When I first joined the SCA, my interest was all things Irish, or, more broadly, if somewhat inaccurately, all things Celtic. I loved the legends of lore of Dark Ages Ireland, but my modern vanity warred with that interest (and won) in favor of things far later in time (and far more flattering). My household all still did "Early Celt" for events like Pennsic, but looking back, I somewhat cringe at my ideas of what that entailed.
Even while studying Viking Age textiles and dress, I was reading anything I came across about the early Celts, and now it is finally time to start assembling my thoughts on my reading, and put to test some ideas I have had. This separate blog will cover that material, including textiles, beads and my attempts to build kits for the La Téne period in Central Europe.
For the moment I am, out of necessity, trying to center my research on the early La Téne period (LT A and LT B for the most part), and regionally I am looking at southern Germany (particularly Baden-Wurrtemberg and Bavaria) and western Austria, though I am tangentially also looking at Switzerland and eastern France. I have materials that reach further out in both time and place, but in an effort to reign in the research and start producing things, I am trying to contain things a bit in terms of time and place. Maybe. Hopefully.
To start, I have tracked down a number of catalogs of textiles from these areas and am compiling them into one spread sheet. I am reading everything I can on the topic and looking into not only the beads found in the regions, but in glass working centres there as well. I hope by late spring to have my loom warped up and in the meantime, I will start crafting test-garments from commercial textiles.
I do not think I can adequately express how energized and excited I am by this project and process. Viking Age research was difficult. I had to wade through a mass of difficult-to-source materials and work with little in the way of evidence to try to make intelligent reconstructions. Early Early Period (as I call it) is even more difficult. At least with Viking Age work, there were other reenactors who had assembled nice bibliographies from which I could bounce into piles of amazing papers. There is a wealth of information on my new focus area, but not in the same easy-to-get-started format. I am already hitting stumbling blocks in tracking down books I am sure I need (there are a few that have no copies in US libraries at all), and I think my mailman is sick already of delivering heavy packages from Germany to my house. And even once I get all of my sources lined up, there is far less in the way of extant garments to make sense of complete costume.
It is absolutely exhilarating.
I feel very refreshed (something I much need these days) and hope to make some other major changes in my SCA life going forward as well.
Even while studying Viking Age textiles and dress, I was reading anything I came across about the early Celts, and now it is finally time to start assembling my thoughts on my reading, and put to test some ideas I have had. This separate blog will cover that material, including textiles, beads and my attempts to build kits for the La Téne period in Central Europe.
For the moment I am, out of necessity, trying to center my research on the early La Téne period (LT A and LT B for the most part), and regionally I am looking at southern Germany (particularly Baden-Wurrtemberg and Bavaria) and western Austria, though I am tangentially also looking at Switzerland and eastern France. I have materials that reach further out in both time and place, but in an effort to reign in the research and start producing things, I am trying to contain things a bit in terms of time and place. Maybe. Hopefully.
To start, I have tracked down a number of catalogs of textiles from these areas and am compiling them into one spread sheet. I am reading everything I can on the topic and looking into not only the beads found in the regions, but in glass working centres there as well. I hope by late spring to have my loom warped up and in the meantime, I will start crafting test-garments from commercial textiles.
I do not think I can adequately express how energized and excited I am by this project and process. Viking Age research was difficult. I had to wade through a mass of difficult-to-source materials and work with little in the way of evidence to try to make intelligent reconstructions. Early Early Period (as I call it) is even more difficult. At least with Viking Age work, there were other reenactors who had assembled nice bibliographies from which I could bounce into piles of amazing papers. There is a wealth of information on my new focus area, but not in the same easy-to-get-started format. I am already hitting stumbling blocks in tracking down books I am sure I need (there are a few that have no copies in US libraries at all), and I think my mailman is sick already of delivering heavy packages from Germany to my house. And even once I get all of my sources lined up, there is far less in the way of extant garments to make sense of complete costume.
It is absolutely exhilarating.
I feel very refreshed (something I much need these days) and hope to make some other major changes in my SCA life going forward as well.
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