Meeting and eating with the Deventer Burgerscap

Not only did we paint this weekend (see previous post), we especially came to the museum to meet the Deventer Burgerscap. They are a city based re-enactment group like us, and situated as well around the year 1370. Their city of origin Deventer is even in the same Duchy of Gelre as Nimweghen (our city of origin) and both cities belong to the Hanze league. They are very nice people, taking re-enactment seriously, but also in a relaxed manner. We would not mind to do more events together with the Deventer Burgerscap in the future. More on the Deventer Burgerscap (and this day - 28 May 2011) can be found on their blog.

The families with children of the Deventer Burgerscap and St. Thomasguild sitting outside in '1370'.

The feast at the marketplace

Our day together ended with a medieval meal (or a feast). And did we eat at this feast? Well, strawberye' and 'taerten borbonnose', a hearty pie with champignons, smoked eel, several types of bread, sausages and cheeses. For those interested in recipies and the origin of some dishes:

Strayberye (manuscript Harl 279.1.123 - in 'Pleyn Delit' recipe no. 114) consists of thick almond milk, strawberries, sugar and spices, a few currants and a bit of rice flour.

Taerten Borbonnose (manuscript UB Gent 476, recipe no. 72 - in 'De keuken van de late middeleeuwen' - a Dutch cookbook) consists of sweetened cream, butter, egg-yolks and flour in puff pastry. This is a true medieval recipe - no amounts of the ingredients are given in the book!

Painting the pole lathe

Last weekend in the Historic Open Air Museum Eindhoven we started to decorate the large horizontal beam of our pole lathe (which bears the name of our guild) with medieval paint. We chose the colours of Nimweghen (black and red) for the letters and background, surrounded by a green "frame". Actually we only succeeded in painting the red and black parts, but the result is already great. We sure have an eyecatcher now.

Journeyman Bram is painting his pole lathe

Our egg tempera paint was made using the guidelines of Cennino DÁndrea Cennini in his 15th  century book Il libro dell' Arte. In short, egg yolk was rolled dry in the hands, the yolk sac opened with a sharp knife and the fresh yolks mixed with pigments which were ground with a bit of water to form a paste. Bone black was used as black and Venetian red for red, (Jeroen) 'Bosch' green for green pigment. All pigments were obtained from paint-mill 'de Kat'.

Nearly finished, the blank wood will later be painted green.

Sambocade

Last weekend, we were present at the Historic Open Air Museum Eindhoven (the Netherlands) where we did some medieval joinery and turning. But also cooking and eating is part of our daily medieval life. This time of year is especially good for making 'Sambocade', a medieval cheese tart with elderberry flowers, which are abundant available around May in the Netherlands. Elderberry flowers contain a sweet nectar which is transferred to the tart. The recipe originates from 'The Forme of Cury', a 14th century English recipe collection. Our version stems from the book 'Pleyn Delit' by C. Hieatt, B. Hosington and S. Butler (University of Toronto Press, 1996).

 Elderberry flowers

Sambocade

pastry to line a pie dish

400 g cottage cheese

1/2 cup of sugar

4 egg whites

1/2 a cup of elder blossoms

1 tablespoon rosewater (concentrated version available at a 'toko' or oriental food shop)

The elderberry flowers, rosewater and tart filling

It is best to shake the elder sprays first. I found that many miniature insects like the nectar as well. You probably do not want the extra protein in your filling. Leave elder sprays in a glass of water until the crust is prepared, Blossoms discolour slightly if prepared to far in advance. When you are ready to make the filling, carefully strip off the white blossoms, trying not to include the green stems. Blend together all the remaining ingredients. When the mixture is smooth, stir in the blossoms and pour filling in the prepared shell. bake about 45 minutes in a 175 degrees Celcius oven. Serve hot or cold (we did the last). 

 The finished sambocade.

Finishing the sambocade in the Historic Open Air Museum Eindhoven

Medieval toolchest: Hammers and mallets

The hammer and mallet are both tools for hitting /striking others instruments. The hammer has an iron head, while the mallet is made completely of wood.

The medieval hammer used in carpentry is most often seen as a claw hammer, sometimes reinforced with long metal strips along the handle. The hammer is used for striking nails and dowels into the wood. A specialised form is used for closing rivets (riveting hammer). Metal hammers are common finds, but it can be difficult to assign the tool to a specific trade, as also smiths, stone cutters, shipwrights, among others, used hammers. 

 

A 15th century claw-hammer. Image from 'Das Werkzeug des Schreiners und Drechslers' by Gunther Heine.

A clawhammer with a reinforced head and a wooden mallet from the Bedford Hours miniature 

'Building the arc of Noah', 1433, London, British museum, Ms. 18850.

A riveting hammer in the right panel of the Merode Altar by Robert Campin, Metroploitan Museum of Art, New York.

The iron head of our medieval clawhammer is made by Deagrad. The handle is homemade from ash and secured with an wooden wedge. Ash is often used for handles as it has some flexibility

The mallet is used to secure pegs (for instance for the pole lathe), hitting chisels and gouges, hitting the holdfast, wedges and benchdogs. Medieval mallets were constructed either as a square or round block attached to a handle and as (turned) cylinders in the length of the handle. 

The first type of mallet hits with the hard endgrain, and can be used with more force. Large versions of these hammers were used with wedges to split wood into planks or smaller pieces (see images below). A smaller square mallet is shown in another miniature below..Many hammers of this type with a round head are found in the miniature of Noah building the ark in the Bedford hours (see image above).  

A woodcutter (Virich Holzhacker) from the Mendelschen Hausbuch (around 1414) uses wedges and a large mallet to split wood.

 

Two monks are slitting wood with an axe and a large mallet. 12th century miniature from St. Gregorii Magni Moralia in Job. Dijon, City library hs. 170, fol. 5970.

 Eve uses a mallet and chisel and Adam a breast-auger. 

12th century miniature from Homelie de St. Basile.

The cylinder type of  mallet construction ensures that a chisel always is hit evenly with the mallet, whatever manner it is hold. However it hits with the long grain, which is more easily indented. Thus pictures often show these mallets with the cylinder hollowed out, i.e. the very worn out ones. This type is found for instance  in another image of the Mendelschen Hausbuch shown below.

 

A cylindrical mallet used by a medieval joiner (Peter Screiner). Mendelschen Hausbuch  around 1444.

 A 10th century wooden mallet found in the Coppergate deposit in York, UK (no. 8188). The head is willow with a hazel handle. (Image from C.A. Morris - Wood and woodworking in Anglo-Scandinavian and medieval York)

We have two types of mallets in our toolchest, a square one (oak hammer head with an ash handle), and two turned cylinders made of acacia. (I recently discovered that this is an exotic tree; the first acacia was planted in Europe in 1579 in Castle Doorwerth, the Netherlands, so we will have to replace these mallets in time with ones made of correct wood). The tools are finished with linseed oil.  

The footrest for the strycsitten

This is the final part of the making of a medieval strycsitten and deals with the construction of the footrest. The footrest is not strictly necessary, but is shown in many of the paintings (see my post on the strycsitten of 7 January 2011). It is also a useful piece of furniture in medieval times - it keeps your feet of the cold (stone) floor. Therefore, in my view, it forms an essential part of a medieval strycsitten.

The footrest is usually slightly longer than the strycsitten. The legs of the footrest fall inside the legs of the strycsitten (this means you have to mind where you place your feet if you stand on the footrest!). The footrest is a separate and movable piece of the strycsitten, i.e. when you change the position of the backrest, you move the footrest to the other side of the strycsitten as well. With this in mind, I made the plan of the footrest completely symmetrical as shown below with the form of the footrest legs.

Plan of the footrest legs. The form is more or less similar to the legs of my "Savonarola" X-chair (see next photo).

The savonarola chair: the legs have similar roundings.

The plank of the footrest was planed to the same thickness as the seating of the strycsitten and rounded off at the edges. The legs were roughly sawn using a band-saw and then finished by hand with a chisel. Also the tenon was cut out using a chisel. I used the tenons to mark the mortises in the footplank, which were cut out as well. The three legs were attached to the plank with two small (6 mm) dowels through each mortise and tenon joint.

Four legs of the footrest; one is a spare. The tenon is not yet cut out.

The still square footplank attached to the legs for testing the fit of the mortise and tenon joints.

The leg with the mortise and tenon joint.

The mortise and tenon joint shown from above.

The joint fixed with a dowel.

The complete footrest.

A footnote for the footrest:

Now, in modern times, the footrest proved to be a nuisance. The strycsitten is part of our dinner table seating and we kept stumbling against it. Besides, with our modern flooring we do not suffer from cold feet, so the functionality is lost as well. The footrest now occasionally appears in the living room to show the complete set.

Constructing the oak strycsitten

This post continues the tale of the making of the strycsitten. After the test with the pine model and carving the oak panels and 'traingle' supports I continued by making the frame of the strycsitten in European oak. This is rather straightforward work: oak beams are planed to their appropriate thickness; mortises are cut using a mortising tool and the corresponding tenons sawn by hand.

Using the mortising tool in the workshop

The next step is to cut the grooves for the support triangles and the panels. The main work here was done with a router table and finished by hand with chisel and router plane. Then the holes for the dowels (for the mortise and tenon joints) were drilled. These holes are slightly smaller (5.9 mm) than the dowels (6.0 mm) to provide a tight fit. Furthermore the dowel-hole is first drilled in the frame but without the tenon in it. The tenon dowel-hole in is drilled separately and slightly closer (~1 mm) to pull the two parts of the frame together (see image below).

When all dowel-holes were drilled, the panels and triangles were fitted in the grooves and everything was fixed by hammering in the dowels.The frame was then finished with three layers of linseed oil.

After the frame was completed the seating board had to be added.  The seating was made of two oak boards which were connected with a loose tongue and groove joint. As wood works, the loose tongue and groove joint allows the seating boards to expand to the middle. The seating boards were finished with linseed oil before they were fixed to the frame at one end with a dowel.

 In each corner a dowel was used to fix the seating board to the frame. 

This restricted the wood to expand to the outside, but allowed it to expand to the middle of the seating.

 The loose tongue and groove joint was wide enough to allow for expansion of the seating boards (small double arrow). There is also space around the middle style (shown by the two long arrows).

 

Next, the backrest of the strycsitten was made. The backrest consists of a square beam, which is chamfered at 45 degrees in two of the corners along the length of the beam. This removes the square edge which would otherwise point in your back. The large chamfer makes the backrest really comfortable to rest against. The backrest was secured to the arm parts of the backrest with two dowels. The completed backrest was finished with three layers of linseed oil before at was attached to the strycsitten.

 The completed backrest - the same size as our modern sofa. 

The hole for the turning point can be seen in the arm part of the backrest.

Detail of the backrest. Two dowels secure the parts of the backrest. 

Note that the chamfering is not done at the backside. 

Finally, the completed backrest was attached to the armrests of the strycsitten. I used a 12 mm wooden dowel with wooden buttons as the turning point for the backrest. An iron rod is often used for strycsittens as a turning point (e.g in the strycsitten of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam or the Loevesteijn replica). I did not want to use iron: it reacts with oak, I would have needed a blacksmith to make it, and a wooden is strong enough and can easily be replaced if necessary. The wooden buttons were made with a tenon cutter, the button-hole was drilled using a forstner bit and the button was rounded with a belt sander. Attaching the wooden buttons to the dowel was the only point in the construction where glue was used. However, I used a skin-based glue, which was also available to the medieval woodworker.

 Dowels used for securing the mortise and tenons, and the turning point dowel with the oak buttons.

 The turning point dowel attaching the backrest to the frame of the strycsitten.

The strycsitten itself was already finished early in February. Only one part remained to be done (which is also finished now): the footrest. However this will be the subject of another post. Two images of our completed strycsitten are shown below.

The completed strycsitten - with footrest.

Nürnberger Hausbücher

Perhaps this is already known for quit a while, but it was new(s) for me. When I was searching internet for  medieval miniatures with woodworking subjects and furniture items, I stumbled upon the complete "Hausbücher of the Mendelschen and Landauer Nürnberger Zwölfbrüderstiftungen. These books date from 1425 into the 1800's and depict the brothers applying their former trade at the time they died. The books are a great resource for any re-enactor, as they show all kinds of trades with their specific tools  at a clearly defined time period. For the Saint Thomasguild the medieval turner Lienhard Drechßel (image below) and joiners Karl Schreyner (right) and Peter Sreiner (left) of around 1425 are the most interesting, but also the  images of carpenters, sawyers, coopers and wheelwrights show parts of the woodworking trade.

The Hausbücher of the Nürnberger Zwölfbrüderstiftungen can be found at www.nuernberger-hausbuecher.de and are searchable on professions (e.g. joiner), occupation categories (e.g. woodworking), tools (e.g. axe), materials (e.g. wood), products (e.g. furniture) as well as the disease the craftsman died off (e.g. dementia). The site is mainly in German, but can be searched in English as well. The images in this post are derived from this great site.