Lady Eyja Gunnarsdottir shares her striking entry for the category: 12. A garish flag, to be the aim of every dangerous shot. An item of heraldic display.
“This is the first item of personal heraldry I have created, using yellow, blue, and red cotton to ensure a ‘garish’ colour. ‘Gyronny Or and azure, in pale three keys fesswise gules’.
Once we are out of plague isolation I will affix it to a dowel and cord for display.”
Mistress katherine kerr’s latest entry falls into the category of “Is this a dagger I see before me?”
In her words:
“I felt it my duty to help my consort present a good-looking corpse..er..combatant on the Field of Mars and so decided to make him a torse and matching lambrequin to adorn his helm and make it easier to identify him, alive or dead.
The torse and mantling are commonly depicted in heraldic illustrations, the torse being a twisted roll of fabric holding the billowing drapery of the lambrequin or mantling.
German Wappenbuchs (rolls of arms) show the use of torse and mantling in heraldry; illustrated manuscripts like the Nuremberg Tournament and Parade Album show knights riding into tournaments with torse, mantling and crests.
Album: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/22.229/
Both torse and mantling reflect Sir Radbot’s livery colours of argent and sable, with references to his rat charges in the form of a number of small metal rat charms on the torse and rat dagging on the mantling. The torse is a general match to my own consort head roll, and has a long tail of silk, as seen in the Schembert Carnivals.”
Schembert Carnival: https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/radical-fashion-from-the-schembart-carnival-1590/
https://www.lesenluminures.com/artworks/categories/4/9486-p-schembart-ldquo-hiding-beard-rdquo-carnival-book-p-c.-1540-1550/
My mother Caterina Mocenigo was from a well-regarded Venetian family, and her wedding cassone houses a number of lovely items once hers. She wore this headware in honour of the Queen of Cyprus, whose funeral procession was one of the largest ever seen in La Serenissima.
I wanted to make a small head roll and veil, but I wasn’t inspired until I saw a Bellini painting (ca 1500) of Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus. Rather than a plain roll, Caterina sports a black, white and gold one, variously described as brocade or damask or embroidered. The roll is securely shoved down over a closely fitted cap made up of what looks to me like alternating bands of lace, or possibly lacis in net. (Partridge, in the Art of Renaissance Venice, pg 96, describes it as damask, so take your pick!) A coronet crowns the whole ensemble. Underneath it all are two very fine gossamer black veils.
I liked the idea of a decorated roll, and of multiple parts to the headwear allowing different looks. Another, unattributed, painting of Caterina appears to show a similar roll (or possibly a cap?) worn much further back on her head with a different veil beneath. (One thing I learned when researching this was the assertion that women wore their ears covered by veils to maintain chastity, this being the route the Holy Ghost took to impregnate the Blessed Virgin Mary!)
My head roll is in Sir Radbot’s colours, being part of a consort ensemble of a black coat, tabbed bodice and Venetian brocade skirt. The black ribbon and pearl earrings I’m wearing are modeled off the ones worn by the Lady with Squirrel by Montemezzano. The roll bears one of our favour pins at centre. The remaining decorations came from long-stashed stuff; the wool was scored at one of Southron Gaard’s beggar markets.
The accompanying veil is silk chiffon, chosen for its sheerness and drape. The edges were stabilised with starch; Master William de Wyk demonstrated how to extract starch by heavily kneading a flour and water dough, then washing the starch out of it; that makes a clearer solution than the common approach of boiling cornflour and water. Ironing a starch-dampened edge onto brown paper made it a lot easier to cut a straight line and to press a fold into this most uncooperative fabric.
Caterina Cornaro paintings: https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-caterina-cornaro-the-last-queen-of-cyprus-108495
Another Bellini depiction of Caterina (far left) wearing the same roll: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Miracolo_della_reliquia_della_Croce_al_ponte_di_San_Lorenzo_di_Gentile_Bellini,_dettaglio_(4).JPG
It is important, when taking to the field in a tournament for the Crown, that people know who is contesting. These pennants identify my contract with Sir Radbot von Borg, bearing our arms and a shared sigil.
Matching heraldic pennants for tourney display have been upgraded from the vinyl stick-on rats we used at May Crown! Painted flags and pennants were commissionable items, as Cennini mentions in The Craftsman’s Handbook. The cats are modelled on the 12-14C manuscript marginalia we used on our large tourney banner; the rat-chasing-cat-chasing-rat motif comes from a 1610 emblem book by Sebastián de Covarrubias Horozco, representing a world turned topsy-turvey:
Anda agora el mundo tal
que no se cual va tras cual
It’s upside-down!
Now, who can say
Who’s the chaser
And who the prey?
I prefer to think of a contemporaneous adage which warned that “when the cat and the rat join forces, the farmer should beware!”
I have promised to be a generous consort to Sir Radbot von Borg and, on learning that he lacked suitable items to bring to table, I have begun work to rectify that.
I made a ratbag and ratkerchief, to go with a feast kit set (rat-marked market wallet, trencher, cutlery roll, bag and napkin) I presented to Sir Radbot at Coronation. The kerchief is of linen with a simple lace edging; the bag is linen with ties in his livery colours. Both bear an embroidered rat as a charge from Sir Radbot’s arms.
Something to eat off : A tazza (painted Italian raised dish), goblet, Reischsadlerhumpen (an heraldic beaker for sharing beer; the German eagle replaced by the SCA Pelican), all on an heraldically decorated table. The blue and white roses are the heraldic charge of Katherine’s Venetian mother.
2 bags, made by Lady Katherine Stewart – the first for a Mouseguard, the second with the Baronial Tower
This is for our day tent’s cloth of estate showing the dimidiated arms of Bartholomew Baskin and katherine kerr (ie joined to show that we are married). This assumes that my proposed augmentation passes….
A banner for Bartholomew — using one of the left-over ones from Nov Crown ASXLIV
This is a valence of heraldic beasts to go on the new cloth of estate for the CF Feast and Half-Circle Theatre.
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