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Byzantine Chess
Byzantine chess or Zatrikion is a chess variant that was popular in medieval times in the Byzantine Empire. It is played on a round chess board, where the game pieces face each other on both sides. The...
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Medieval table manners
When you attend a feast at the lords castle, you will need to behave and show that you have table manners. One of the things was (and still is) that you had to wash your hands. From the 12th until the...
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The eagle heads of the sella curulis
It has been more than a year since I posted on my sella curulis project. During this time almost nothing happened to the medieval folding chair. I had to carve the four eagle's heads, and was very...
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Entrails
What do entrails have to do with feast and food? It is a spectacle food or 'entremet', set between the normal courses of a medieval feast. It was made to awe or shock those sitting at the table, like...
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Aumonieres and purses from Germany
Aumonieres (pouches used for carrying money or alms for the poor) and reliquary pouches (pouches containing relics from saints, like pieces of bone or cloth) were often made from expensive materials...
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JSTOR for your medieval research
JSTOR (journal storage) is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources. Not all science journals or science subjects, but quite a lot. You might ask yourself what this has to do...
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The eagle heads of the sella curulis finished
Hurray! Yesterday I finished carving the eagle heads for the sella curulis, a medieval folding chair. The carving went faster than anticipated and I am quite happy about the result. Next are the four...
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Some pouches and purses of the St. Thomasguild part I
The kind of medieval pouches shown in a previous blogpost, as well as those described in the catalogue of medieval textiles from the treasury of the St. Servatius church in Maastricht, the Netherlands...
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Some purses from the St. Thomasguild Part II
This post continues with two more purses in use by us. Both purses are of the frame-purse type (as described by Olaf Goubitz in the book 'Purses in Pieces' (ISBN 9789089320148). This book gives an...
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Misericords from Luneburg
Usually, I do not find church interiors very interesting. The exception is of course when there is something medieval to see - fresco's, sculptures, (some) stained glass windows, and/or furniture. Most...
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The claw feet of the sella curulis
The carving of the claw-feet for the sella curulis proved to be more easy and much quicker than the carving of the eagle heads. All in all, it took me a week's time - during the Christmas holidays - to...
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Medieval chess boards
After all the 'exotic' medieval chess versions (grande acredex, Byzantine chess,four season chess) shown in previous posts, we also made a 'normal' medieval 8x8 chess board and chess pieces. But how...
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Medieval chess and variants
My planned post on medieval chess became much too long, reason why I chopped it into three parts. The first part concerned the medieval chess board. This is the second part of the story and concerning...
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Faulty medieval chess boards
This is the third post in a series on medieval chess. Chequered and unchequered, or different colours are not the only chess board variations found in medieval manuscripts, as shown in a previous post....
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The medieval toolchest: the frame saw
There were different types of saws in use during medieval times, for instance the long two-handed saw in use for construction work. Another saw that is frequently illuminated in manuscripts is the...
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Some wooden needle cases and other textile working tools
At our woodworking course we have a new electric lathe, and I wanted to try this machine to make some wooden needle cases. Such needle cases existed in bone and metal forms in medieval times, and...
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The medieval tool chest: the two man cross-cut saw
The two man cross-cut saw appeared first in the 10th century in the Northern Alps, but only became common in the mid-15th century. The saw was mostly used by carpenters, and only after medieval times...
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Torta in balconata
Last weekend, the re-enactment season of this year started for us with a visit to the Historic Open Air Museum in Eindhoven. This meant preparing some dishes in advance as well. One of these was the...
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Gilding the sella curulis
The sella curulis is a luxury folding chair, intended as a seat of authority. Therefore, I wanted to have the seat to have an appearance of importance, and impress by having gilded the eagle heads and...
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Another game to play with your medieval chess board
The start of a (fake) game of jeu de dames. A composition of margin illuminations of the 14th century manuscript Bodleian 264. Made by St. Thomasguild in 2014 using Photoshop. There is another...
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