The most recent magna-mopus...

 I was first introduced to the concept of a magnum opus in the early 70s through an Asterix book ('The Roman Agent', and a big dumb character called Magnumopus) and needless to say this contributed to a) my misunderstanding of the term for quite a few years and b) my underlying feeling that a magnum opus is in some way a Big Dumb Thing, reinforced by my family joking about fairly important things they'd created; so a magna-mopus became (for us) a thing that was really quite special and you'd spent a lot of time on but didn't want to blow your own trumpet so belittled it by calling it such.

 

I find that I create one of those bite-off-more-than-you-can-chew projects about once a year and for a month or two or four focus on it fairly exclusively - I think 'obsessive' is *such* a strong term, but I really don't get much else done LOL.

You may have noticed from earlier posts that I have an altar set up in my tent (appropriate to a noblewoman - one has to have a *place* to say one's devotionals 😉)  The silk mat on the altar, which I got 2nd (?) hand in the 1990s, perished and needed replacing... so I launched into a Major Project.

There are quite a few examples of beaded textiles from our period, mostly Sicilian and German (which were influential in Cyprus at that time due to the interference of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in Cypriot affairs), so I cast my eye over the gloves, altar frontals, shoes, capes, bags etcetera and then rummaged though my bead collection to see what I had.

(Sources below)

Being a pensioner AND a re-enactor means a lot of op-shopping - and if I see a necklace or bracelet of freshwater pearls (well, white-ish ones and not ridiculously large) I buy them - often  for less than $10 😄  A lot of them end up on our costumes (and the tiny ones on veils) but I found I actually had rather an embarrassingly large amount of them and so the new mat was planned around those.  Because it's displayed horizontally (i.e. flat, not hanging) I decided not to go for a terribly complicated design and settled on fairly generic concentric circles and star-shapes, which can be seen in the art of the period and place (Roman Christian, Byzantine, and Islamic). I tend to be a rather hasty person and when beading and this translates into not paying attention to stitch tension which results in the fabric puckering and the piece of work shrinking overall somewhat, so I decided to use a heavy woolen felt as the base; I sketched the basic design on with 6B pencil... and then the beading began.

It's not a complicated task, but very time-consuming - I started in Mid-September 2024 and finally finished it in mid-February 2025... granted, I was doing other things during that period and it became my go-to project - do a little every day, and more if I couldn't find anything else to do.

Once the beadwork on the mat was finished I sewed a coarse linen backing onto it to cover (and protect) the stitches and then made a beaded fringe for it - fringes appear to have been an important part of ecclesiastical decoration and I wanted something to bring it forward over the edge of the table as it didn't look like it was sitting right and there was an unsightly gap and fuss fuss fuss 😉  The whole thing ended up weighing 1043g (!)

 

In the end I'm fairly happy with the overall result, and hopefully the mat will last as long as its predecessor 😉

 

 

Sources:

(if you're interested in medieval beadwork these sites are rather good 😊)

Red silk glove, Palermo, 1220 Vienna, was made for the coronation of Emperor Frederick II in the royal workshops of Palermo. Sicily came under Fatimid rule in the tenth century and although the Fatimids lost control of the island in the twelfth century, the influence of Fatimid art is evident in Sicily and southern Italy.  Kaiserliche Schatzkammer, Vienna, Austria, acc. no. WS XIII 11, 2013/8033.

https://trc-leiden.nl/trc-needles/individual-textiles-and-textile-types/secular-ceremonies-and-rituals/imperial-gloves-of-the-holy-roman-empire

An orphrey is an ornamental stripe or border, especially one on an ecclesiastical vestment such as a chasuble; this one is dates 1200-1224 and is German.
https://medievalbeads.com/13th-century-orphrey/
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O362714/embroidery

13th century Altar frontal, Germany - the gold and seed pearls are missing, presumably ‘re-cycled’…
https://medievalbeads.com/13th-century-altar-frontal/
 

 

 

A new candlestick :-) OR 'fake it 'til you make it' OR 'It's only dodgy if it doesn't *look* period...'

 I wasn't terribly happy with the brass candlestick I've had since 2015 for my altar table - it was adequate but not terribly period and the more I updated other things in my display, the more it seemed lacking.  Hunting around online and rummaging through op-shops were equally fruitless - it looked like unless I wanted to shell out a phenomenal amount of money for the Real Thing, I was going to have to make it myself...

Casting brass is a bit beyond me - I could carve a wax image and then shell out another phenomenal amount of money for someone to cast it for me, or I could use the grey between the ears and do a bit of research and see what other forms of candlestick were around in the place and period I'm reenacting, that might be a bit more within my means and capabilities.

It turns out that a ceramic one, Persian-style, would fit the bill; again, I don't have a potter's wheel or kiln but I *have* worked with clay (a bit) and figured that as the piece only needs to hold an unlit candle and get looked at (and look reasonably legitimate...) I should be able to manage.  I have a bee in my bonnet about making replicas - to me, they need to be exact copies of the original and I know I'm not going to get it exact and it'll bug me forever, so I prefer taking a couple of examples and making something in-between.  I ended up choosing two fairly basic and simple candlesticks as models; one from 12th-13th century Persian which had interesting (and decidedly do-able) crenelations around the top, and one from Iran (same period) which had a much simpler top (where the candle goes).

 

I've worked with air-dry clay before - it's an interesting mixture of  papier-mâché, clay, and some kind of polymer that (like the Force) binds it all together.  I find that it's a lot harder that real clay to join bits together (scoring and wetting it don't really do much) and the surface tends to dry out and crack a little within half an hour so Much Planning must occur before the packet is even opened; however, the end result is pretty sturdy and so it's fit for this purpose.

Having worked out roughly how big I wanted the candlestick, I rolled out the air-dry clay on a board and started stamping out the circles in the crenelation before I noticed that the clay I was stamping out was sticking to the board... and so, it turned out, was the rest of it >.<  Scrape up clay into lump, say rude words, massage clay, spread out paper, roll clay out again and do the stamping; I figured if it stuck to the paper then I could peel/wash it off later.  It actually worked quite well and the paper enabled me to use sticky tape when I shaped the flat bit into a cylinder for the body of the candlestick 😊  I cut out a bit of paper roughly the size of the opening of the cylinder and used it as a template to make the top, and made a ring to hold the candle, and let everything dry.

It shrunk a bit, of course... which I hadn't taken into consideration, and the 'join' at the back now didn't... and the damn top was too big... but fortunately the clay is easy to sand so I reshaped things and tidied up the crenelations (which had little paper fibres or something hairy sticking out of them 😬) and fit it together and glued it with Shoe Glue.  It did look a little dog's-breakfast-y so I rummaged around in the workshop and found a venerable half-used bag of Spak-filla (plastering compound) and did some serious patching, and in the end I was pretty happy that it looked acceptable.  The original pieces I was using as models had a bit of engraving on them and I cowardly decided to go with the easier version: just a couple of rings around the body and a bit of accentuation around the crenelations - I have a tiny screwdriver sharpened up as a chisel for this sort of thing 😉.

I let it dry overnight (I need to mention here that I live in Australia and at the moment our days are getting up to 34º-37º and overnight it's about 28º - that's about 82ºF for my American friends) and then the next day set about 'glazing' it.

The glaze is acrylic varnish tinted with acrylic paint, and I've used the method before reasonably successfully on other projects; the varnish is milky in its liquid form (dries clear) and that makes getting the colour right a bit difficult - at least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it LOL; it bugs me that I didn't get it quite blue enough, but the turquoise is quite acceptable, really...  I painted a layer on, then poured (gently, carefully) - and then spent the next 10 minutes wiping drips off the bottom and patching bits that were still white (although you do see that in extant pieces).

(The piece is sitting on the varnish can, on a cake-cooling rack, above an aluminium baking dish, on a very dilapidated but much-loved Lazy Susan (turntable).

 

Clean up, wash brushes, let dry, time for coffee and lunch.

While I was waiting for it to dry I realised that the candle I'd used with the old brass candlestick was too thick to use with this one, so set about remaking it - made a mould by rolling up a sheet of plastic (it had been an old folder cover) and wrapping it in tape so it didn't unroll, ran a wick (cotton cord) through it (anchored at the top with blu-tack, covered in more tape, just in case) and a bamboo skewer at the base, and then suspended it over the sink by every damn S-hook I could find in the kitchen so I could pour the melted wax into it; meanwhile I pulled the old candle apart and melted it on the stove - it was quite easy to pull apart because back in 2015 I'd had the good sense to make a Very Period dipped candle 😉.

 

The candle worked out okay (a bit of trimming and tidying up here and there) although I royally cocked up the base measurement and had to shave it severely before it'd fit in the candlestick... but in the end I'm pretty happy with the result and it looks a lot better than the old brass one 😊.

(At the time of the photo the candle was not exactly straight, thanks to poor workmanship and summer heat, but I've fixed that... I think...).

Arty-Farty

 I thought I'd also post up some pics of our 'pretty' stuff, showcasing our artwork and so forth :-)

...And now I just need to keep on top of it and *keep posting* 😅

Happy New Year... I discovered Instagram... 😬

 Once again I have been remiss in making regular posts (read: slack, life got in the way, and Christmas >.<).  I ended up (finally) making an Instagram account (mimka369) which of course I then flooded with reenactment stuff rather than personal stuff LOL, as I was inspired to make up pithy, *square* little pics describing the irks and quirks of our hobby... which I'll now share here (occasionally... when I remember to >.<)

The 'Tips'n'Tricks' ones are directed probably more towards reenactors, as most of my friends/followers indulge in the same hobby I do, but I guess they'll let non-reenactors see that it's not all glamour LOL

 

 

There's also a collection of 'Arty-Farty' offerings, but I'll make that the next post ;-)