just so obviously wrong that we had to move it around until it looked right with everything else that is going on there.  as it hangs now, the right end is about 7/8ths higher than the left end but it totally looks right given the other stuff that is going on .. havent had to do that for a while.  click the pictures to enlarge them ...

 

 and the cherry bookcase clients will be in town this weekend ... that piece will be 

joining its friends that we made previously ...

 and the dart cabinet is happening now ... it can be fun working with crooked old barn boards.

 you certainly cant be fussy, and you definitely have to go with the flow.

 and its been a good excuse to have a dartboard next to the chop saw for a while.

recipe for a railng .. cut a bunch of steel up into very specific lengths, and weld it all together,  

then take it to the clients house and bolt it to the posts you put there last week ..

 looks easy when its done ...  

 

and sams got a couple other table bases in the works.  the one above will have a danby marble top.  thats 1" rebar .. polished .. its a nice look and the rebar is becoming popular with our customers .. 

 

 and another nakashima style base 
hes just making the base.  the client is making his own top.

and theres a new claro walnut table happening too ...  4 x 8 x 2.75" thick, with a 

beefed up steel base to go with the beefier slab.  its gonna look good.  weve done a 

heavier base before in 1.75" steel, but this looks fine in our regular 1.5" steel.

the price of steel has increased so much lately that its hard to justify working in the thicker stuff.

 

 the slab had a few surface, non structural, cracks that we filled with our usual advantech tintable epoxy.

  

chris finished the chest of drawers for the shaker piece .. we may install that tomorrow.

and trevors underway on a new 60" round walnut table with a 22" crotch walnut inlay in the center of it.

 

more on that as we progress ... all for now ... dan
update: ill do a complete blogpost when were finished

 

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I give you my heart with all my love…

I give you my heart with all my love….

How often will that have been said over the centuries. Very, very often probably. And is still said…. Sometimes the sentence may have been accompanied with a gift. And who wouldn’t fall for a suitor bringing a very nice and very precious gift?

In Sandra Hindman’s book (S. Hindman. 2007. Towards an art history of medieval rings. Paul Holberton Publishing, London, UK. ISBN 978-1903470640. Medieval (gold) rings from a private collection placed in perspective.) a very nice example is shown of a golden ring with a large heart-shaped ruby, lord of stones, with engravings of ivy and the text ‘CORTEPORTAMOR’ estimated to be just for the right period of our re-enactment group, the fourteenth century. Nowadays, I would probably laugh hard and find the ring very much over the top, but perhaps in older times I would just have been delighted. Well, actually no one ever gave me a present like that, so I will just have to make it myself!

The Gothic heart shaped 14th Century love ring in gold and ruby. 

With engravings of clinging ivy and text inscription. Height 23 mm, 

inner diameter 12.3 mm, outer diameter 18.7 mm, bezel 21.6 x 17.5 mm. 

Stone approx. 10.2x 10.8 x 7.7 mm.

The original ring is of course full of symbolism. Ruby is and was a very precious stone surrounded by myths of warding of danger, having the power of fire, removing evil thoughts and of influencing the decisions, mental and physical health of the person wearing it. The ivy expresses fidelity and eternity, as the evergreen crawls and creeps towards the sky, forming a union with whatever it clings to, becoming almost inseparable. And the text to make it even more plain in old Italian that the heart caries love… Someone really had to be convinced.

(Above) Text engraved on the Gothic Love Rings hoop.

(Left) Engraving with ivy on the bezel of the Gothic Love Rings hoop.

In Medieval times rubies were probably traded along the spice trading routes, arriving in Europe from India. Nowadays it proves to be difficult to find heart-shaped cabochon natural rubies of the size desired for the ring. Well, at least, I could not find affordable ones. In the end I resorted to buying a synthetic, opaque one – made in China - that as side bonus seems to come closer in appearance to the more pale pink colour of the original stone.

The ring itself is made from 1 mm thick silver plate material. I started sawing out the shape for the band and the heart in one strip very much like a loop shapes cigar band. Sizes. I neatly filed the ends of my band and soldered them together. Next I made the ring round on my ring mandrel. For the heart shaped stone I made the setting out of 0.5 mm silver plate. I drew the heart shape on a small paper and used to strips of approximately 5 mm to form to half shapes that soldered together exactly fell around my ruby.

 

Repeated annealing the hoop and bezel of my silver ring to be able to slowly mould it to its round shape.

On a half round file I now hollowed out the setting so that the bottom fitted nicely on my ring. I soldered the two pieces together. With a small file I made the top of the setting thinner to make it easier for the time I was going to fit the stone into the setting. Then I had to file and sand the whole thing thoroughly, before polishing it.

The heart shaped setting soldered to the rounded hoop and bezel. After this the heart shape was filed to its final shape and sanded.

The ring was polished except for the inside of the setting. 

The text and ivy has been written with a black marker on the hoop and bezel before engraving.

When it was nice and shiny I used a black marker to draw on the ivy vines and fit all the letters of the text on the ring itself. I am not a good engraver, but having the ring firm and stable in my ring clamp it worked out quite nicely. I lightly polished the ring again to get rid of any small scratches made. Then I placed the stone in its setting and slowly pushed, bit by bit, the setting round the stone. Bling bling, ready to show off!

The result shown from three different sides.

The CORTEPORTAMOR text on the replica.

A small movie to show the ring from all sides.

There are various other examples of heart-shaped rings and jewellery found in private collections and museums. Some examples are given below: A medieval A-engraved heart-pendant of bronze (private collection), a medieval childrens silver ring with gold-plated heart (private collection), an engraved gold ring with a heart shaped wolfs teeth (14th century, V&A museum, London, UK), and a heart shaped brooch engraved at the back with the text (14th century, V&A museum, London, UK).

Two pictures of a medieval small heart shaped childrens ring in silver and gold (the heart) found on a terp - a man-made dwelling mound - in Friesland, the Netherlands. The ring is ornamented with diagonal ribs.

A medieval bronze pendant with a nice green patina, engraved with an A. Archaeological find, Germany.

Gold heart- shaped brooch with stylised leaves and flowers or feathers, made in France or England around 1400. The brooch would have been colourfully enamelled, both at the front and back. Engraved on the reverse in a dentillated border is the black-letter inscription NOSTRE ET TOUT DITZ A VOSTRE [D]ESEIR (Ours and always at your desire), each word separated by a small floral sprig. Brooches often fastened garments with a slit at the neck; they were used both by men and women (V&A museum, item 86-1899, London, UK).

Decorated gold ring with wolfs tooth set in a heart-shaped bezel, made between 1200-1300 in France or England, inscription added around 1375-1425. Gems, but also other materials, such as teeth, were supposed to have magical properties. Inside the hoop are two engravings: a magic formula and a biblical phrase. The charm: ‘BURO + BERTO + BERNETO’ is to protect against toothache; the biblical phrase CONSUMMATUM + EST are the last words Christ spoke on the Cross, and were used as a charm to calm storms. This large ring likely belonged to a man, possibly a merchant who travelled at sea (V&A museum, item 816-1902, London, UK).

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r i p virgil gibbs

well, we lost a friend last week.  when i came to town in 1971 after traveling around for a couple of years, michael and meg were running a small business called virgil gibbs boots and leather in the center of what was then a funky little town of a couple thousand people. kit and i also lived in the center of that town,

and since vgb&l became sort of a hangout place, we hung out there.  time went on and in 1973, we all bought some land in towns nearby, got married, and built some houses.  none of us really had much of a clue what we were doing regarding building houses at the time.  one friend bought an old backhoe and an old john deere bulldozer.   i bought a book and read up on carpentry ... rim joist, rafter tail, header ....we all worked together on each others houses.  it was, in hindsight, a kind of a magical time in vermont.  land was cheapish. our first building lot was $7000., our first mortgage $25,000.  we were bartenders and there was no tax on tips .... anyway, we all go way back.

michael and i went on to become full time carpenters after we moved into our houses, and went on to have kids and raise our families.  there were, in 1974, five of us who built houses that year, we worked together, and were all still friends today.  michael went on later to become a builder and i went on to build furniture.   above, in 1976, we are raising the frame of my first wood shop/garage at our house in arlington.  

mikes easy to spot in the photos above as the only bald guy. 

later, after his divorce, michael built a house next door to ours on goodwood lane in dorset, and was our neighbor for a couple of years there before moving to california and remarrying.  as one friend said recently, he added the spice to the stew.  an excellent observation ..

open studio, 2003 with kit and mike and friends at the shop.  the tall guy there on the right in the blue shirt was one of the five 1974 house builders, as was the shorter women in the white shirt standing with him ..

so, we made a box ... with some reclaimed wood from a project michael did in downtown dorset that miraculously ended up in my garage when i needed it for the box.  it had come to me when we did some work on that house a couple years ago.

 .

i only hit a few hand wrought nails when i resawed it for the box wood.

i put a little leather inside for virgil gibbs

r.i.p. mike

yall enjoy your friends and every healthy moment ... onward ...

from this weeks manchester journal ...click to read it ...

added this to the leather inside in the end

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