Friday, November 03, 2006

To Market to Market!

Staying on the theme of re-enactment for this next post, I went to two re-enactor's markets in Warwick and Coventry last weekend and returned with all sorts of gauds! The rather alarming piece of pottery on the left is a replica of a mid thirteenth century jug from Kingston on Thames. It's made by 'Jim the Pot' of Trinity Court Potteries, whose wares may also be seen gracing the trestles of the film A Knight's Tale. Here's the url to his site. www.trinitycourtpotteries.co.uk
I've now added it to my mantlepiece collection of 'authentic' medieval pottery, much of which I use at shows, and of course as an inspiration to my writing.
As well as the chappy on the left, I also returned with:

A 12th century replica brooch
Four wimple pins
Two cookery booklets titled: The Recipe Book of Gareth The Baker and And We Must Eat of the Yellow Wobbly Bits - being a sundry and diverse collection of notes on the arcane art of offal cookery.
A rather beautiful deep wooden trough for kneading bread dough
A trug for my husband who had his last one stolen at the village
show.
A Venetian glass pen as a Christmas present
I ordered a pair of shoes from www.anaperiodshoes.co.uk They're in the High Medieval section and they're the twelfth century laced ankle shoe.
Not content with that, I have also ordered a late period kite shield (mid twelfth century) from
www.shieldsandshoes.co.uk
It's going to be blazoned for John Marshal, the father of the great William. Not that anyone knows his blazon and heraldry was only just beginning at that time, but I am having it done half green half yellow like William's, but with the green and yellow reversed, and the famous rampant lion in the foreground.
I think that's about all I bought - indeed, I would have needed a mortgage if I'd come home with anything else, but pennies are now being saved for a nice firebox on which to do my cooking instead of having to use the group's firebox. This will give me leeway to experiment at home. And I did find myself rather longingly eying up the rivet mail hauberks and late 12thC helms at the Get Dressed for Battle stand....Hmmmm. www.getdressedforbattle.co.uk

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

If I hint hard enough is there any chance of more pictures? It all sounds like lovely stuff :).

KC said...

I'd also love to see pictures! Sounds like a really fun shopping spree. I'm off to visit some of those links right now.

Elizabeth Chadwick said...

Gillian, KC, I would love to post more pictures but my blog won't let me. I have tried all sorts to post more than one picture a session, but for some reason one is all it'll allow me without sending the formatting totally haywire. I tell it to put a pic in one place and it stubbornly refuses and puts it at the top anyway. Cutting, copying, pasting has no effect. However, I'll try a posting a couple of pics without text in a minute and see what happens.

Carla said...

Elizabeth - positioning pictures on a blog seems to be something to do with the 'float' command in the code that Blogger puts in the post. I haven't figured it out, being a technical klutz, but I'm sure if you can find a teenager doing web design in school or college they could fix it up in a few minutes. Or you could try asking Gabriele Campbell over at The Lost Fort, because she obviously knows how to do it. (Meantime, lots of short posts with one picture and a few lines of text each would do the job!)

Anonymous said...

Carla,
I tamper with the code of the picture insert on HTML level every time. :)

Mail hauberks and swords would be about the only thing I'd gaze longingly at - women's garments and cooking utensils are not something I would buy - though I'd like to see a cooking demonstration. :)