Visiting the 14th century

Yesterday a friend and I went to Varberg on the westcoast of Sweden. There was a "medieval market" at Varberg Castle (where they also keep the Bocksten Bog Man, complete with his well-preserved 14th century clothes). The event was mainly aimed at families and tourists so there wasn't much there for serious re-enactors, except an excellent lecture on 14th century clothing by costume historian Eva Andersson. Still, I got the chance to dress up and spend a lovely day off in beautiful surroundings, so I'm happy. I also got some pretty good pictures taken of my handsewn "Herjolfsnes dress". The cut with 4 narrow panels in each side giving it its shape is based on one of the dresses found in the medieval cemetary at Herjolfsnes, Greenland. Whether or not this method of constuction is representative of medieval clothing elsewhere is much debated by costume historians and re-enactors, but I think that the silhouette it results in is perfect for the 14th century (and no, I'm not pregnant - my hand just happens to fit nicely there!)! It's an extremely fabric-saving way to make clothes too - my dress only uses 3 m of wool (150 cm wide) and the circumference of the skirt is over 3.5 metres! It took just about forever to finish all the side seams, though...

Bachelor of...Science?!

There. Now I have my degree. I was a little surprised to learn it's actually a B. Sc., but I suppose it's because of all the technical texile stuff and the handweaving. I'm happy it's finally over, anyway! With the archaeology and everything else, I've studied for a total of 7 years now! And that doesn't include the two years I spent doing textile arts and crafts at Löftadalens folkhögskola... I'm beginning to wonder if I'm fit to do anything other than studying...

My friends told me I should take some time off now to relax and not fiddle around with threads and boring, brown archaeolgical textiles for a while. But...fiddling around with threads is what I always do, even in my spare time, and I love boring, brown archaeological textiles!!! So I ignored them and went to Copenhagen yesterday to look at "Eric of Pomerania's Belt" again... My thesis is finished (and will eventually be available on the web through the University College of Borås's academic database BADA), but now I have a proposal for a conference paper and a couple of articles to write! So I thought it would be nice to see the good old girdle again and to verify a few things before I get started on those...

Here's me with Eric of Pomerania's Belt and one of my samples in the background. I thought the National Museum wouldn't mind me posting this picture here since you can hardly see the actual girdle. It could be any old ribbon, really... ;-)!

The work of days and hands...

I handed in my thesis this week!

It ended up being part archaeolgical report, part something else. There's so much more I would have liked to put into to it. I had to cut 1 page of background, which means there's no historical overview of medieval girdles in it anymore. But at least it's finished and on Monday I'm going to present my work to the graduation people and defend my thesis... Then I'm going to sleep for a week...

My brain hurts...

Since my weaving is going very well I decided to turn my attention to the paper I have to write instead. I spent the better part of the day fiddling with the introduction and then tried to write the background instead. I seemed to have forgotten everything I had ever read on the subject of medieval girdles and had to sit down with the books again and take new notes. This also meant I had to re-translate the relevant parts of Ilse Fingerlin's book Gürtel des hohen und späten Mittelalters because I had no idea what they said anymore despite having read them all a month ago. It's very annoying, but I suppose that's what stress does to you...

I don't know any German, but luckily my native Swedish is similar enough to make reading it possible with the help of a dictionary and a lot of patience. Fingerlin has some interesting discussions concerning the dating of Eric of Pomerania's belt - she pushes it back to the 13th century, wheras Poul Nørlund and the National Museum of Denmark say it's 14th century (all of them agree that attributing it to Eric of Pomerania is completely wrong, though. But the name still sticks...).

Hopefully I'll manage to write something tomorrow instead. I have a meeting with my supervisor on Monday and it would be nice to have something written to show her, but it's a real struggle to write in English again. I haven't done it in years, but I thought it would be a good idea now since there's a lot of non-Swedish speaking people out there who might find my thesis interesting...

Practice makes...

...perhaps not perfect, but at least a whole lot better!

I changed the pattern for the gold thread (there's hardly anything left of it on the original belt, so I had to improvise a little) and started all over again with my sample piece. I have to show it in the graduation exhibition organised by the school, so I decided I needed something that can be displayed without having to cover up the first couple of centimetres of uneven picks...

And I'm much happier with this second piece - the "gold" thread looks a lot better and the proportions are closer to the original. I wove it in half the time it took me to do the first one too, so yay for me!

Here's a picture of the new and improved sample!

So many threads, so little time...

My first full-scale trial piece of the "Eric of Pomerania's Belt"-weave is progressing slowly and I'm reasonably happy with it. The cheap spun silk I'm using as a substitute for the more appropriate reeled silk is a bit fuzzy and the fake gold thread doesn't cover the background very well, but otherwise it's working. I had a hard time pulling the weft tight enough to get the band down to the correct width today (approximately 3 cm). There are over 100 threads/cm and although the edges are nice and tight, the threads in the middle still look a little too spaced-out. But they do that in the original too, so maybe I shouldn't worry about it...

Here's a close-up of today's work. Remember it's only 3 cm wide!

Bachelor's Thesis Angst

I'm analysing the so-called "Eric of Pomerania's Belt" kept at the National Museum of Denmark for my bachelor's degree in handweaing. It's an extremely well-preserved silk girdle dated to the 14th century with a very complex weave. It's wonderful, fascinating work and I should be loving every minute of it. And I am. It's just that it's also incredibly slow work and I only have one month left before everything has to be finished..

The archaeologist in me wants to do a proper report with lots of background research and comparative material, but the powers that be at the University College of Borås where I study are more into textile design and product development so I'm worried that an archaeological/historical type of thesis like mine will meet with puzzled incomprehension. I won't have a designed product or a textile artwork at the end of this like my classmates; I will have a tiny woven sample the size of a bookmark if I'm lucky and spend my nights weaving instead of sleeping! I just hope I'll be able to make them see all the work behind it... Just figuring out the weave took me almost a month and several weaving experiments!