Breaking the shackles of time: Books, Writing, and Practical Paleography

"What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are printed lots of funny squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."   

                                                              - Carl Sagan, Cosmos (1980)

You knew we'd get to this eventually, right? Before any other label I may affix to myself, I'm a novelist, a writer, a storyteller. The world I see around me isn't a world of atoms and elements, it's a world of stories waiting to be told.

And we have unfortunately forgotten more stories than we remember. Because we only remember what was recorded.

The constant struggle with this project isn't tracking down the right tool or the correct material. The real struggle can be forced into the old Journalistic construction of the W's: "What do we know? Who recorded it? When did they record it? How did they know it? Why was this saved when all else was lost?"

This was almost a "Thoughts from the peeler" post, but then I remembered that there was an actual guild or two involved in the transmission of the Elizabethan Culture from pen to posterity. The "Who" in the above question is primarily focused through the Worshipful Company of Stationers and the Worshipful Company of Parish Clerks. These two groups are responsible for the lion's share of what we know about our period of study.

As Carl Sagan said at the top of the page, it all boils down to dark squiggles on dead trees (or dead animals in many cases).

Most of the information we have from the 16th century was recorded under the auspices of two groups: The Worshipful Company of Parish Clerks (who aren't really a livery company at this point), and the Worshipful Company of Stationers.

All records of births, deaths, and christenings were recorded by the local parish clerk. Books and broadsheets were printed on the presses of the Stationer's Company.

Yes, I'm working on a letterpress demonstration, but I'm not sure what form that will take. I've put some feelers out locally and will probably be working with someone who has already built up the necessary setup for printing with movable type. I'd wager though, that we're going to be extrapolating from a modern setup.

To keep things within the period constraints we've set for ourselves, I'll be binding a book in a manner that's correct for our period. There's an astonishing amount of gear involved in binding, though, so we'll be doing some preparatory projects in wood and metal just to get us to the starting point for that project.

In the meantime, I am at work preparing quills and teaching myself a new hand.

The preparation of a quill will be the focus for a near-term post, but I've demonstrated that craft many times at renaissance faires and events, so I'm not really learning anything new while doing it.

Yes, a new hand. This is where the "practical paleography" comes in. For our purposes, a hand is a method of rendering the alphabet in a culturally-specific way. I'll write more about this as I go along, but the method of writing used to record important documents in the 16th century was known as the Secretary Hand and it's damn near illegible to modern eyes.

Translating any manuscript documents from the period into is so time-consuming that the Folger Shakespeare Library and Oxford University have  put out a call for help from the internet to translate more period documents faster than they can alone. Part of my goal with this specific project will be to help in that effort. Not only will this effort increase the number of available records from the time of Shakespeare, you can also contribute to the new edition of the Oxford English dictionary!

You too can help out and learn more about this project at shakespearesworld.org

Anyway, that's where I am at the moment and what I'm working on during the rainy season which is in full effect hereabouts. My old back injury flared up this week as the result of a minor mishap, so I think I'll be spending some time indoors anyway, cutting quills and reading about the chemistry of ink and the denaturation of collagen in parchment... nerd heaven.

- Scott

Further Reading:

Advice for Reading Secretary Hand, Folger Shakepeare Library (PDF)
http://folgerpedia.folger.edu/mediawiki/media/images_pedia_folgerpedia_mw/2/21/Alphabet_Abbreviations.pdf

Bonus Video:

I thought this was especially appropriate since we kicked off this project with a quote from Anthony Bourdain. As part of a project he's working on with Balvenie Scotch Whiskey, he paid a visit to Arion Press in San Francisco. They are one of the last of their breed, printing and binding fine books with movable lead type. Their methods are modern by our measure, but very old fashioned and very cool by modern metrics.

A Joiner's Toolbox: The Hand Plane

If this sometimes feels like a woodworking blog, I apologize. It's not intended that way; it's just that so much of the technology of the 16th century revolved around items made from wood or iron. Often both. 

Despite the fact that modern woodworking has largely become a matter of "He/She who dies with the most tools wins" it hasn't always been that way. In no small part, this is owed to the fact that there wasn't as much unnecessary variety in tools. The tool box if the 16th century joiner was relatively simple. Even today, there's not much you can't make if you have a couple of measuring implements, a sharp knife, a few decent chisels, a saw or two, a hand drill, a nice heavy mallet, a hammer, and a few simple hand planes. (Your apprentice will also need an axe, a mallet, and a froe for splitting lumber as well since you can't go down to ye olde Home Depot to buy it.)

Some details can be found in period sources:

"A Rule a compass a hatchet a hansawe a fore plane a joynter a smothen plane two moulden planes a groven plane a paren chysell a mortisse chesell a wymble a Rabbet plane and six graven Tooles and a Strykinge plane..."  

- From a 1594 apprenticeship contract of John Sparke and Humfrey Bryne, outlining the tools of the joiner's trade. (As quoted in "Seventeenth Century tool kit." Peter Follansbee, joiner's notes (blog). September 8, 2009.) 

If you're engaged in a specific trade, of course, there would be a couple of additional items such as lathe tools or spoke shaves, but there's really not really much variance from that central list.

A small selection from my toolbox...

The primary tool in the joiner's toolbox is the hand plane. Roy Underhill has even said that the difference between a carpenter and a joiner is the joiner's plane. He's right in a very specific way: guild laws actually forbade the use of certain key tools by other craftsmen in order to discourage generalists. For the joiner, the hand plane -- especially the plough plane -- was his identity as much as the lathe identified the turner.

The hand plane is essentially a chisel held in a frame and secured in place with a wedge. Sometimes, there's a handle at the front or back, depending on where and how it's used. They've been around since pre-Roman times and arose independently in cultures cut off from one another as the obvious next step to save labor from smoothing large surfaces with hand chisels and adzes.

The parts of a hand plane (I realized I haven't done a custom illustration in awhile)

The amount of change between the Roman hand plane linked to above to the hand planes that were found in the wreck of Mary Rose (below) and the ones in my wood shop today is very slight. The drawing above could cover any one of them. Most of the changes were matters of metallurgy as the blades got better and better and the chip-breaker was introduced to help alleviate the clogging problems endemic to the old beasts.

It wasn't really until the industrial revolution that any great change in plane technology was introduced and took root. In 1865, Leonard Bailey's patent hand plane changed the plane from the wooden carcass we see in the archaeological record (and my tool chest) to the iron-bodied planes that we see today.

If you've been following along, you've seen this tool before in a far more decrepit shape. It's my recently refurbished Bailey Number 6 with my custom over-sized walnut tote (I have large hands). This is the most common form of hand plane seen in workshops today. My friends might mock me as a Luddite, but even in my focus on hand tools, I'm a mostly modern worker of wood. Iron body planes have it all over the wooden ones in durability and adjustability. They're easier to use, easier to set up, and less finicky by far than their old wooden counterparts. Want to adjust the iron on a wood plane? Grab a mallet. Whack the tail to retract the blade, the front to extend it, the sides to adjust the pitch, and hit the wedge to set the blade... then do it all over again if you get too much or too little. Yet wooden planes are still made today and used religiously by many.

Why?

I wondered that myself until I bought a couple of them from my local antique dealer and put them back into service. First off, they're fun. I can't find a better way to describe it. Also, the weight of the thing does some of the work for you. I've noticed as well that once you've worked out the zen of setting the iron,  they don't chatter as much.

Another thing worth noting is that proper joinery of the period was all done with green wood. None of this kiln-dried nonsense that we get today: Cut down the tree, split it up, and make some furniture! If you try working green wood with iron-bodied planes you're going to have rust problems in pretty short order.

Incidentally, they can also be quite beautiful.

My favorite planes aren't as pretty as the one Robin Wood made (pictured in the link above) but they are elegant in their simplicity.

The fact that these tools changed so little from their inception to now is a blessing of a different sort: We can set up our (mostly) period-correct toolbox without making them. The differences, in fact, are so slight that in his book "Make A Joint Stool from a Tree: An Introduction to Seventeenth-Century Joinery," Peter Follansbee advises buying them and getting on with it. This is because -- other than the addition of a chip-breaker and handle placement -- the wood-body planes I can buy today in any antique store are virtually identical to the tools depicted in paintings, engravings, and other depictions of early modern joiners, as well as the first English-language treatise dealing with the joiner's art: Joseph Moxon's Mechanick Exercises (available via that link as a free download), published in 1694.

We'll be referring to Moxon again, so get used to hearing his name...

~ Scott

Image from Moxon found via Project Gutenberg's scan of Woodworking Tools 1600-1900

State of the project update...

Bonus Extras!

People who follow along on the project's Facebook page get timely updates, additional progress photos, research trips, discussions, links, and even construction tips such as this one: Put an old rolling pin inside your leather jack to keep from impaling your hand as you sew.

It's a bit like getting to see the DVD extras before the movie comes out!

Projects Currently Under Way

• Hornwork cup & spoon
• Leather bottel
• Needlemaking
• Coopered tankard (still trying to make the !@#$ thing water-tight)
• Knitted Monmouth cap
• A cob bread oven
• Brick "hob" (a wood-fired cooktop)

Research in progress

• Shoemaking
• Advanced toolmaking
• Cutlery
• Elizabethan/Jacobean joinery
• Harvesting wild yeast for bread and beer
• Cooking & Baking
• The Brewing of Ale and Beer

A Craftsman's Curriculum

You may look at the list of research projects above and rightly wonder how I'm organizing this project. As we've progressed, I confess that I have become somewhat obsessed with tracing the way that the companies and guilds lean one upon the other for their very existence, and from that study I have evolved a curriculum of sorts.

The central idea is that each project should, ideally, feed the next project in terms of tools made and acquired or skills learned or improved. In the current kitty of completed projects, we have thimbling, pinning and thanks to my cat figuring out how to operate Amazon's one-click ordering, needle making*. Also about to go on the shelf are coopering, wiredrawing, and girdling.

The stave tankard gave me additional shaping tools and practice with a shaving horse. That will play into the wood forms for the next phase of the bottellers, bowyers, and lastmakers. Of course, the leatherwork will naturally lend itself to shoemaking as well. Pinmaking brought me experience with bone, and thimblemaking (failure though it was) introduced me to brasswork.

Peppered in there are projects that I have going in the background such as knitting and spinning, which I will string together (so to speak) when the time comes, but presently lend themselves to the sort of rainy and blustery conditions that are winter in the great northwest.

Once old Sol starts to stay in the sky for more than a few hours at a stretch, the tilers and bricklayers will emerge blinking into the sun, and build us an oven and cooktop that will do justice to the efforts of the cook and baker.

And so on and on through the end of the year.

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*True story. It used to be that thumbs were our major advantage in the race to stay at the top of the heap and then some brilliant idiot went and invented touchscreen technology.

Sick Day: Elizabethan Knitting, Part Three.

When I started posting about knitting in the renaissance, my Facebook walls lit up with people sharing resources and images. I love knitters even if I'm not especially loving knitting... yet.

The most prevalent period images of knitting actually come in the form of the "Knitting Madonnas". In Catholic countries, it seems to have been a meme to paint the Virgin Mary (or one of her thematic surrogates) knitting or holding implements of knitting/spinning. Some of my favorites show her apparently trying to take her knitting tools back from a Christ child that's acting like a very human baby and playing with the spinning wand or whathaveyou.

I can't imagine why I feel a link to the Madonna trying to knit/spin with a fussy baby on her lap trying to "help"...

This house is overrun with yarn gremlins.

Here's a "Knitting Madonna" care of the Wikimedia Commons that pushes my start date for knitting 'in the round' from mid-1500's back into the dawn of the previous century as some of you were kind enough to point out.

I most certainly stand corrected on that point. (Click image to embiggen.)

And here are some "Spinning Madonnas" for you to ponder over on the Spinning Fishwife blog. (Hat tip to Kat Porter for that link!)

The Purl Stitch

In order to make the tidy, clothlike 'stockinette' stitch that seems to dominate period knitting, you have to know how to make rows of knit and alternating purl stitches. Which means learning to purl.

This is how we begin the knit stitch. Note that the needles are going through the loop of yarn in the same direction. The active needle (the right if you are right-handed, left if you're a southpaw) is behind the carrying needle (the needle carrying the previous row when you begin).

These are my terms. I don't know how everyone else thinks of these things, but they fit how I see this process, so I'm going with it.

For the purl stitch, the needle begins by going through the loop in the opposite direction, as shown below. Your active needle is in front instead of behind the carrying needle.



The "throw" is once again between the two crossed points, only this time passing in front of the carrying needle.

Once again, you use the point of your active needle to pick up the thrown yarn and pull it through to create a loop... 

When you ease the loop off the carrying needle onto the active needle, you've created your first purl stitch! 

Excellent! Now, keep going. I learned that stitch this morning and at this point, I've done a sum total of about eighty of them. Which isn't very many. Much more practice will be needed to create the kinds of beautiful knitted garments my beloved Engineer is capable of.

When you work alternating rows of knit and purl, the "right side" of your fabric creates that nice, flat, woven aspect that you see in so many sweaters, stocking caps, socks, and knitted whatnot.

Note: Purl stitches are almost inevitably looser than knit stitches. It has to do with working in front of the needle rather than behind it or something. I'm not sure I understand it completely at this point. However, I have learned that the farther I go, the more important tension becomes to the finished product.

Keep that trailing thread wrapped around your pinky or something, because loosy-goosy knitting isn't worth much in terms of warmth or aesthetics.

These are the two key stitches we're going to use to make our first knitted item. Straight out of Shakespeare: it's a Monmouth Cap!

My kingdom for a horse: An Incomplete History of the Shaving Horse

I have a pile of oak staves waiting to be turned into something useful, a razor-sharp draw knife in my hand and a far away look in my eye. Like almost all of my best hand tools, the knife was left to me by my grandpa, who taught me an enormous amount about how to make wood do what I want it to.

I was always a little afraid of the draw knife.  In no small part, this was because the way my dad and grandpa used it seemed weird and unsafe. In fact, I said so once and got in trouble for my cheek.  Grandpa and dad tended to brace the piece of wood they were shaving between their stomachs and a table and scrape away.

They never cut themselves. Never even came close as far as I know. This might've been because they wore heavy jackets, but it was probably a combination of the way you hold a drawknife and the breadth of the blade, they might not even have been in any danger of doing so, but it still seems to me to be an unnecessary risk.

When I inherited grandpa's drawknife, it was put away until I built a proper shaving horse.  Because though dad and grandpa lived charmed lives (at least where draw knives are concerned) I do not. I'm clumsy and need to stack the odds in my favor.

What? You thought this would be a history of the shaving horse rather than a history of why I think I need one?

Fine, be that way.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

The picture above is the stereotypical shaving horse from a 19th century book of trades.

The shaving horse is a key element of the cooper's art and mystery. It is, in effect, a foot-powered vice designed to hold wooden slats as they are shaped. The user straddles what amounts to a modified sawhorse with their feet on the pegs at the bottom of a timber that is hinged where it passes through the top of the horse. 

Note: Sadly, the hovering shaving horse didn't pan out, so I put legs on mine.

By pushing away with your feet you apply pressure to the top of a slanted portion of the horse, pinching your workpiece in place.

Here's a picture and you should go back and watch the video of the cooper at Colonial Williamsburg that I posted last week to see it in action. 

So much safer than holding the stave against your tummy.  Don't worry, mom, I'll be wearing a leather apron anyway. 

Just in case.

Is it period-appropriate for a 16th century cooper?

I was a bit surprised to discover that this is a controversial question in certain circles.

A rudimentary shaving horse is depicted in use in the 1556 book De Re Metallica. For the record, it's shown being utilized by a miner to make bertte, a wood billet with shavings left attached to be used as fire-starters. In the case of the miners in the etching, to light fires in a mine to fracture rock.

Bertie makes the best bertte in all of Bavaria!

The bertte maker is the image of a shaving horse most bandied about in these discussions online. And I thought it might be the only one in existance until I paged through the Mendel Hausbuch and noticed that half the coopers in the book are using a shaving horse of some sort.

                                                                                                                         Photo Source: Stadtbibliothek Nuernberg 

So there's a cooper at work, his tools in the background, including a shaving horse. Case closed as far as I'm concerned. More pictures of the same foot vice here and here. Since the monk in the second image is using his as a sort of ersatz workbench, you can see the whole thing in profile, including the arrangement of the foot pedal and vice dog.

This is mine...

It's worth nothing that none of the shaving horses I've found have the angled surface that mine (and every other shaving horse I've ever seen) has. That slanted piece makes shaving with knife or spokeshave easier, but would preclude using the horse as a work surface as that second monk was doing.

It might be a later addition to the design; I'm not sure and don't have any data one way or the other on that topic. Mine has the slanted second level and I'm not planning to remove it so we'll make a note of it and move on.

~Scott

----

I was flipping through NetFlix videos and found an episode of Dirty Jobs where he learned to make a wine barrel. Hilarity ensues...
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/27751-dirty-jobs-building-a-barrel-video.htm

Before Pinterest: The curious history of the Pinners

Just before Christmas, I received an email back the Museum of London in response to an enquiry I sent them about a list of 111 crafts that existed before the Livery Companies properly got going. I kept hearing about this list and seeing it referenced in books without anyone I could find actually presenting the entire list.

My question was answered patiently and thorough (more than!) by John Clark, retired Senior Curator of the museum's medieval collection, who sent me the list and links to a couple of books available online (archived as out of copyright) as well as some newer ones, which I have added to the "Library" tab above under a heading for general histories of the guilds.

From Mr. Clark's email:

"The list was compiled by the Clerk of the Brewers' Company and included in the company's records. It is headed (in English - the Brewers were one of the first companies to record their business in English rather than Latin or French):  'A list of the names of all the crafts exercised in London from of old, and still continuing in this ninth year of King Henry V [ie 21 March 1421 to 20 March 1422], and here set down in case it may in any wise profit the hall and Company of Brewers.'"

Mr. Clark went on to caution me that the list of 111 was a list of crafts compiled by the Worshipful Company of Brewers for their own uses. There were many such lists of varying length and contrary to what it says in many books, shouldn't be taken to mean that every craft on the list was represented by an organized guild or that the informal groups were the same as those who were later rolled up into the great livery companies.

It is a mistake, he warned, to assume that craft = guild.

It's an excellent point. This is a problem that we will encounter more than once on this journey, I think. The histories of many of the great and even lesser companies are so convoluted even they cannot say for certain in many cases whence they came. The Founderers, for instance were founded by God, apparently. I assume the Fruiterers claim Adam (though they should probably claim Eve) and the Cutlers even have a song about how they came about because Eve wanted apple slices.

But we will get to all of those great and might folks later. First, I want to talk about the Pinners, the makers of metal pins for sewing and dressing.

It might seem odd to begin with pin making for this project. It's not glamorous, elegant, or even all that difficult.  The Pinners are not even one of the Livery Companies, or rather not one of the ones named on my list of 54 (they were a small part of the Girdler's for awhile). But we will begin with them nonetheless because the illustrate the mercurial nature of trade in the 16th century.

Pins seem simple enough. The bog standard Tudor pin could be cast, but they were more generally made by wrapping a small ball of thin brass wire around a long, hardened brass pin. The ball was crimped and/or soldered to one end to form the head and the other end was sharpened with a file. There were, as always, finer and lesser pins: Jeweled, enameled, and precious metal pins for the gentry, but most were basically variations of that relatively simple formula.

The pin makers were not wealthy. They were not powerful. And it was not because pins were not in demand. In a time before velcro, snaps, or zippers, pins were an absolute necessity. The term 'pin money' didn't mean idle spending cash, it meant the money set aside to buy hand-made pins. Some of them were quite beautiful and ornate.

The ascendancy of Elizabeth I was the ascendancy of ever more elaborate costume including the elaborate ruffs, and the demand for pins was all the greater as the 16th century advanced. The more elaborate the ruff, the more pins that were needed to keep it stable and pretty.

And yet, it seems that the fortunes of England's pinners fell rather than rose along with demand. You see, the marketplace was flooded with cheaper pins of better quality from France. Successive administrations from Henry VIII through Elizabeth I enacted protections against the dumping of foreign pins on English markets, but it was for naught.

"In 1543 Henry VIII made a move to control the quality of pins produced in England in hopes that English pins of high quality would prove more desirable than the imported items: 'No person shall put to sale any pinnes butonly such as shall be double headed and have the heads soldered fast to the shank of the pinnes, well smoothed, the shank well shapen, the point well and round filed, canted and sharpened.'" 

From: 'Findings: The Material Culture of Needlework & Sewing' by Mary C. Baudry

Pin makers most likely began as one of these not-quite-a-guild independent trade associations that sprang up in the early 15th century. In 1497 they officially combined forces with the Wiresellers upon whom they were dependent for materials anyway. This continued until 1511 when both were consumed by the Girdlers, becoming subordinate members of that society.

Royal interventions in the market like those mentioned in Caple's book, banning the import of foreign pins by Henry VIII and again by Elizabeth, were well-intentioned, but fell short of the glory. Henry's quality demands for soldered heads put the pin makers in daily contact with very toxic materials and slowed production. The consumers kept buying the contraband foreign pins and since the poor pinners had to pay for the enforcement of their monopoly (as was done with most guild monopolies) it failed to pull them out of their slump.

However, the price of pins plummeting, they already could not afford to enforce their monopoly until 1579 when the wire-drawers/girdlers cut them loose. Pinners should have been wealthy, but they never seemed to get their feet under them sufficiently to really parlay the need for their product into real success.

Tudor pinners had it bad enough that they were chosen by Tony Robinson for his television show "The Worst Jobs in History" for the Tudor era, which is pretty high up on the universal list of dubious distinctions.

It would not be until automation and mass production that the humble art of pin making could make enough pin money to make anyone truly wealthy. And when it came, that person wasn't a pinner at all, but the inventor of a machine.

They were the humblest of the humble and yet, they quite literally held the whole of Tudor society together. Something in my quixotic nature is drawn to that. And so it is with them that we will begin.

This project includes a firm grounding in:

• Tools (files and materials safety)
• Wire-drawing and brassworks,
• We will make a pinner's bone,
• We will approximate a cold forge for pinheads,
• And finally, we will make some pins!

A great and special thank you to John Clark, Curator Emeritus at the Museum of London, for his kind assistance and patience with the questions I tossed across the Atlantic in hopes of finding a kind and scholarly ear for them to land on. Thank you sir. You are too kind.

- Scott


Post Script:  Here is the list of 111 trades recorded by the Brewers Company from the appendices of George Unwin's book The Gilds and Companies of London (Published 1908 and out of copyright in the United States) provided my Mr. Clark.  You can read the full book at Archive.org.

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edited 8/16/2016 to correct quote attribution and provide a link to the Findings book. - Scott

News: Plus Stuff and Tools and OMG all the STUFF!!!

Beard = Serious Scholar

I've been silent for awhile as I do important things like acquire hard-to-find tools, rare books, and grow a new beard (very important, I am told for these historical research projects). Seriously, I've been travelling all over the country, visiting family, haunting antique stores, and generally ramp up the behind-the-scenes portions of this effort and tie off a bunch of projects both personally and professionally that will be on-hold while I'm doing this.

I seriously think that at some point in the recent past all of the antique tools in America were loaded in trucks and hauled to rural Missouri.

My studio is starting to look like Brueghel's Satire of a Merchant's Greed.  Which might be the nerdiest reference I've made in recent memory... Also, Amazon has started sending me emails that say things like "Special sale for our customers who like hammers..."

Yes.

Oh, and while doing this, I've been applying and interviewing for a full-time job at the college where I am currently working part-time. Which will seriously change the dynamic of this project if I get it.

And I really hope I do get it. Not because a potential background checker might see this post but because it sounds like an awesome job that I'd really enjoy that would allow me to actually use the skills I paid tuition dollars to learn.

(Gasp!)

I bring this up because I haven't before, and we need to start this with everyone knowing that I will be fitting this project in the spaces around my "Real Life". Yes, I will be "getting 500 years behind" in my free time, which is an unfortunately limited commodity. This project is about pursuing my deep and abiding desire to LEARN ALL THE THINGS (as we say on the interwebs) not about putting food on the table, so anything that pays will inevitably take first chair.

Image Inserted to Meet the guidelines set forth in the International Treaty 

for Internet Meme Propagation, 921.4, section C, subsection L9

The upshot being that I might actually be ready for this.

(Panics and runs to re-check that everything is in order for the umpteen millionth time.)

Making

Why am I doing this?  I ponder that a lot. And there are a lot of reasons why I decided to do this and why I'm doing it exactly the way I have chosen to.  Primarily, I think, it's because I make things.

Stories, gardens, paintings, toys, furniture, clothing, messes, mistakes... it's all part of the same creative impulse that's driven me throughout my life. It comes from the frustration with what's there not living up to what could be there.

This project is about celebrating the people Who Made All the Things.

When I was a kid, I made many of my own toys.  All of my favorite toy guns came from the crates of miscellaneous junk beneath my grandfather's work bench, not Toys-R-Us.  This isn't because we were particularly poor, and it wasn't because I grew up in 1936 (though it felt like it sometimes). It was because the toys I envisioned in my head were just that much cooler than the ones you could buy at the toy store.

Thankfully, my parents and grandparents encouraged this sort of thing.  At least until I went as far as getting into pounding heated nails into tiny swords for my GI Joes.  Dad drew the line at me becoming an  eight-year-old blacksmith.

Spoilsport.

Even those toys I did buy or that was given would eventually go under the screwdriver.  All of my favorite GI Joe and Star Wars characters and vehicles were custom amalgamations to suit my own fancy, characters in my own extended story lines.

As an adult, I transferred this into sculpture and artwork, but really these are all extensions of the same brain frequency, the translation of a mental picture into a three-dimensional object.  I've made props for renaissance faires and small theatrical productions and science fiction conventions.

This isn't to toot my own horn.

For one thing, I never got the hang of playing a brass instrument and if I did toot a horn, you wouldn't want to listen to it. My sister got the lion's share of musical talent in this family.  This isn't horn-tooting, it's about the philosophy of what I'm up to, what I'm about.

This is a project about makers.  It's about doers.  It's about pulling the spotlight away from the princes and generals and artists who dominate the history books and shining it on the people in their shadows. I've always found that the trouble with teaching or even talking about history is that it keeps boiling down to bold-face names and red letter dates, which are ultimately meaningless: "William the Conqueror defeated King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings in 1066."

I came out of school with my head packed to the hair follicles with dates and names like this. But I couldn't have told you what they ate. Or who prepared it. Or how. I could not have told you, beyond the broadest outlines, how their houses were built, or what their daily lives were like.

And it's just getting worse because history is getting bigger and we're spending less time learning it. Encouraging evermore the approach that exemplified the teaching of history as I went through school: Invasion! Battle! New king. Red ink, memorize the boldface names, pass the test and move on. How did they bake bread? Who cares! No time! Look at the shiny armor, memorize the battles, we have more facts to memorize tomorrow.

I came to terms with the fact long ago that if I was to get a deeper understanding of how humankind got from there to here, it was up to me to figure it out on my own. Thankfully, we have the reenactors and their groups to help us out. Vast societies have sprung up in recent decades to keep alive the martial arts of Europe, breathe life into the illustrations of the fighting manuals of Germany, Italy, France, and Spain.

I don't want to denigrate their efforts. There's some amazing things coming out of their salons, vast tracts of forgotten knowledge reawakened by their scholarship. But strength at arms are not my strengths. One reason I've never joined a reenactment society is because I can't find one that focuses solely upon the homelife of the world that was, a society that doesn't spin breathlessly around the rehearsal for a half-forgotten war.

I know the names and dates of the kings and princes and generals that we are told got us to this point in history. Too much of my brain is taken up with the records of destruction. Time for me to turn over those vaults to the records of creating. Because while the kings and generals were off crusading, there were people keeping the rushlights lit back home.

I've studied the fine art of killing people for king and country and personal honor; now I want to  study the things that kept everyone alive between duels and wars. The people who made the renaissance.

Making things. It's what fires me up.

Chateau de Guedelon: A medieval castle for the modern era

My friend Jon reminded me the other day of this effort to build a castle in France using artisans pursuing only the period techniques circa 1200 or so.  There was a BBC article updating the world on their progress recently (link below) and it's always something to learn from things like this.

The craftsmanship is amazing, the dedication astounding. It predates my project by hundreds of years, but nonetheless... wow.

Recent BBC coverage:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10440300

The Official Website (English edition):
http://www.guedelon.fr/en/

The article on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu%C3%A9delon_Castle

Some videos from YouTube:

The Livery Companies: A list in progress

This is a work in progress, with the beginnings of details and possible projects being sketched out along with critical resources for completion.  All advice, feedback, and suggestions of source material are appreciated at this stage of things.

Not all of the projects will happen in this order and not all are set in stone. Everything is an idea at this point and I'm not done with the list either. (Hey, I still have a few months, right?) Nevertheless, I'm looking for all the help I can get.

Critical Online Source for Background info: The Records of London's Livery Companies Online:  Apprentices and Freemen 1400-1900 http://www.londonroll.org/about

Section 1.01: What shall we eat?

(a)     The Worshipful Company of Salters
Modern Iteration: http://www.salters.co.uk/

The salters began in the manufacture and trade of salt, a key commodity in a time when salt-curing was the only real way to preserve meat for any length of time.

" By the fourteenth century, salt was an essential commodity in England. It was used mainly for preserving meat and fish before the advent of tin cans and refrigeration. Other uses included any operation where ‘chemical’ action was required, such as cleaning, dyeing fabric, bleaching, degreasing, dehairing and softening leather and in the formulation of medicines and ointments.  As well as dealing in salt, Salters were experts in the dry salting of fish and meat and also dealt with flax, hemp, logwood, cochineal, potashes and chemical preparations. The modern day association of The Salters’ Company with chemistry and science can therefore be traced right back to its roots."

- From the modern guild's website

Project: Curing meat. Make some bacon.

(b)    The Worshipful Company of Grocers
Modern Iteration: http://www.grocershall.co.uk/

Originally the Guild of Pepperers, the grocers became the merchant guild supporting the importation and sale of bulk foodstuffs.Projects: Wheat -- from the field to the ovens. Also the tao of peppercorns.

(c)     The Worshipful Company of Fishmongers
Modern Iteration: http://www.fishhall.org.uk/

The Fishmongers were granted a royal monopoly on the sale of fish in the city of London in 1399 by Richard II. Through most of the period before the Reformation, Three days a week were 'fast days' not counting Lent, making fish (not considered a meat by doctrinal standards) a supremely lucrative market to corner.

Project: Get on a boat and go catch a fish.  No, really. Out to sea with you! Then bring it home and cook it.

(d)    The Worshipful Company of Brewers
Modern Iteration: http://www.brewershall.co.uk/

Brewers brewed beer on an industrial scale, setting the standards and trade practices for an important comestible in the days before water purification. Historians estimate that northern Europeans drank an average of three liters of beer a day; it was of widely variant alcohol content (hence Henry VI proposing that drinking 'small beer' be a crime in Shakespeare's play) but that's still a lot of beer.
Research Note: Strangely, the spectacles makers first aligned under the brewer's banner before being granted their own charter in the next century.

Project: Period beer brewed in a proper oak barrel. Maybe some spectacles as a bonus project?

(e)     The Worshipful Company of Bakers
Modern Iteration: http://www.bakers.co.uk/ 
The other half of the twin staples of the medieval and renaissance diet: bread and beer, the bakers were immensely powerful in early modern society. Most villagers could not afford an oven of their own, so communal ovens were often created or the village baker would bake the loaves of the village goodwives for a nominal fee.

Note: The function and nature of yeast was not understood until the latter half of the 18th century. The brewers and bakers worked together in this mystery, the bakers obtaining their yeast from the brewers stocks as often as from natural sources such as apple trees, oddly enough.
Project: Build a wood-fired oven and bake some bread

(f)      The Worshipful Company of Cooks
Modern Iteration: http://www.cookslivery.org.uk/

Near and dear to my foodie heart (especially considering the inspiration of this project) this is also the smallest of the livery companies, the cooks were a confederation of those who made food for others.

Project: Cooking in ceramic vessels over open flames. (Demo)Project: Cooking in ceramic vessels over open flames. (Demo)

(g)     The Worshipful Company of Butchers
Modern Iteration: www.butchershall.com/ (website currently inactive 09/21/2012)

They are just as you might think they are, those who guide and control the slaughter of livestock and the sale of their meat. A crucial force in a time before refrigeration, it was the butchers who held their members responsible for selling meats that had been properly cured or freshly killed and punished those who sold bad meat to the detriment of public health.

Project: Meat in the Elizabethan diet. Cooking demo on the rotisserie.

(h)    The Worshipful Company of Poulterers
Modern Iteration: http://www.poulters.org.uk/

The poulters were responsible in much the same way as the butchers for the regulation of trade and husbandry for all poultry, including chickens, ducks, swans, pigeons, as well as rabbits.
Project: Count your chickens before they hatch.

(i)      The Worshipful Company of Fruiterers
Modern Iteration: http://www.fruiterers.org.uk/

The orchards and gardens of England produced many fruits for the tables of the renaissance. The fruiterers governed the trade and quality of the fruits both fresh and preserved imported into the city.
Project: Cider from the tree to the press to the bottle.  Get thee to Yakima!

Section 1.02 What shall we wear?

(a)     The Worshipful Company of Dyers
Modern Iteration: http://www.dyerscompany.co.uk/

Those who held and protected the mysteries of dyed cloth and traded in the dyestuffs used for same.Project: Experiment with period dyestuffs, maybe a madder and an indigo.

(b)    The Worshipful Company of Clothworkers
Modern Iteration: http://www.clothworkers.co.uk/

The combination of the Shearmen and the Fullers, combining two aspects of the creation of woolen cloth. Taking the woolens from the weaver and then fulling and trimming it into the material used for darn near everything in the 16th century.

Project: Time for a discussion of the many period forms of woolen cloth available in the 16th century and how they differ from the modern ideas of wool.

(c)     The Worshipful Company of Merchant Tailors
Modern Iteration: http://www.merchant-taylors.co.uk/

Tailors and creators of clothing, both made to measure and off the rack (though little of it was off the rack unless it was used, the province of the fripperer.)
Project: Patter drafting and draping techniques with Joel Reid, who has graciously volunteered.

(d)    The Worshipful Company of Skinners
Modern Iteration: http://www.skinnershall.co.uk/

Trade in furs and the management of the trade of furs and fur garments in a time when the wearing or possession of same could be a crime.

Projects: Zibellini and the Victorian imagination -- the myth of the flea fur.

(e)     The Worshipful Company of Mercers
Modern Iteration: http://www.mercers.co.uk/
See the Haberdasher's, below.

Project: ??? Yeah, not sure about this one.

(f)      The Worshipful Company of Drapers
Modern Iteration: http://www.thedrapers.co.uk

See the Haberdasher's, below.

Project: ???

(g)     The Worshipful Company of Haberdashers
Modern Iteration: http://www.haberdashers.co.uk/

Three associations of merchants and purveyors of cloth, the Mercers, Drapers, and Haberdashers are weirdly intertwined and overlapping, often to the point of creating confusion even in their own ranks.  The haberdashers at least had a focus on sewing supplies, needles, pins, and cetera.
This one will be a dawdle to demonstrate, but a b**** to explain in a non-wonky manner.

Great Google Books source material here.
Project: Create and demonstrate the proper use of period sewing kit and various basic tradegoods.

(h)    The Worshipful Company of Leathersellers
Modern Iteration: http://www.leathersellers.co.uk/

A guild that controls the sale of leather goods and inspects every hide and leather good in London to verify quality and origin, punishing imposters who attempt to substitute one skin for another. This gives them control over the crucial supplies that are the lifeblood of  those whose livelihoods require leather, including the Cordwainers, Curriers, Girdlers, Glovers, Glovers, and Saddlers as well as some of the ancillary goods that arise from the manufacture of leather, such as the Tallow Chandlers.

It's interesting to note that despite their prominence on the Leatherseller's website, the making of leather bottles was the province of the Horners Company.

General leatherworking. Gloves or a purse, perhaps?

(i)       The Worshipful Company of Girdlers
Modern Iteration: http://www.girdlers.co.uk/

Makers of luxury goods: fine belts for the gentry, including sword belts and hangers.

Project: Swordhanger.a cloth one Discussion: The myth of the Hollywood BIG BUCKLE SWASHBUCKLER BELT.

(j)      The Worshipful Company of Cordwainers
Modern Iteration: http://www.cordwainers.org/

Fine leather used in the production of shoes and other luxury goods, mostly from cordovan, a goat leather developed in Spain and considered to be the finest available in the period.

Projects: Shoes -- Need to track down and get an introduction to a proper shoemaker working in a period style and methodology.

(k)    The Worshipful Company of Weavers (The Most Ancient)
Modern Iteration: http://www.weavers.org.uk/history

Quite possibly the earliest craft mastered by human hands, the weavers style themselves "The Most Ancient" for good reason.  Originally the most powerful of all the textile guilds, the weavers waned in power as the specialist textile guilds rose: the mercers especially.
Projects: Warm up that loom that's in the living room.

(l)      The Worshipful Company of Woolmen
Modern Iteration: http://www.woolmen.com/

Spinning, sheep, and selling raw wool. Wool was England's strongest and most important industry up to the Industrial revolution. "So concerned was Queen Elizabeth I about the wool trade that she had Parliament make everyone over the age of six (except the wealthiest) wear on Sundays "a cap of wool knit and dressed in England". Under Charles II Parliament passed a law requiring coffins to be lined in fleece and shrouds to be made of wool. Later, carriages had to be lined with it." - Guild website

Project: Herding, Shearing, Carding, and Spinning. THEN, knit something because the knitters never formed a guild and deserve some notice. A nice hat, perhaps.

(m)  The Worshipful Company of Curriers
Modern Iteration: http://www.curriers.co.uk/

Those who cured leather for eventual use by others to create trade goods.
Project: Cure a hide? I am so very much not looking forward to this one.

(n)    The Worshipful Company of Broderers
Modern Iteration: http://www.broderers.co.uk/

The broderers were artists in thread, the embroiderers who adorned everything from tapestries to clothing, even creating home embroidery kits reminiscent of modern cross stitch kits.
Stitch demos, simple blackwork

Section 1.03 Makers of Hard Goods

(a)     The Worshipful Company of Pewterers

Project: Soapstone casting -- make a pendant or a hat badge.

(b)    The Worshipful Company of GoldsmithsIncluded workers in silver.

Project: Yeah, I still dunno.

(c)     The Worshipful Company of Cutlers

Project: Hilt an eating knife or cooking knife?

(d)    The Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers

Project: Beekeeping and wax candles.

(e)     The Worshipful Company of Tallow Chandlers

Project: Rushlights! LARD; it's not just for dinner anymore.

(f)      The Worshipful Company of Armorers & Brasiers

(g)     The Worshipful Company of Saddlers
Modern Iteration: http://www.saddlersco.co.uk

Obvious, isn't it? They made saddles but not usually tack.
Project: No ideas. All of the horse-related items together in one. I think I might need to discuss this with Neb & Gordon first. They're the most knowledgeable people I know about these things...             

(i)     Loriners (edited)- Makers of tack. A Loriner produced horse furnishings in leather, fabric and metal such as traces, bridles, bits and spurs. (via Leatherworking Rev)

I didn't know that bit about the spurs, but it certainly makes sense. Their status as an independent entity is uncertain (to me) at this time, but tied to the saddlers.

(h)    The Worshipful Company of Founders (Brass and Bronze)

Project: Lost wax casting in Brass.

(i)      The Worshipful Company of Coopers

Project: Make a Mary Rose stein and maybe a butter churn.

(j)      The Worshipful Company of Bowyers

Project: Visit Patrick's Friend. Maybe a trip to Maryland?

(k)    The Worshipful Company of fletchers
Project: Learn to shoot the bow and arrow from Robin Hood. Yes, Robin Hood. If he will deign to teach me, of course...

(l)      The Worshipful Company of Joiners & Ceilerers

Project: The hand-jointed X-chair sans nails.

(m)  The Worshipful Company of Stationers

Project: Making paper.

(n)    The Worshipful Company of Upholders

Project: Upholster an X-chair?

(o)    The Worshipful Company of Turners

Project: Human-powered lathe

(p)    The Worshipful Company of Basketmakers

Project: Weave a basket, of course.

(q)    The Worshipful Company of Glaziers

Project: Glass in an Elizabethan home.

(r)     The Worshipful Company of Horners (And Bottlers)

Project: Beaker, Spoon, leather Bottel

Section 1.04 Services & Labor

(a)     The Worshipful Company of Barbers

(b)    The Worshipful Company of Carpenters

Making period nails and assembling something with them. Perhaps a nice chest or something?

(c)     The Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers

(d)    The Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths

Make some stuff: Pinking chisels, stonemason's chisels, hinges, hasps, etcetera...

                (i)     Farriers are still in the mix in this period, I think. Once again, I should email Gordon for leads on this one...

(e)     The Worshipful Company of Masons

Projects: Carve a Mortar & Pestle? Not really a mason's main gig, but still it's pretty fiddly as stonecutting goes...

(f)      The Worshipful Company of Plumbers

(g)     The Worshipful Company of Innholders

(h)    The Worshipful Company of Tilers & Bricklayers

Project: Build a brick hearth for the back yard.

(i)      The Worshipful Company of Scriveners

Project: Quills, inks, and the strange mysteries of Elizabethan secretary script.

(j)      The Worshipful Company of Plaisterers

Project: Would this include plaster moulding or maybe just painting a fresco?

(k)    The Worshipful Company of Musicians

Project: Recorder lessons

Progress Report: Volunteers and A Growing Library

Research is a drug for me. Mostly because it means acquiring more books and shoehorning them into the groaning shelves of my home library.

Comments on Facebook have inspired me to move forward and post the bibliography of books I've been consulting here on the blog. To keep it from getting lost, it will be added as a "page" (the tabs across the top of the blog).

I will post links when I can to places like Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive where available.

At the moment, my reading is dominated by textiles, blacksmithing, and food.  A reading list that has raised the eyebrow of many a local librarian, let me tell you.

As we get closer to the start of the project, these posts will generally have a single topic, but for the moment, I'm all over the place trying to line things up before January.

In the spring edition of Piecework magazine's "Knitting Traditions" special, The Engineer found a lovely article on knitting and knitted goods of the 16th century, focusing on the 'Monmouth cap', mentioned by Shakespeare in Henry V, it is a knitted and fulled wool cap that was favored by laborers, soldiers, and sailors of the period. Pretty much anyone who needed to keep their ears warm.

I will be learning to knit as part of this and it's all I can do not to cheat and practice ahead of time so as not to make a total fool of myself come time to do it for the project. The Engineer has bravely stepped forward to teach me how to do this.

She is a brave, brave woman.

Looking at the photos in the article, I could wear a cap like this through any shopping mall in America and no one would bat an eyelash.  It's amazing how persistent a simple, elegant design can be.

Speaking of the simple things that haven't changed much, I tagged along when my friend and colleague Cory recently brewed a batch of beer in his kitchen. Other than the occasional brewery tour, I've never really watched the process of brewing up close.

The processes of brewing were pretty much established in medieval times and hasn't changed greatly. As I am finding in many cases, it's mostly a matter of refining the recipes for modern tastes (not to mention production on an industrial scale) but the technology we use in modern brewing is just a surrogate for the exact same processes the monks were using in the 12th century.

Oh, and I suppose we actually know what yeast is, so we have that going for us.

Cory also has a line on a Tacoma brewer that's doing small-batch brewing in barrels! So I'm one step closer on that front as well.  I'm sure we'll be seeing more of Cory in the course of this project. The man knows everybody!

Also, I have a firm commitment to demonstrate the art of the Merchant Tailor. Yes, I am a costumer, but I costume for myself, which is a different animal entirely from clothing another. Therefore, I have prevailed upon Seattle costumer Joel Reid to demonstrate the subtle arts of fitting period garments and discuss with us the foundations of Elizabethan dress. As soon as he has a website available, I shall link to it.

Mental Note: Even more than a list of links, I really need a cast of characters, don't I?

Also, I have several lines on gold/silver smiths, bowyers, blacksmiths, and armourers but cannot announce those folks until I have a hard commitment.  Anyone know where I can find a good 16th century barber surgeon?

Off to do more research before the weekend's honey-do list steals me away!

-Scott