Calligraphy pen from my new lathe

The nib holder inserts that I ordered from Stiles and Bates arrived the other day, so I thought I’d have a go at making a calligraphy pen on my lathe to test them out. This is the first thing I’ve made since installing the new motor. The timber is from a scrap piece of chair leg and has quite a coarse grain, not really suitable for this purpose, but it meant I didn’t have to rough it out first. First I drilled a 6mm hole for the nib holder, then mounted the timber in the lathe and turned it. I forgot to allow for the waste I’d have to cut off at each end, so the handle is a bit short, but the nib insert fitted nicely and the pen is lovely to hold.

Now to experiment with some different timbers and designs and put them up for sale!

Medieval eyeglasses

I browse the internet a lot, and keep a big album of all the pictures that interest me, so that when I come across something in an op shop that looks promising, I snap it up. I recently found these children’s sunglasses which look almost like medieval frames in shape, so this weekend I decided to have a go at modifying the shape and removing the tinted lenses so that I can fit some prescription lenses.

I removed the side arms and, using a combination of a small saw and some files, reshaped the bridge and removed the bumps from the nosepieces. I then cut off the part with the side arm attachment and carefully cut up the centre of the little stump that was left to remove the lenses. The lenses are circular, 38mm diameter.

This is the result after shaping the split part so that is can be wired shut again. I’ll use the old lenses as a template to cut down an old set of prescription lenses, and I’ll post again once I’ve got these to fit. If this pair works out they’ll do as a temporary solution while I play around with making some more authentic frames. Frame material options include horn, wood (particularly boxwood), bone and leather. Horn will be easy enough, I already have some horns, and if these are not thick enough I’ll track some down thick horn salad spoons from an op shop. Bone may be more difficult – the best piece is the metacarpal bone, and I don’t think that’s a piece that makes it to retail butchers. (I’ll add this to my wishlist along with the calves feet I recently needed for jellymaking, which were impossible to source retail in Melbourne). I’d probably have to import boxwood. Leather would be very easy to source but I don’t like the style of the leather eyeglass frames as much. I’ll probably get my optometrist to cut a set of lenses to size once I’m happy with the final frames.

Woodworking workshop 29 December

6-board chest: don’t use this as an example of how to join the ends and sides, it’s the wrong way round.

On 29 December I’ll be hosting a woodworking workshop at my place for local SCA members, where we’ll be making simple medieval or Viking 6-board chests and bench seats using hand tools (although if we’re pressed for time power tools will be available to help finish things off). There will be several people there with woodworking skills to help those who are less experienced. Participants are encouraged to bring their own hand tools if they have them (chisels can be sharpened on the day).

The timber shopping list is available to download from the “workshop notes” page – use the tab at the top of the site. You’ll notice that we’ll be using pre-dressed pine boards in the maximum available widths. We will not have the time or equipment for participants to edge join narrow boards or plane rough sawn timber to shape, but it will be discussed and you can do this yourself in future projects. Instead we’ll concentrate on how to use saws, marking tools, chisels, mallets and brace and bit drills; how to cut rebates and mortise and tenon joints;  and how to make simple gimmal hinges from split pins. Also covered will be: tool safety, tool maintenance and sharpening, timber selection, other types of hinges and metal strapping, and options for decorating and timber finishing. Notes will be provided, with plans to make all the different options – please share these with your friends, and I want to see photos of how the finished projects turn out!

The day will finish up with a BBQ, and as long as there is not a fire ban there’ll be an open fire as well.

I know that many people will be away on this date, so if the workshop proves successful it will run again in February/March – just in time to make something useful to take to Rowany Festival. And possibly later in the year we’ll do another one on trestle tables.

Rowany Festival plans

Next year at Rowany Festival I plan to run a working medieval painting studio. Rather than have fixed classes, each day will have a theme, and stuff will get made and played around with according to the day’s theme. The plan so far is:

Thu  28 Mar
joinery and carving – panel making, boxes, shields, helmet crests etc
medieval joiners tools

Fri 29 Mar
making and using glues and varnishes – hide glue, casein glue, cutler’s resin – setting a knife blade in a handle
working with gesso, pastiglia work

Sat 30 Mar (is also market day)
morning – overview of the studio, materials and tools of the medieval artist
afternoon – making and using drawing materials – parchment, paper, charcoal, inks, drawing chalks, silverpoint, plummet

Sun 31 Mar
making and using medieval paints – egg tempera, tempera grassa, oil paint, milk paint, distemper, manuscript paints
medieval pigments – extraction methods and preparation

Mon 1 Apr
gilding – using bole, water gilding, oil/mordant gilding, gilding effects – stamping, glazing and overpainting

This will have to modified to accommodate a couple of meetings. There will be art supplies and various other tools/kitchen implements that I have made, on sale for the duration of festival. If anyone has materials or tools they’d like to bring and play around with, particularly raw pigments or dyes or small parchment offcuts, please bring them along. You are welcome to work on projects over several days and leave them in the studio until they are finished.

I’m also helping with organising a formal “artisan space” at Festival – my local barony is providing the tentage – where people can share tool and materials and work on projects that don’t fit nicely into the 1-2 hour A&S class slots.

Atelier Médiéval – my new business website

As the workshop slowly progresses toward completion – I’m currently building the main workbench – I’ve reorganised the business side of things so that I will be able to sell my artwork and reproduction medieval goods more easily. The first steps were to register a business name – Atelier Médiéval – and develop a sales website. This blog will continue as a way to record my projects, and for free downloads of workshop notes etc.

At the moment the website is more style than substance, with very little on sale yet, but with the Christmas break coming up I should be able to address that by re-photographing all the existing stock, working out a price list, and getting started on some new work.

So, please visit the new site, and bookmark it ready for when sales go on line.

ATELIER MEDIEVAL

http://ateliermedieval.weebly.com

Working on the workshop

It’s been quite a while since my last post. After all the work with the last Royal household I felt I needed a rest, and put most of my projects on hold. Then my house’s central heating unit shorted out due to possum damage, and so for the last few months I’ve been working on and supervising various repairs and renovations that I’d been meaning to get to for several years. One of the good things to come out of this is that the workshop and studio finally have electrical power, so I can go ahead with the final bits of the fit-out: building a workbench and making custom tool racks for everything that can’t hang on nails on the tool board.

It’s also an opportunity to upgrade some of my tools now that there is somewhere to store them properly. Last year when I was visiting family in New Zealand I went to the estate auction of a retired cabinetmaker, and got myself a bargain in the form of a very small wood lathe complete with tools and a number of centres, faceplates and guides, and various other tools. I’ve gradually been bringing these back home to Australia, and on the last visit I finally got the lathe home.

Unfortunately when I stripped down the motor I found that the insulation on the wiring had completely perished, so I left it in NZ and have just ordered a new one here. Once it’s all wired up it will be perfect for turning new tool handles and making little storage containers for pigments.

My dad very kindly added a few of his spare tools including a draw knife, so an additional project will now be to make a shave horse. There was a particularly nice example at the recent Melbourne Timber and Working With Wood Show which I intend to base mine on. The show also provided a good opportunity to buy all the things I need for sharpening my new tools and to make some contacts within the woodworking community in Melbourne – I’ve just joined the Australian Hand Tool Preservation Society  and am looking forward to their tool sale next weekend.

So with the focus shifted to woodworking for the time being, I also plan to get underway with making some tent poles and building a few items of furniture and some storage chests so that I will be able to set up a working medieval painter’s studio at the SCA’s Rowany Festival next year. I think this will be far better way of demonstrating the range of techniques involved in preparing and painting on panels than trying to squeeze the information into one or two hour classes.

Hopefully it won’t be too long until I’ve got some photos of the new projects to share.

New research projects

I’ve lined myself up several research and experimentation projects for the second half of the year, in addition to gradually finishing off all my unfinished panel paintings. One is to perform an extraction of ultramarine from lapis lazuli. This has been done by several SCA artists previously, but there’s nothing like trying it for yourself to learn about the process. As a secondary task I need to get my scientific equipment in working order: repair and calibrate my balance scales (for which I now have brass weights); obtain a brass pestle for my mortar, for the heavier grinding; and get a tripod the right height for my spirit burner.  I also need to obtain some mastic, and possibly some fresh pine resin in addition to the colophony which I have. I’ve got the Cennini text to use as the primary source, plus notes from other artists who’ve done the extraction: Randy Asplund and Nancy Hulan (aka Lady Gwerfyl verch Aneirin).

The second one is to start learning a bit more about, and experimenting with, using some of the other separation techniques used to purify chemicals in the middle ages, such as levigation (for azurite and malachite) and fractional crystallisation (for saltpetre).

The final project is to read the Strasbourg Manuscript, a 15th century German artist’s manual. I have located a copy of the medieval German/ English translation parallel text in Monash University library which I will be able to get a friend to borrow for me. This should offer some new information on medieval paint recipes. My recent reading has uncovered quite a few references to blended pigments, especially the use of lake pigments to alter the tint of more opaque base pigments eg adding indigo to azurite to deepen the blue. There is a lot of research going on at present using non-invasive analysis of pigments and binders which is fleshing out existing paint analyses and the information from extant artist’s manuals. This will eventually lead me to some more experimentation with paint-making.