I have just found out that there is a research magazine for graduate students - first issue came out in April 2011, and they are now looking for more submissions.

The magazine is called Chronika, is based at the University of Buffalo and aims to give grad students a place to publish. They are welcoming papers from all the US, submission can be made online.

If you want to check it out, go on to the Chronika page; they have a parent organisation called IEMA (Institute for European and Mediterranean Archaeology) that you can find here.

For all those of you who are still waiting for the shop to come up in English: Work on that is in progress. I'm sorry that you have to wait so long, but I'm doing my best to juggle all the projects and bookings and preparation work and behind-the-scenes stuff that I have to do as well.

I hope to have the English version up and running some time next week, unless unforeseen mishaps and stuff happen. The basics have to be set up to let the shop go bilingual, which requires some updates, but it's mostly the texts and some test runs lacking.

I know that it's totally annoying to wait for something to happen, and that something takes ages and ages due to no discernible reasons at all - and I am really sorry that I have become one of those folks who let others wait and wait. But it's just not always possible to do everything at once, or even in a timely fashion. There's a lot of things that clamour for attention, and that cause shifting priorities again and again, leading to some things being postponed. Since I have experienced this on myself, I have gained a whole new level of appreciation for things happening fast, or soon. And if you have done your own website hacking and script-tuning and text-translating... you will probably know that it can be obnoxiously tricky and very much disinclined to going smoothly.

Well. All this was just supposed to let you know that I have not forgotten you who cannot use the German shop, and that it will be up in English.

You will probably all know, or at least have heard of, the project in Guedelon, where a medieval castle is being re-built using materials and methods available in the 13th century.

Guedelon does seem to be a success, at least in terms of being well-known and visited. And now something similar-but-different is planned in Germany, called "Karolingische Klosterstadt" (Carolingian monastic city).

The project is to re-build the famous plan of St. Gallen, the idealistic layout and plan for a monastery. There's an official project website that does not offer very much yet, but there's one English pdf presenting the project idea - and some very interesting thoughts about how interpreters should be trained.

I have started this nice little project that is supposed to serve as a market stall sign one day. Wel, scratch the "little" - it's quite big. And I have only just started...


... embroidering.

I will keep you updated on progress - at the moment, basic maths say that I can do about 5 cm² in about ten to fifteen minutes. And I have not yet tried to calculate how long the full piece will take at that rate - but it will take a really amazing amount of time.

A few years ago, when I was sharing office space with physicists (a long and wonderful story), there was a website up on the Internet under something like "www.isitfriday.xxx"*.

When you went on that website, there was either a black window with a red "No" or a black window with a green "Yes" on it. That was it. Nothing more - and still we'd have a lot of fun checking if it was Friday yet.

Then, after a while, the site was no more. But after another while... there is a similar page now again.
Not as black as the first one... but just as delightfully simple, and nonsensical, and nice to look up for that Thank-God-It's-Friday moment. Provided it's Friday, of course.

So... is it Friday yet?

* I don't remember if it was org, or net, or whatever. And since that page is dead and gone, I do not care, and nor should you.

I have, for the first time in my life, joined a writing group. I was never a part of a study group, and I have never been part of a writing group if you don't count the collaboration things on papers and suchlike, and it's a new and somehow exciting experience.

And it already did work as in "helped me to tackle some part of DustyOldBookproject that I had been procrastinating on for far too long. Alas, I have not yet managed to write all of it, and I will probably not do so until the next check-in on Friday, because I have found that I need to do some more research on one bit of it that I found I needed to include while writing it. So all as usual.

I also found out, during all that reading and writing and picking up other bits and pieces for the same project that there is virtually nothing on the subject of medieval hair and hairstyles. Yes, there are popular science articles and "overview books" about hairstyles since the beginning of mankind to today, but they are about as useful for reconstructing possible hairdos of the Middle Ages as a costume history overview book is for reconstructing individual dresses. And then there are various "papers" of dubious quality that do not help at all (and are usually not about medieval times anyways) - and finally there's some writings that are so heavily into mysticism and symbolism and psychological stuff that may or may not have been connected to hair in the Middle Ages that they are totally non-useful for any practical aspects as well.

Which means that there is actually another field of study that has even less, source-wise, for reconstructing possible historical reality than garments. Gah.

Of course my secret hope is that you, oh readers, will now prove me totally wrong and tell me that there is this list of brilliant books about medieval haircare and medieval hairdos out there that I was totally too stupid to find.

I'm hoping very much, in this case, that I was totally too stupid to find it.

Really.

Snooping around on the message boards of livinghistory.co.uk, I found info about a conference on European Painted Cloths C14th-C21st (London, 15-16 Jun 2012).


The deadlines for the call for papers are already gone by, but the conference itself might be of interest. At the very least, it's a topic not encountered so very often, and I'm happy to see it gets looked at a bit more!

European Painted Cloths C14th-C21st
Pageantry, Ceremony, Theatre and the Domestic Interior

This two day conference will explore the use of painted cloths in religious ceremony, pageantry, domestic interiors and scenic art. It will focus on their change of context and significance from the
fourteenth to the twenty-first century exploring their different function, materials, and method of creation.

The potential for large sizes, portability, and versatility for religious objects including banners, hangings, altarpieces, and palls was the impetus for the emergence of fabrics as a painting support in Western art in the Middle Ages. The demand for elaborate altarpieces, church furnishings, and liturgical objects increased in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries due to changes to liturgical practice and an upsurge of religious fervour. The functionality of the works explains the survival of relatively few examples. Were paintings on fabric envisaged as ephemeral objects? There is evidence to the contrary. One of the most common forms of interior decoration for centuries, painted cloths have received less attention from art historians and historians than they deserve in part due to their poor survival. Often regarded as cheap substitutes for those who could not afford tapestries, their function has been oversimplified and their importance in  providing imagery as well as literary subjects has been underrated.

Scenic backcloths were once commissioned for court functions, part of an elaborate display of royal power and magnificence, such as the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The same methods and materials continued to be used for theatrical cloths. The nineteenth and twentieth century saw a
resurgence in interest in the art form, as established artists, among them Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Picasso and later Piper, Hockney and Caulfield, took up commissions for the theatre and ballet.

The conference, to be held at The Courtauld Institute of Art, will be run in collaboration with the Victoria & Albert Museum. Presentations by four keynote speakers will reflect the aim of the conference to bring together and foster interdisciplinary research between art and interiors historians, paintings and textile conservators.
Organised by Christina Young (The Courtauld Institute of Art) and
Nicola Costaras (Victoria & Albert Museum)