I booked the day off work yesterday for my birthday. It's a tradition in my family to book the day off and do stuff you enjoy doing (or at least get stuff done that you don't otherwise have time for).
I used the time to pop over to Zeli's and pick up some leatherworking stuff I've been meaning to get, plus look around for materials I need for my fall leatherworking class.
I found some nice brown pigskin that will work well for the class, and picked up some needles that I can give to folks as part of their class package. I also bought the leather braiding book that Mistress Elizabeth recommended in her stick-purse course, so I can start looking at what to do with the handle. And of course, I bought myself a few "birthday presents" as well.
They had a really neat book of Celtic and Norse patterns that has partial documentation of where the designs were found. (for example, it may say that the pattern was from a bedpost in Gotland, or something like that). Not enough that I could track it down, but better than most where it could be entirely made up by the artist.
I have to admit, I also bought myself some leather. They had some really nice sueded goat skin in a nice brown colour on clearance. It will be really awesome for something. And I bought a few new tools, and a new smaller blade for my swivel knife (for when I'm doing finicky detail work).
I did do a bit more work on my stick-purse as well, cutting out the pieces for another of the mock-up pouches. I figure if I do three, plus the handle it will give me enough to see how things go together.
Wednesday 19 June 2013
Monday 17 June 2013
Big stick-purse news
I had a very exciting week last week with respect to my stick-purse project. All thanks to THL Catherine, who sent me a link to a merchant in the UK who had done a stick-purse.
In reading his site, it mentioned that his work was based on a find from the Mary Rose...
Now, this is cool in and of itself, but let me recap. Both existing artifacts I knew about, along with every piece of art I've ever found with a visible stick-purse has been tied somehow to what is now the Netherlands (a couple of the paintings were from Germany but were done by Flemish artists that were living in Germany). I had never seen a reference to a stick-purse outside of that region, never mind finding an artifact on the freaking Mary Rose!
For most of last week I was corresponding with Peter in the UK, who made said purse. It turns out he's an illustrator at the Mary Rose museum and was able to get authorization from the museum to send me the information about the item. It isn't identified in any of the Mary Rose books as a stick-purse (it hadn't yet been identified when the relevant book was published), which would explain why I never found any reference to it (not that I would have thought to check the Mary Rose for a Flemish artefact).
I have to admit I was a bit of a Muppet around the house last week, I was so excited about the find.
So we now have three extant purses I can reference (the Mary Rose purse is fragments but there's enough pieces, along with where it was found on the ship, to clearly suggest it was a stick-purse). And, unlike the other two which were right on the cusp of the end of our period with vague dates, the Mary Rose piece can easily and definitively be dated to 1545, well within our period. Hard to argue that an object isn't period when it was found on a ship that sank on a specific date. I had the artwork, but its always nice to have an actual artifact to confirm.
Of course, as with any piece of important research, this actually raises more questions that in solves.
First, the remains of the Mary Rose purse suggest a different construction than the others (for those counting that's three pouches with three different designs). The handle is a bit different, the proportion are very different (the flaps seem to have been placed much higher on the handle) and the remains of the leather pouch flaps are a different shape and attached differently than I would have expected. I'm going to have to take a closer look to compare the designs, and probably do some reconstruction to figure it all out. It isn't entirely surprising that different leatherworkers would make the same object in different ways - these aren't mass-produced modern items after all - but it still presents challenges when trying to reconstruct the pieces.
Second, what the heck is a purse like this doing on the Mary Rose? It was found in the purser's cabin, along with a bunch of coins, scales etc. The purser's role was to handle transactions for the ship but according to the folks at the Mary Rose museum, the equipment found also suggests he may have acted as the crew's money-changer, so that makes sense. Was he of Flemish origins? Did he have some connection to that region of Europe? Or was the purse design used more widely than we previously thought, despite the lack of artistic representation?
What does all of this mean? Well, right now I don't really know.
This will obviously change my documentation significantly, but I'm not sure it needs to affect the actual project. I'm still thinking I like the design of the purse from the Fries for my project since its different from previous pouches I've done. That means I still have to document my choice to make that design, despite the fact that the Fries Museum has such a broad date range assigned to the item, much of which would be considered post-period.
Since the Mary Rose purse doesn't have intact pouches (just the handle and flaps), I can't really say what pouch design they would have used so that won't help me document the Fries item. Materials look to be similar (although there's no way to know if the pouches themselves were leather since they didn't survive).
All in all, a busy week to geek out on leatherworking discoveries.
In reading his site, it mentioned that his work was based on a find from the Mary Rose...
Now, this is cool in and of itself, but let me recap. Both existing artifacts I knew about, along with every piece of art I've ever found with a visible stick-purse has been tied somehow to what is now the Netherlands (a couple of the paintings were from Germany but were done by Flemish artists that were living in Germany). I had never seen a reference to a stick-purse outside of that region, never mind finding an artifact on the freaking Mary Rose!
For most of last week I was corresponding with Peter in the UK, who made said purse. It turns out he's an illustrator at the Mary Rose museum and was able to get authorization from the museum to send me the information about the item. It isn't identified in any of the Mary Rose books as a stick-purse (it hadn't yet been identified when the relevant book was published), which would explain why I never found any reference to it (not that I would have thought to check the Mary Rose for a Flemish artefact).
I have to admit I was a bit of a Muppet around the house last week, I was so excited about the find.
So we now have three extant purses I can reference (the Mary Rose purse is fragments but there's enough pieces, along with where it was found on the ship, to clearly suggest it was a stick-purse). And, unlike the other two which were right on the cusp of the end of our period with vague dates, the Mary Rose piece can easily and definitively be dated to 1545, well within our period. Hard to argue that an object isn't period when it was found on a ship that sank on a specific date. I had the artwork, but its always nice to have an actual artifact to confirm.
Of course, as with any piece of important research, this actually raises more questions that in solves.
First, the remains of the Mary Rose purse suggest a different construction than the others (for those counting that's three pouches with three different designs). The handle is a bit different, the proportion are very different (the flaps seem to have been placed much higher on the handle) and the remains of the leather pouch flaps are a different shape and attached differently than I would have expected. I'm going to have to take a closer look to compare the designs, and probably do some reconstruction to figure it all out. It isn't entirely surprising that different leatherworkers would make the same object in different ways - these aren't mass-produced modern items after all - but it still presents challenges when trying to reconstruct the pieces.
Second, what the heck is a purse like this doing on the Mary Rose? It was found in the purser's cabin, along with a bunch of coins, scales etc. The purser's role was to handle transactions for the ship but according to the folks at the Mary Rose museum, the equipment found also suggests he may have acted as the crew's money-changer, so that makes sense. Was he of Flemish origins? Did he have some connection to that region of Europe? Or was the purse design used more widely than we previously thought, despite the lack of artistic representation?
What does all of this mean? Well, right now I don't really know.
This will obviously change my documentation significantly, but I'm not sure it needs to affect the actual project. I'm still thinking I like the design of the purse from the Fries for my project since its different from previous pouches I've done. That means I still have to document my choice to make that design, despite the fact that the Fries Museum has such a broad date range assigned to the item, much of which would be considered post-period.
Since the Mary Rose purse doesn't have intact pouches (just the handle and flaps), I can't really say what pouch design they would have used so that won't help me document the Fries item. Materials look to be similar (although there's no way to know if the pouches themselves were leather since they didn't survive).
All in all, a busy week to geek out on leatherworking discoveries.
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