Making a Birka-style oil lamp

After working with the wild clay I harvested previously, I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t very good clay. It just wasn’t plastic enough for me to work into shape well; it cracked rather than bending. While I did come across a video about enhancing poor quality clay based on a translation (of a translation) of a method described in The Secret of Secrets by Al-Razi, I decided to do what it seems like most wild clay potters recommend – I went out and found some better clay.

When I was in elementary school, I would dig for pale grey clay in the creek in my babysitter’s backyard, and I remember being able to shape this clay into little pots without further processing. While I’m sure I’m overstating the quality of this wild clay, these vague memories guided me in my search along the creek behind my house. After wandering along it for a while, I found a patch of silty grey earth, closer to the streambed than what I had previously harvested. I found that I could form this into a snake and then (gently) a loop, which suggested that this clay might be more workable than what I had harvested before.

I collected some and again used the wet processing method to remove impurities. I pulled A LOT of sand out of this clay, which I dried and kept to use as temper (yes, I took the sand out of the clay and then put it back in later).

Birka oil lamp (Historiska museet, Sweden, item number 270759_HST), photograph by Gabriel Hildebrand (CC BY 4.0)

To compare the two clays, I made a tiny pinch pot bowl (to hold little bits and bobs for displays) and an oil lamp inspired by one found in Birka out of both clays. I was able to coax the red clay into a tiny bowl using the pinch pot method, but the oil lamp was too large for that; I had to use a slab construction method to get it together, and it cracked pretty badly while drying. In contrast, the grey clay was very easy to work, even after adding sand. I was able to make the walls of the tiny bowl much thinner than I could with the red clay, and I was able to form the outside of the oil lamp as a pinch pot. For both oil lamps, I formed the outside and the center “post” separately, then allowed them to dry to leather hard and used the score-and-slip method to join them. This made it much easier for me to smooth the inner walls of the lamps!

Tiny bowls made from my wild grey (left) and red (right) clay before firing. I had to leave the walls of the red clay bowl much thicker, and even then, some small cracks formed!

Birka-inspired oil lamps from my previously-harvested and processed red clay (left) and my new grey clay (right) before firing. Just drying caused several cracks to form in the red clay lamp.

I let the bowls and lamps dry for about two weeks, then pit-fired them by burning wood to coals on top of them for about two hours, then sealing the hole (with an old grill lid and dirt) and letting them slowly cool overnight. I fully expected both red clay pieces to break, but the tiny bowl survived the firing process! Both grey clay pieces came through the firing intact (which I had hoped for, but didn’t necessarily expect). Large pieces of the red clay lamp broke off, but not necessarily in the way I expected; the cracks on the inside didn’t seem to lead to fracturing. Clay is a strange beast!

Oil lamps and tiny bowls post-firing. The ones on the left are the grey clay; the ones on the right are the red clay. Three out of four ain’t bad!

To finish the surviving oil lamp, I gave the outside a coating of beeswax by heating the lamp in the oven to warm it and painting melted wax onto it. I doubt this was done to the extant example; I did this because I have used unsealed clay lamps with liquid fuel oil and noticed some oil weeping through the pores of the clay. The wax may or may not help with that, but it does give it a nice hint of shine! Just in case, though, I also found a flat rock to put it on.

I sewed a tubular linen wick and placed it over the center post, then filled the lamp with melted shortening. I hope to replace that fuel with tallow at some point, but I’ll need to find a butcher who can provide the appropriate fat to render down. Tallow and shortening have similar melting points, though, so it’s not far off for initial experimentation!

Dyeing wool with beard lichen and walnut hulls

For the Kingdom of Atlantia Royal Forestry Guild‘s group display at Kingdom Arts and Sciences Festival, I thought it would be fun to try dyeing some wool with foraged dyestuffs.

The Seek app thinks this is Bristly Beard Lichen (Usnea hirta) – I’m not sure if the species is correct, but I think it’s got the right genus!

The first thing I tried was using Usnea (beard lichen). There’s a fair amount growing on some of the trees at the park where I walk my dog, but to try to minimize harm, I collected lichens when they were blown off the trees by storms.

I found a very informative video by Wildcraft Dyeing on dyeing with Usnea, and I largely followed the method described. I did scale everything down a bit, though – for my first attempt, I used 0.5 grams of merino wool thread and 1.5 grams of rinsed and dried lichen (3x WoF). Simmering the lichen (in a paper tea bag) in a double boiler for an hour resulted in what looked (to me at least) like a relatively weak dyebath, so I left the tea bag of lichen in the dyebath while I simmered my wool in it for another hour. The resulting color was a pale yellow – I thought the color was lovely, but it doesn’t seem to match the results in the video. It could be a species difference, or it could be that the method doesn’t scale down to the degree that I attempted (I know that’s a thing in baking, but I’m not sure about dyeing).

The colors aren’t coming through perfectly here, but hopefully it gives an idea of the colors! The dyed wool is sewn down with undyed wool from the same lot.

Since I was curious (and I had more lichen), I tried doubling the amount of lichen for the same amount of thread (3 grams of lichen for 0.5 grams of thread, or 6x WoF) and repeated the process. The result was also yellow, but a little darker and with a little of the brown tone I was expecting. It’d take a lot of lichen to dye a full skein at that ratio, though!

Thinking about browns made me curious about what walnut hull dye would do with wool. I’d made some to stain leather previously, and I decided to try some of the leftover dye on wool. I’d read that an alum mordant could result in more gold tones, and that an iron (ferrous sulfate) post-bath would darken the color, so I decided to try several different combination – no mordant/no modifier, no mordant/iron post-bath, alum mordant/no modifier, alum mordant/iron post-bath. I purchased some ferrous sulfate from Walnut Farm Designs (since they’re not so far up the road, and I could buy just a little to play with).

For the mordant tests, I soaked 4 yards (~ 1 gram) of merino wool thread in warm water with 0.1 – 0.2 grams (10-20% WoF) of alum for one hour. I soaked the same amount of thread in warm water without alum for the no-mordant treatment, then placed both in separate glass jars of walnut dye that I warmed for 1 hour. I then rinsed the threads cut them in half, and hung half of each up to dry. The other half of each thread was soaked in a warm ferrous sulfate solution (approximately 5% WoF) for 1 hour, then rinsed and hung to dry. The differences in colors were very interesting!

I think my favorite is the wool mordanted with alum, but not treated with iron – as promised, there are some warm gold tones that I really like! I was also surprised (although maybe I shouldn’t have been) with what a difference the alum made to the depth of color.

Overall, this was a fun way to dip my toes into natural dyes! I hope to do some ammonia fermentation of lichen in the future; it seems like that can be a way to get some really wild colors (no pun intended!).

A Maciejowski Bible-inspired pilgrim’s bag

Detail from fol. 15v of the Maciejowski Bible

Like many folks who like to dress up in medieval clothing, it seems, I really like the look of the trapezoidal pilgrim bags seen on fols. 10v and 15v of the Maciejowski Bible (New York, the Morgan Library and Museum, MS M.638). Something about the shape and the tassels just feels so… medieval. No, I can’t be more specific; the vibes are just excellent!

To make a version of this scrip, I followed a method of construction by Coblaith Muimnech. Or, I think I did to a certain extent, at least! The thing that attracted me to this method is that the strap ends are stitched into the seam holding the front flap of the bag to the back body panel. This tucks the strap ends away nicely, instead of stitching them to the back of the bag (which I’ve personally never managed to do as cleanly as I would like!).

The pieces of the outer shell, before sewing the sides closed.

I made the bag out of red wool, with a blue linen lining. These colors feel a bit opulent for a pilgrim’s scrip, but the maidservant in the Maciejowski Bible image above is carrying a red satchel. To be more honest, though, I wanted to make the bag with fabrics I had on hand, and I had red wool and blue linen (as well as matching threads) on hand!

I made the strap from a tube of the red wool, which made the seam between the flap and body of the bag a bit bulky, but not unmanageably so – a woven strap would likely play more nicely with this construction method. I cut the linen lining to the same shape as the wool bag, but in one piece, so there would not be a seam at the bottom of the lining or between the back and the flap of the lining. Removing the flap seam meant I wasn’t adding more bulk to that part of the bag, and I hope that removing the seam at the bottom of the lining might make the bottom of the bag a little stronger. Using the same piecing for the lining as for the outside of the bag would probably have worked just as well, though! When sewing the lining, I left a gap on one side so I could stitch the bag and lining together right side-to-right side and turn it through the gap.

To keep the lining better in place, I added some decorative stitches with blue thread around the flap and mouth of the bag; I did the same to the strap to keep it flat (since it was a fabric tube). I also made three blue tassels for the bottom of the bag.

Overall, I’m pleased with how this bag turned out! I gifted it to a friend with a 14th century English persona; while this style of bag is a little early for her impression, I think it works visually – again, the vibes are excellent 🙂

Harvesting clay and pit-firing statuettes

Clay harvested using the wet method

In the late spring of 2021, I harvested some clay from a creek bed near my house using what I’ve seen described as the “wet method”. I gathered some soil and mixed it in a bucket with water, allowing the rocks and sand and the like to settle to the bottom while the clay particles stayed suspended. I then transferred the clay-containing water to a new container and allowed the clay particles to settle. Once clearly distinct layers of water and clay formed, I siphoned off the water and poured the clay/water slurry into cloth to strain out even more water. It took some time, but eventually I had workable (if a bit coarse) clay!

The first thing that I made and pit-fired was an oil lamp inspired by one found in Birka. One of the walls of the vessel broke during firing; it was still useable, but the break limited the amount of oil that it could hold, and the porous surface of the clay (no glaze) meant that the vessel absorbed oil. At some point, I’d like to try to make some terra sigillata and make a version with a less porous interior.

VMFA object 60.24 – “Statuette of an Ox”; Mycenaean, c. 12th century BCE

I bagged up the clay and worked on other projects for a couple of years, but in the summer of 2023, I visited the VMFA and was inspired by a Mycenaean oz statuette (c. 12th century BCE). I thought it might be fun to make some small bull statues and pit-fire them!

I built three statues, but the coarseness of the clay I harvested made that a bit more difficult that I expected it would be. The first I made from several “logs”, one for the body and four for the legs, and joined them by scoring and slipping. The head was made similarly, by forming the horns separately and joining them to the head. This all ended up being very fiddly, so I used a different method for the other two. I rolled out a long log shape for the body and legs, splitting both ends down the middle and bending them to form the legs. The heads were made similarly, but only one end was split and bent (to form the horns). The heads and bodies were joined by score and slip.

Dried statues before being fired. The one on the right was made first, followed by the one on the left, and the last one made (and my favorite) is in the center.

I allowed the statues to dry for a week before pit-firing. To fire the statues, I dug a small hole, perhaps a foot square and 6 to 8 inches deep. I put a split log down (flat side up) first, then placed the statues on it. I surrounded the log with sticks, to support the rest of the fire structure, and packed the space around the statues with wood shaving. I then built a log cabin fire lay on top of this and lit it (with flint and steel, even though it is a much too modern method of period fire starting for a Bronze Age-inspired project!). I fed the fire and kept it actively burning for about two hours, then covered the coal bed (I could have buried it, but I used the lid of a charcoal grill) and left it overnight. The next morning, the coals were cool enough to dig through, so I knew I could pull out the (hopefully fired) pieces.

The log cabin lay catches quickly

After two hours, a good hot coalbed had built up

I would have preferred to see more ash and less charcoal in the morning, but everything was cool enough to touch

It was not intentional, but the two complete statues look so concerned about the broken one!

I dug around in the coals and was pleased to see that two of the three statues had survived in one piece! Of course, the one that broke was my favorite, which had split down the body and lost one leg. I was able to find all the pieces, though, so I figured that I would glue them back together.

To make sure the pieces had actually fired (gone from greenware to a true ceramic material), I submerged my least favorite of the three in water. It didn’t dissolve, so the firing was successful and I was good to give the pieces a clean. I thought the statues were covered in charcoal, but I scrubbed them with soapy water and a toothbrush and did not really remove much, so I think the black color is a product of the firing. The pieces of the broken one fit together so well that, if I didn’t want to handle it, I could have just puzzled them together and put it on a shelf, and it would have held together. I like to mess with things, though, and I also have cats, so glue it was!

Hide glues are thought to have been used to repair ceramics for thousands of years (Table 1; Koob, 1998). For this repair, I used Old Brown Glue, a traditional liquid hide glue used by woodworkers. While not as authentic as boiling animal connective tissue myself, it seemed like a reasonable compromise! The porous clay and matched edges of the break made for a tight joint, and it was an easy repair.

I believe the Mycenaean statuette was painted (although that’s not mentioned in the object description), so I may paint these pieces sometime down the road! It might be a fun excuse to research and experiment with some simple period pigments. For now, though, I’m pretty happy with how they look.

I displayed this project at the Stierbach Baronial Birthday Celebration XXV (the baronial populace badge is a bull):

References

• Unknown Mycenaean artist, Statuette of an Ox, terracotta, 12th century BCE, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, https://vmfa.museum/piction/6027262-8065830/.
• Koob, Stephen. “Obsolete Fill Materials Found on Ceramics.” Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 37, no. 1 (1998): 49–67. https://doi.org/10.2307/3179911.

A Bocksten Man-inspired tunic

This tunic was made as part of my participation in the Atlantian Persona Development Challenge.

While I am pretty well set for cold-weather garb (or at least, what passes for cold weather in Virginia), I am less pleased with my moderate-to-warm weather kit. If I’m doing something active, I can strip down to my undertunic and braies (as those engaged in labor are sometimes depicted in the 13th¹, 14th², and 15th³ centuries) but that is not appropriate for all occasions! I have a few tunics made from dyed linen, but my understanding is that dyed linen was uncommon in mid-14th century England, and that wool would be more appropriate. I am not well read in fibers, though, so I could be wrong!

An approximation of how I cut out the pieces of the tunic from two yards of 59″ cloth.

Given my desire to wear wool in the warm, humid mid-Atlantic region, I purchased a very lightweight worsted wool from Burnley & Trowbridge in an olive drab that I thought would look nice and blend reasonably well with a wooded environment. It seems likely that this is really more a lateral move in authenticity than an improvement, though, since I don’t know that a fine worsted wool like this is any more appropriate for my 14th century English forester persona than dyed linen! For the construction of the tunic, I referenced the extant wool tunic the Bocksten Man was found wearing. The Bocksten Man was found in Sweden, and his clothing dates to 1350-1370⁴. My impression is English, so this is not a perfect reference, but as the Bocksten Man’s clothing is one of the only finds of it’s kind and seems to resemble clothing depicted in contemporary English manuscripts, I do not think it is too much of a stretch to think my persona might wear similarly constructed garments.

Sleeve gussets made from the cloth cut from the bottom of the sleeves

While I referenced the general construction of the extant tunic⁵, I adjusted the measurements to suit my body (I am shorter and… broader than the Bocksten Man was) and cut the front and back of the body of the tunic as two separate pieces. The front and back of Bocksten Man’s tunic were made from one 230 cm piece of cloth, without a shoulder seam⁵. Since I only purchased two yards of fabric, I was able to make a longer tunic from the yardage by including a shoulder seam. I made the triangular underarm gussets that add width to the top of the sleeve from the cloth cut away from the lower part of the sleeve that makes it more fitted around the wrist. I don’t know that this is how the original gussets were made, but it seemed like an efficient way to use the material.

A seam from the outside (left) and inside (right) of the garment

I tend to over-engineer most of the pieces of kit that I make, and tunics are no exception. I am hand-sewing the seams with a linen thread (yes, dyed linen, but just a little bit!), first by backstitching the two pieces of cloth together, then making them something akin to a flat felled seam by trimming one seam allowance, then tucking the raw edge of the longer seam allowance around and under the shorter one and whipstitching it down. That is probably more than is needed, but I’m hoping it will keep the seams strong and the cut edges of the fabric from fraying.

A diamond-shaped gore helped address a fit problem, but made for more difficult sewing!

As I assembled the tunic, I found that the upper sleeves were a bit too narrow; I’ll make the sleeve “rectangle” wider in future tunics. To compensate, I added a diamond-shaped underarm gore. This solved the width problem, but resulted in a lot of seams meeting under the arm, so I don’t recommend this approach for this style of sleeve!

To mimic the extant tunic, I assembled the front godet from the two right-triangular pieces and sewed a false seam down the middle of the back godet. To set these pieces into a slit the body of the tunic, I followed the excellent tutorial on La cotte simple; I’ve attempted this type of tailoring before, and these instructions resulted in the smoothest time of it I’ve ever had!

I’m not totally happy with the finished tunic, but it’s a wearable piece of garb and I learned a lot making it!

References

1. c. 1240. The Crusader Bible. New York, The Morgan Library and Museum, MS M.638, fol. 18r. Accessed August 4th, 2022. https://www.themorgan.org/collection/crusader-bible/35
2. c. 1325-1340. The Luttrell Psalter. London, British Library, Additional MS 42130, fol. 74v. Accessed August 4th, 2022. http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_42130_f074v
3. Albucasis. First half of the 15th century. Observations sur la nature et les propriétés de divers produits alimentaires et hygiéniques, sur des phénomènes météorologiques, sur divers actes de la vie humaine, etc.  Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, NAL 1673, fol. 91v. Accessed August 4th, 2022. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b105380445/f214.item
4. “The Bocksten Man’s Unique Outfit.” The Bocksten Man Find. Hallands kulturhistoriska museum. Accessed August 4th, 2022. https://museumhalland.se/en/the-bocksten-man/the-bocksten-mans-outfit/
5. Carlson, I. Marc. “Kyrtles/Cotes/Tunics/Gowns – The Bocksten Bog Man.” Some Clothing of the Middle Ages. The University of Tulsa, April 23, 2003. Access August 4th, 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20210226053359/http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/cloth/bocktunc.html

A Cristopher of silver sheene

This badge was made as part of my participation in the Atlantian Persona Development Challenge.

A yeman hadde he and servantz namo
At that tyme, for hym liste ride soo;
And he was clad in cote and hood of grene.
…
A Cristopher on his brest of silver sheene.
An horn he bar, the bawdryk was of grene;
A forster was he, soothly, as I gesse.

The Canterbury Tales: General Prologue
Lines 101-103; 115-117

One of the accessories the Knight’s Yeoman, a forester, is described as wearing is “A Christopher … of silver sheene”. While the Yeoman might be wearing a badge of Saint Christopher to protect him specifically while accompanying the Knight on pilgrimage, foresters walked or rode their defined bailiwick or ward to keep the vert and venison¹, so it’s possible that some might seek the protection of the patron saint of travelers even when close to home.

Badge design based on a 14th century image of Saint Christopher³, reversed for carving

I chose not to attempt to reproduce an extant badge, even though a few have been dated to the 14th century², largely because I had a hard time making out the details of the objects, either because they had been lost over time or because the photographs were difficult to interpret (or both!). Instead, I chose to reference a depiction of Saint Christopher from the “Neville of Hornby Hours”, a book of hours dated to the second quarter of the 14th century³.

I used a image manipulation program to trace the lines of the image that I wanted to carve into my soapstone mold (altering a few details, just for my own preferences), then reversed the image, since I would be carving the mold as the reverse of the final badge. I sized the image to 2.5″ high, printing it, then trimmed the excess paper away so that I could trace the outline of the image on my prepared soapstone.

Tracing the design onto the soapstone

Carving a shallow relief before adding details

Copying the details onto the relief for carving

This was only my second time carving and casting with a soapstone mold, and the first time was an acorn, so the difficulty curve was… steep. I tried for too much detail in too small a piece, and it did not come out as clearly as I hoped. However, most pilgrim badges were cheap trinkets, so maybe a less than stellar one is historically excusable.

Front of the badge with sprue and flashing

Flashing on the integral pin

There was a lot of flash on the piece straight out of the mold (the soapstone did not meet tightly enough, I’m guessing), which would not have worked for what was meant to be a cheaply mass-producible process. Fortunately, I only needed one, so I cleaned up my best cast with files.

Cleaned-up badge

Integral pin

This was a tough project, and honestly, I was not skilled enough to manage it as as well as I would have liked. I learned a lot, though, and plan to revisit casting in a soapstone mold in the future!

References

1. Grant, Raymond. The Royal Forests of England. Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton Publishing Limited, 1991. p. 116
2. Mitchiner, Michael. Medieval Pilgrim and Secular Badges. London: Hawkins Publications, 1986. p. 95
3. 2nd quarter of the 14th century. Neville of Hornby Hours. Oxford, British Library, Egerton MS 2781, fol. 36v. Accessed May 4, 2022. http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=egerton_ms_2781_f036v