In case anyone’s wondering what I’ve been up to…

… there’s an account over on the National Leather Collection blog.

Hedeby quiver erratum

In what should probably come as a surprise to nobody, I made an error in my translation of the original German report. The carrying lugs attach “…at about one-third of the height… (…auf etwa einem Drittel der Höhe…)”. I’d taken that as the full height of the quiver and put them at 20cm/8″ down. They should be at one-third of the height of that front panel at 16cm/6.3″ from the top.

I’ll correct the first post when I get a chance.

Big Book Erratum – Chapter 5, Luggage

In the Big Book on p53, I feature an illustration from John Waterer’s Leather in Life, Art and Industry, with, what in my defence I will point out is Waterer’s original caption.

chest1

English travelling trunk of pinewood covered with cowhide, ornamented with brass studs. Second half of the 17^th century.

It transpires that it is a Queen Anne chest, reputedly Queen Anne’s chest (1702-1714) and dates from the first quarter of the eighteenth century. A contemporary chest of drawers appeared on Antiques Roadshow in 2013 and has more recently been authenticated.

Note the similarity of the bunch of grapes on both this chest and the Roadshow one.

Click to view the clip:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p013qmyl/player

The Stonyhurst Gospel

The British Library’s Medieval manuscripts blog had a cracker at the end of June on the St Cuthbert or Stonyhurst Gospel.

I’ve talked about the binding before in my post on another Saxon quiver, now they’ve managed to do CT scans of the binding and covers. It looks like the tree design was worked into a mould from the back, then the design was filled with clay to keep the shape. The technique is the same as the one I used for my costrel all those years ago.

The raised straight lines that frame the tree and knotwork are worked over cord, but I have my suspicions that the groove may have been started from the back with the ~~seventh~~ eighth century equivalent of a butter knife and plastic rule, the cord put in place before the cover was stuck to the board and the line finally worked down from the front. You can see where they’ve overshot with the butter knife in the corners. Emboss the knotwork and paint to taste.