Ten years (and a day) ago...

...I defended my PhD dissertation Kläderna och människan i medeltidens Sverige och Norge (clothing and the individual in medieval Sweden and Norway).

It is in Swedish and apart from an article in the 2013 issue of Medieval Clothing & Textiles called "Clothing and textile materials in medieval Sweden and Norway" I haven't published about this in English. But there's at least an 18 page summary in English. And you can download the whole thing for free here.

So, I probably should celebrate this in some way, but I am too tired from teaching a lot this week and have more work to do, so it is likely that it will be celebrated the way it was concieved: with lots of tea and work ;)

Gratitious photo of yours truly in costume, just beacuse I can:

More 13th century men's underpants

For a person who doesn't wear them I write many posts about braies  :)
It's just that you get so happy when you find more images. And i found this nice 13th century statue in the medieval museum in Bologna:

I've also collected some more 13th and early 14th century braies images from the internet:

The Westminster psalter, showing St. Christopher carrying Jesus over a river. Second quarter of the 13th century

Link to the manuscript at British Library

A 13th century bestiary

British Library Royal MS 12 F XIII 

 These are dated to the first half of the 14th century: The Smithfield Decretetals

Link to the manuscript at British Library

Previous Posts with braies: here and here.

My husband's braies (and the rest of the outfit, scroll down)

I have many more, but now I have to put my youngest daughter in bed. And we can count on there being more posts about braies later.

Gifts for the King and Queen of Æthelmarc

Last weekend the new king and Queen of Æthelmarc. Marcus and Margarite were crowned and the baron of Gotvik and I sent gifts to them. Why, you may ask, sicnce there are no particlular reasons why a Swedish SCA barony should send gifts to an American SCA Kingdom. However, this wasa special case, since Marcus originally is Swedish. Furthermore, Lord Ho-Chi from Gotvik is Sir Marcus' squire and had decided to fly over as a surprise for him. Since he was there could just as well send greetings from us, and some gifts. So I made these:

The purse is made from the same silk as mine and Måns' gowns for our investiture. It is lined with green silk and the embroidery, tassels and drawstrings are made from yellow and blue silk yarn. The blue is probably a modern dye, but the yellow has been dyed with onion peels by me and my friend Ragnhild. The draw strings are finger lucet.

In the bag was two linen napkins with drawn thread edging and embroidery in silk. The yellow is from the same dye bath with onion peels and the pink is cichineal, also dyed by me and Ragnhild, while the blue was dyed by baroness Felicitas Schwarzenbergin (founding baroness of Gotvik).

Gifts are an important part of SCA culture, but I want the gifts that I give to be both useful and period appropriate, which unfortunately isn't always the case. Lightweight is also an issue when you're flying, so these fit perfectly. The bag is c 22 cm at its widest point and could work for both 13th, 14th and 15th century.

I also wrote a letter on parchment, with a wax seal, but forgot to take photos of that. However, Ho-Chi took some, so I can get a photo when he comes back to Sweden.

14th century boxes made from wood and ivory in the medieval museum of Bologna

Not only are these ivory boxes very beautiful in themselves, but they also have some lovely carvings of men and women in fashionable dress.

Boxes from the middle of the 14th century. I am very fond of the women's capes reaching to just below the waist, which can be seen in manusripts from the same time and region.

These are from a late 14th century manuscript of the Quest of the Holy Grail, made in Lombardy:

La quete du Saint Graal de Gautier Map

There were to very similar hexagonal boxes from the middle of the 14th century too:

And these, from the end of the 14th century, or beginning of the 15th:

More of the nice mid-length capes.

Some 9th to 13th century ivory carvings from the Museo Civico Medievale in Bologna

On Saturday Lena and I went to the medeival museum, which was just around the corner from where I stayed. I don't know what I expected, but not this absolute awesomeness. So many things: a pair of chopines, beautiful 16th century glassware, cool stone carvings, gorgeous illuminated manuscripts, and some fun curiosa too.

In this post I will show you some of the carved ivory objects from the Middle Ages. Some of them are well known and have been reproduced in books on medieval craft, but not all.

Ivories can be good sources to clothing, even if they're monochrome, because the three-dimensional quality makes it possibel to see folds and wrinkles better. Especially for, say the 11th and 12th cnetury, that is improtant, because otherwise one could mistake the lines at wrists and ankles for stripes, insted of folds, or scrunched up fabric.

Byzantine ivory box 9th-12th century:

10th century

12th century:

13th century:

"Best of" Basilica di San Pietro

After the conference a lot of us had lunch together and then Lena Dahren, who's a Swedis expert on renaissance lace, and I went to the Basilica di San Pietro. It's a huge cathedral, with a crypt from the 12th century and even older roots. There are excavations being made under the church and you can actually go in there and look at them, from the crypt. We had a very nice archaeologist who showed us around.

This beautiful terracotta sculpture by Alfonso Lombardi, from the 1520s is found just to the right of the entrance.

Photo from wikipedia.

As you can see most of the sculptures wear allegorical dress. Except for the man in the left, who I took many photos of:

It's such a find! You can see all the details of this artisan's dress: he's wearing a coat with stand up collar made in one with the main body parts and shoulder wings, buttoned with a few, large buttons. Under it he's wearing a pleated shirt with a low neckline. If it's the shirt sleeves we see, or separate sleeves fastened under the shoulder wings we cannot know. His cap is probably made from felted wool and shoes reaching to his ankles.

The actual church is mainly baroque, which I'm not that interested in, so we went down into the crypt after photographing the terracotta sculpture.

Here ornaments from the 12th century were hung on one of the walls:

There were also relics - these are from the protmartyrs Vitalis and Agricola, who according to legend died in Bologna in the early 4th century. 

This is one of the amazing thing with being in Italy - there are so many layers of history, going back so far.

The following images are from inside the excavations - we were shown teh different layers, starting with a Roman road (this was were the Forum was), a 6th century remnant of a church, a 12th century pillar, and then some 16th century walls, all in the same place.

Roman bricks, with footprints of dogs :)

A late 14th century dress ornament found in the excavations. Th earcehologist thought that he was wearing armour because of the roundels, but I see a metal plaque belt, buttons, and a hood with metal ornaments, i.e bezants.

There were parts of a 16th century fresco underground too - this shows a rather nice detail of the shoulder of a woman's jacket.

After walking into a low, narrow tunnel we also got to see an ossuary.