To my unending delight, I've received a message yesterday evening... the travelling merchants have been found!

A friend hunted them down for me, with help of the search engine "ecosia": she found an image in the same style, searched for the name connected with it (Girart de Roussillon), landed on pinterest and found the image with a link to the manuscript there. Thank you so much!

It's Codex 2549 in the Austrian National Library, and it's available as a digital image. See it in all its glory here. According to the explanation, it shows Girart, his wife, and two companions, together with two pack animals. Seems it's not a merchant after all, that guy - he was a count, instead. The original person lived in the 9th century, but became star of a chanson de geste later in the Middle Ages - the Roman de Girart de Roussillon.

So... what do we learn from this?

A: Search engines are not all alike, nor are the methods of the people using them.
B: It never hurts to ask for help. I should do more of that.
C: Illuminations stand in context with the text, and it's really a smart idea to check that context. It does make a difference whether it's a travelling count or whether it's merchants... so I'd like to find out more about that. (Which means deciphering the text on the page, and deciphering the Old French, so probably nothing that will be done just now. But hooray, now I can!)

I've done some more evening mini painting - it's a nice change to doom-scrolling, and staring at smaller or larger screens. Also every evening of mini painting brings us closer to the day when we can actually start playing the game... (Yes, I know that it's theoretically possible to play the game before the minis are painted. Or with just some of them done and some not. But, ah, they just look soooo much better when painted. And to be fair, it's not as if we have nothing else to do in the evenings. There's mini painting, for instance!)

There's some figures that are just for one of the sub-stories, but most of them will come into play over and over again. Like the villagers - four of these guys, all looking the same. We've decided to also paint them the same, and not do different colour clothes for each.



They were the first batch of pieces from that game. They are finished now, and already have their first glossy coat of varnish.



The photo is a little blurry - these are quite hard to take decent photos of! The green things they are mounted on are bottle caps, serving as a handle.

The next guys I'm working on are the shadows - basically the main baddies that turn up again and again, and make everything worse.



These are about half done, they need some cleaning up of spills of the pink/purple, and some shades and highlights, and some details.

And then there's the main baddie for that story section, and some thugs with knives, and an inn-keeper, and another guy, and the four virtues... and of course Solomon Kane himself. Who has some very odd things on his sculpt, and it's not so easy to figure out what belongs to which garment, and how they might look best!

There's a picture in my personal image database that has irked me for ages now. It's from a popular science book about the Middle Ages:

Hägermann, Dieter: Das Mittelalter. Die Welt der Bauern, Bürger, Ritter und Mönche. RM Buch und Medien, 2001.

There are plenty of illustrations in that book, and some of them state where they are from (or at least roughly), some of them don't. Of course, I'm talking here about one from the latter category. I've been looking for that image ever since I've seen it in the book, but to no avail - but maybe someone of you has?

Here it is:

[caption id="attachment_6015" align="alignnone" width="412"] From Hägermann, Dieter, p. 154. The description says "Travelling merchants with pack animals. They exchange information. French book illustration, 1448."


This might have been a marginal illustration somewhere, as it has been cut out from the background; some of the marginal images from the Luttrell Psalter have been treated similarly for the book. It might be a cut-out part from a "proper" image, too, though - the style somehow looks not so marginal to me. But then, I'm no expert on illuminations. I'd just really, really like to know where this comes from, so I can cite it properly and learn about the context and maybe see if there's more like it in the same manuscript - because it's one of the rare images where you have a woman merchant/traveller among the group, and I find that wonderful and fascinating.

So. Have you seen these merchants, by chance? Or do you know any similar pictures of travelling merchants that include women? Please let me know!

Update: They have been found. You can read about who did it, and where they are from, here.

Just in case you wondered about yesterday's blog silence - our DSL was cut.

Literally.



Thankfully, the issue was fixed a few minutes ago - because I have found that while it's theoretically possible to go into the 'Net via my phone, it is rather slow, sketchy and tedious.

Now I can get some actual work done again! Amazing how many things are possible only with an Internet connection...

 

Another week has flown by, and I'm half happy that it's Friday (yay weekend!) and half unhappy (but... but... I wanted to get more done this week!). It's nice and sunny outside at the moment, so the happy half is much louder right now as well.

Speaking of nice and sunny, there's something hanging in the sun here, and it is seeing some use:



These are "wild bee hotels" - ceramic blocks with smooth round holes in them, deep enough for wild bees to make their nests in there. They hang in front of our winter garden, where they get plenty of sun (warmth is important for the brood), and we're happy to see that they are all getting some attention from the wild bees. Their season has only started a bit ago, so we're hoping to see much more action around here during the summer.

Our placing the hotels is not completely altruistic, by the way. These small solitary bees are excellent pollinators, and we have a few fruit trees in the garden that I definitely want to see well-visited when they are in bloom. Which is around... now, for most of them. So go little bees!

The Early Textiles Study Group has opened their Call for Papers for the next conference, which is planned for Manchester on September 9-11. In case in-person is not possible, it will be held virtually.

The title is ‘Legacy: textile studies, the past informing the present’. The ETSG is thus looking for papers that explore any aspect of the legacies of the study of early textiles. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Pioneers in the study and reconstruction of early textiles,
• Collections, their histories and their futures,
• Fresh insights gained by applying new methodologies to old collections and archives.

The CfP is open until June 1st.



Definitely virtually, and taking place this Saturday, is the next EXARC textile chat. As usual, you can find it on their Discord server, and it will start at 15:00 CET. This month, the topic is embroidery.

In case you're looking for something to watch, Alexandra Makin of the Cuthbert Project (yes, that one with the lovely embroidery silk threads that I was involved in) has started a YouTube channel, and she's already put three videos into it - two of which are about the Cuthbert maniple.

You can find her channel here. Enjoy!