Medieval eating and serving utensils - thrift store edition

Unlike when I started playing in the SCA, an later in the Swedish group Nordrike, in the 1990s (and now I am back again in the SCA), you can nowadays get replicas of virtually any type of plate, glass, pot, dish etc that you want, from different centuries and localities. 

But that was not the case when I started, and I am conditioned by my early experience into looking for suitable things at thrift stores. Everything in these photos is from thrift stores. Most of it, including the table cloth, from Mölndals secondhand. The glasses are painted by me, inspired by Italian 14th century glasses - I have a blog post about them with sources and close-ups here. 

We're a family of five, so of course we need more stuff than one person. I am also fond of cooking in camp, which means that you need bowls for preparation and serving. My pots and pans are not in this photo, they're in the basement. 

The wooden plates I've had since we were only a family of four, probably 20 years now. Two of the dark ones are broken, but luckily I still have five left. I have also broken two of the matching glasses, so I will have to paint more.

Photos from slightly different angles:

I have replicas too, glass, and some pottery, and my beloved cooking pot from Krohns Krukmakeri. But lots of stuff is just things that look medieval (or renaissance) enough. 

The Water Elf photos

Hubby took lots of photos, and I am very happy with almost all of them. Since I don't want to bore you I won't post ALL. Just too many ;)

The cloak that I am wearing in some of the photos is my husband's wool cloak that I made over a decade ago. The belt is a piece of trim, that I beaded last week. And the gown is actually a 1930s gown from rayon satin, that I also made, and beaded. I made it with the photoshoot in mind, but I thought that it would be nice to make something that you can use for other purposes too. And this satin just screamed to me that it needed to be a gown with the skirt cut on the bias.

I felt like a very pretty water elf - and with the sword, like the Lady of the Lake.

This is how the gown looks when not used in a fantasy setting:

And in this video, which I haev shown on the blog's facebook page, you can see why I love a bias cut gown - the way the fabric moves is amazing. Also, the gown has no zipper or buttons, the bias makes it elastic enough to get into anyway.

Going fantasy again: wire crowns

 So, I continue with my fantasy costuming. This flare of interest in fantasy outfits comes from when I "needed" a fire themed crown for an Elf king in August. So I thought: why not try making oen from aluminum wire and glass beads, the latter I have more than enough of.

So I made this crown:

And, which is not uncommon, I got really inspired and ordered lots more wire in different colours.

And I made a earth element/forest crown:

Both these have braided wire as foundation, but for the water crown I used another technique, that I have use previously for circlets to wear with veils - though that was more than 15 years ago.

Here you have two rings of thicker wire, and use thinner wire to weave beads between the two thicker ones. The aluminum wire is a little soft and bendy for this, but it is okay, especially if you add other things to teh circlet, as I did.

Finished:

I am working on an Air crown too, but got sidetracked by making a water gown, so that I could have a photoshoot last weekend, when Rickard and I had rented a cabin by a lake.It is easier to take water themed photos with a lake at hand ;)

This is the beginning of the air crown - I am working with clear, and iridescent glass beads to get a light and airy feeling.