Our nineteenth A&S Research Paper comes to us from Lord John Kelton of Greyhorn, Guildmaster of the Honourable Company of Fermenters of the Barony of Concordia of the Snows. He considers the fascinating question of distilled spirits within our historical period – specifically the possibility of such spirits in SCA-period Mexico. (Prospective future contributors, please check out our original Call for Papers.)

Tequila: Is it a Period Beverage? A Brief History of Agave Based Fermented and Distilled Beverages and the Origins of Distillation in West-Central Mexico

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Our eighteenth A&S Research Paper comes to us from Mistress Sarah Davies of the Barony of Bergental, who introduces us to the surprising world of historical quilting, where we discover some familiar friends and some quite unfamiliar new ones! (Prospective future contributors, please check out our original Call for Papers.)

Early Quilting and Patchwork: A Short Introduction

The word “quilt” summons a host of images:

• Thrifty pioneer housewives cutting up worn clothing to piece elaborate patchworks for their families.

• Album quilts raffled off for a worthy cause.

• Wholecloth petticoats worn by colonial dames who danced with George Washington, then carefully preserved in a museum.

• Brightly colored feed sack quilts during the Depression.

• Community quilts telling the story of a town from its founding to the Bicentennial.

• Inexpensive versions of patchwork quilts sold in department stores for families wanting that “country look” in the bedroom.

• Cherished art quilts hanging in museums or going for high prices at auction.

The popular image of the quilt is of the quilt is modern, calico, and as all-American as an apple pie.  If the word “medieval” ever comes up, it’s because someone made a Game of Thrones quilt with appliqued dire wolves in the border.

The problem with this familiar stereotype is thatit doesn’t begin to reflect reality.  Patchwork and applique may be most associated the United States, but quilts themselves are anything but modern. Quilted carpets were prized on the steppes of Central Asia, quilted garments padded Crusader mail and protected Elizabethan fencers, quilted coverlets graced Tudor bed chambers, and quilted heraldic tapestries hung in Hungarian throne rooms. The evidence is scattered and sometimes hard to recognize, but quilting and patchwork were hardly alien to medieval Europe. Continue reading →

Our seventeenth A&S Research Paper takes a turn to the lighthearted, and comes to us from Mistress Aildreda de Tamworthe of the Barony of Carolingia. She offers a tabloids-eye view of some of the more ghastly deaths of the medieval period – not necessarily to be considered for our lunchtime readers! (Prospective future contributors, please check out our original Call for Papers.)

You Won’t Believe How They Went! Five Strange and Terrible Medieval Ends

Nothing in his life / Became him like the leaving it.
– Wm. Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), I.iv.

A person can achieve historical notoriety in many ways; brave deeds, terrible deeds, happy or cruel accidents of birth and geography, or even a greatly distinctive appearance. But one certain way to be remembered for posterity is to die in some memorable fashion. Today, the East Kingdom Gazette brings you five tabloid stories from history, wherein we learn of some of the more notorious exits of the Middle Ages. Please note that some are quite gruesome!

(NB: Like all good stories, these have been embroidered in the telling and the recollection. We have endeavored to provide the true tale in every case.)

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Our sixteenth A&S Research Paper comes to us from Lord Drake Oranwood of the Shire of Rusted Woodlands, who examines the work of the Elizabethan songwriter Thomas Campion, and uses his texts as a way to look closely at the role of women in that complex society. (Prospective future contributors, please check out our original Call for Papers.)

The Double Bind: Thomas Campion and Elizabethan Women

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Our fifteenth A&S Research Paper comes to us from Edmund Beneyt of the Barony of Endewearde, who demonstrates that the delicious preserved lemons of the Middle East have a very long history indeed! (Prospective future contributors, please check out our original Call for Papers.)

On the Preservation of Lemons

The preservation of food has been an ongoing struggle against Nature since man first started storing food for later use. There is evidence of the most basic form of preservation being used 14,000 years ago in the Middle East[1], and many different strategies have been discovered.

Pickling, the process of preserving food by either anaerobic fermentation in brine or immersion in a liquid of pH 4.6 or lower, is in use by most cultures across the globe. The range of pickled foods is astounding, from meats and fish to grains. The only limit on what can be pickled seems to be what is available to pickle.

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Our fourteenth A&S Research Paper comes to us from Lady Angela Mori of the Barony of Bhakhail, who demonstrates and explains the process of making one of the splendid helm crests so familiar from manuscript illuminations of tournaments. (Prospective future contributors, please check out our original Call for Papers.)

Making a Leather Swan Helm Crest

How to Model Crests or Helmets: “Whenever you have occasion to make a crest or helmet for a tourney, or for rulers who have to march in state, you must first get some white leather which is not dressed except with myrtle or ciefalonia, stretch it, and draw your crest the way you want it made. And draw two of them, and sew them together; but leave it open enough on one side so that you can put sand into it; and press it with a little stick until it is all quite full. When you have done this, put it in the sun for several days. When it is quite dry, take the sand out of it . Then take some of the regular size for gessoing, and size it two or three times. Then take some gesso grosso ground with size, and mix in some beaten tow, and get it stiff, like a batter; and put on this gesso, and rough it in, giving it any shape of man, or beast, or bird, which you may have to make, getting it as like as you can. This done, take some gesso grosso ground with size, liquid and flowing, on a brush, and you lay it three or four times over this crest with a brush. Then, when it is quite dry, scrape it and smooth it down, just as you do when you work on panel. Then, in the same way, as I showed you how to gesso with gesso sotile on panel, in that same way gesso this crest. When it is dry, scrape it and smooth it down; and then if it is necessary to make the eyes of glass, put them in with the gesso for modeling; do modeling if it is called for. Then, if it is to be gold or silver, lay some bole, just as on panel; and follow the same method in every detail, and the same for the painting, varnishing it in the usual way”

– From Chapter CLXIX, Il Libro dell’Arte (The Craftsman’s Handbook), Cennino D’Andrea Cennini

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Our thirteenth A&S Research Paper comes to us from Lady Raziya bint Rusa, of the Barony of Carolingia. She examines a question that troubles many people working with illuminated manuscripts: what exactly are those plants in the illuminations? Are they fanciful or are they plants that really existed in history? (Prospective future contributors, please check out our original Call for Papers.)

Persian Plants in Miniature:  What are the Plants in Persian Illuminations?

Four years ago I bought a book of Persian miniatures for reference to help me sew garb.  As I paged through over breakfast one illustration caught my eye – a hollyhock.  I am a gardener by trade, and thought it out of place that a hollyhock, a staple of the English country garden, would be found in Persia.  To satisfy my curiosity I did a quick web-search into Persian Plants.  This line of questioning would be the undoing of my motivation to sew; two years later I had a seven thousand entry horticultural database and no new garb.

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Our twelfth A&S Research Paper comes to us from Condêssa Violante do Porto, of the Shire of Quintavia. She examines a kind of puzzle that is all too familiar to the student of historical crafts: What do you do about problems arising from trying to do a historical craft with our more modern tools? (Prospective future contributors, please check out our original Call for Papers.)

Untwisting the Answer: A Trick for Tablet Weaving on Modern Portable Looms

The subject of this paper will discuss adapting period patterns for modern looms in order to tackle the problems presented by using modern tools for period narrow weaving. This is not exclusive or proprietary; as I will discuss, I stumbled upon this technique by accident. This technique is also an adaptation to a modern loom, and I know of no examples supporting this as a period technique. My argument is that it is possible, and easy, to maintain the integrity of period patterns when working on a modern loom without relying on modern solutions. This technique could be similarly applied to more period techniques of tablet weaving, such as the backstrap method, as another means of handling the problems associated with some of the more complex period patterns.

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Our eleventh A&S Research Paper comes to us from Lord Gideon ha-Khazar, until very recently of the Barony of Dragonship Haven and now of the Barony of the Middle Marches, and who did most of this research while he was a citizen of our fair kingdom. He examines the history of a group of people many of us know very little about – European Jewish freeholders who fought in battles alongside their non-Jewish counterparts – and provides fascinating historical support for medieval Jewish fighting personae. (Prospective future contributors, please check out our original Call for Papers.)

 Jewish Carolingian Fighters: The Jewish Fighting Freeholders of Carolingian Southern France

“Quapropter sumus dolore tacti, usque ad mortem anxiati, cum cognovissemus per teipsum, quod plebs Judaica … infra fines at territoria Christianorum allodia haereditatum in villis et suburbanis, quasi incolae Christianorum, possideant per quaedam regum Francorum praecepta.” (Migne vol. 129 p.857 and Jaffe 288)

“Therefore we are struck with sorrow, anxious to death, since we have learned through you that the Jews … possess allodial lands within Christendom in towns and outside them, like Christians, through certain grants of the kings of the Franks” (Chazan 188)

— Pope Stephen III to the Archbishop of Narbonne and “all magnates of Septimania and Hispania”, 768 CE

In 768 Pepin, Carolingian King of the Franks, recognized Jews’ rights to own land in what is now southern France. Since the lands were held in allod (owned outright instead of feudally) and in Frankish law all allodial landholders had to fight when called, Jewish fighters took part in Carolingian wars (including Charlemagne’s Roncesvalles campaign) and helped garrison lands taken from the Muslims.

Thus SCAdians have documented historical bases for having openly Jewish fighting freeholder personae from Carolingian (8th-9th century) southern France and its Spanish March. Furthermore, the region was on Radanite Jewish trade routes extending all the way to China and Narbonne was a center for scholarship, so one could historically justify having fighter-traveler or fighter-scholar personae from those periods as well.

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