labours of the months, 1371

Our Living History Week is over for this year. A new campsite, just down from our previous one which is now becoming a Garry Oak meadow. I was a bit apprehensive, but it worked out nicely. So, a few pictures of everyday life in the 14th century, below.

 Isabeau at the churn. Behind her you can see information booths for some modern enterprises. She's actually quite close to the kitchen, which is just out of the shot.

I love this medieval style iron-shod spade. Unfortunately we aren't allowed to do any real digging onsite, but I got Mark to pose with it as a model for a potential calendar of the labours of the months. 

Ditto with Havise, performing one of the labours for November (rather ahead of time)--baking bread. This is a labour for every day, to be accurate. Yes, we had fresh-baked bread from the oven and fresh-churned butter. Life in the Middle Ages was nasty, brutish and short, and everyone was starving and clad in rags, don't you know?

Alicia card-weaving. Ingeniously, she is able to adjust tension by turning the tent-pole her work is fastened to. I have a video as well, but given my past lack of success at posting them, I'll wait to attempt it this time. 

My studio this year. I found the big easel at a consignment shop and snapped it up right away. I managed to finish off the two paintings on it, and begin a new one. The smaller one in front is, yes, baking bread as the Labour for November. 

A final picture of the oven, with two loaves of bread successfully produced. Beside them you can see the ashes of the fire that heated the oven and was pulled and swept out so that the loaves could be put in for baking.

Huh. How about that?

My article on painted cloth hangings in the Middle Ages, Whips and Angels, is cited twice in Wikipedia. Once for the article on Samite (where they misspell my SCA name) and once for the article on Joyous Entry (where they give my modern name).
Every now and then the article brings me an inquiry on either 'How can I paint my medieval costume to look as if it's embroidered?' or 'How can I tell whether this tatty piece of painted linen is medieval?'
That it should be used within the Society for Creative Anachronism, and perhaps re-enactment groups, for documentation or research, that I pretty much expect. That it should be treated as a 'real' resource always surprises me. Especially when Diane Wolfthal's book The Beginnings of Netherlandish Canvas Painting, 1400-1530, is available.
I suppose it's the immediacy of it being online and not requiring physical movement.

The title, in case anyone is wondering, is a reference to one of the many, many, many (and yeah, many) medieval and early modern painted cloths that have been lost to time and changing fashion and moths. That one was recorded in an inventory which mentioned that it was painted with 'whips and angels', probably for Lenten decoration. It's my little shriek of frustration that so little is known for sure.
Though it would also make a good title for something by krylyr, maybe?