Back from the North.

I'm back home, back at the desk, and back trying to keep up with... well, everything. There's my tablet weaving workshop coming up next weekend that has to be prepared, plus the website needed some updating of software and some maintenance, and there go the hours faster than you can say "I think I need more coffee."

My little excursion up north, to Syke, was wonderful - and I had a lot of fun presenting the Bronze Age garments that were made for the Forum Gesseler Goldhort. Which, by the way, is not only a lovely museum with prize-winning modern architecture presenting the spectacular gold finds made just a few kilometers away - the rest of the museum is a treasure trove of early modern work and farming tools. (It's actually just the kind of museum that I love to spend time in when on holidays, where I have a rather strict "no medieval stuff" policy. Because it's holidays.) 

On the way back home, I made a stop in Bremen and visited the St-Peter-Cathedral and the Cathedral Museum. Both are free entry, and very much worth a visit - if you're interested in textiles, the museum especially, as they have garments from medieval (13th century) bishop's graves on display.

Like always when I'm looking at medieval textiles in a museum display and it's properly done, I'm at the same time delighted about the low light levels and annoyed by them. That was the case there, too. It would be wonderful to have even better eyes or to get closer to the pieces, but I can tell you that even with murky lighting, murky colours (due to a few centuries in burial) and through the glass of the cases, they are very spectacular. There's lots of gold thread, silk embroideries, tablet weaves with brocades and very nice fabrics - among them a diamond twill in silk (in form of a cushion).

I took some really, really crappy phone pictures as a form of digital note-taking, but it was so dark that it was even hard to take a good picture of the little plaques explaining what each piece was... so, well, you can imagine that it's really not much more than a memory aid. Still a very nice thing to be able to do...