Each event has a different theme, revolving around a past era. Previously, Steam Garden did a Meiji-themed party — a fascinating time when Japan was opening its doors to the West, and fusing Victorian fashion with traditional kimonos and obis. This time, the code word was Celtic Fantasy. Luke describes it as “a blend of industry, fantasy, and epic adventure set to a soundtrack of exciting tribal and Celtic music.” -
Japanese Steampunk, complete with bagpipes, medieval food, fire dancers and wood elves.
posted by Artw
on May 18, 2013 -
7 comments
Weird, funny, surreal, fun, silly, bawdy, macabre, cool and strangely beautiful.
The Discarded Image is a Tumblr collection of Medieval illustrations gleaned from various illuminated manuscripts, bestiaries, books describing the cosmology of the Middle Ages,
ordered and maintained by a celestial hierarchy.
The Discarded Image is also the name of CS Lewis' last book, about the fascinating Medieval mindset and world picture.
[more inside]
posted by nickyskye
on Apr 13, 2013 -
23 comments
"To the world of today the men of medieval Christendom already seem remote and unfamiliar. Their names and deeds are recorded in our history-books, their monuments still adorn our cities, but our kinship with them is a thing unreal, which costs an effort of imagination. How much more must this apply to the great Islamic civilization, that stood over against medieval Europe, menacing its existence and yet linked to it by a hundred ties that even war and fear could not sever. Its monuments too abide, for those who may have the fortunate to visit them, but its men and manners are to most of us utterly unknown, or dimly conceived in the romantic image of the Arabian Nights. Even for the specialist it is difficult to reconstruct their lives and see them as they were. Histories and biographies there are in quantity, but the historians for all their picturesque details, seldom show the ability to select the essential and to give their figures that touch of the intimate which makes them live again for the reader. It is in this faculty that Ibn Battuta excels."
Thus begins the book, "Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354" published by Routledge and Kegan Paul. Step
into the world of "
the first tourist" who made his mark as
the world's greatest traveler before the age of steam.
[more inside]
posted by infini
on Jan 12, 2013 -
21 comments
The Geese Book is a lavishly illustrated manuscript of choral music, written for the church of
St Lorenz, Nuremberg, between 1504 and 1510. It takes its name from a whimsical illustration showing a
choir of geese with a wolf as their choirmaster. The manuscript has now been
digitized, and many of the chants
recorded, so that you can listen to the music (or even sing along) while following the text. Highlights include Christmas, with a
fox and rooster, Ascension Day, with the famous
choir of geese, All Saints' Day, with a
dragon eating a baby, and the Mass for St Lawrence, with a
musical bear.
posted by verstegan
on Nov 29, 2012 -
8 comments
Early English Laws is a project to publish online and in print new editions and translations of all English legal codes, edicts, and treatises produced up to the time of Magna Carta 1215.
[more inside]
posted by jedicus
on Nov 21, 2012 -
7 comments
If you’ve spent much time in museums—or even leafing through art books—you’ve probably come across something that leaves you scratching your head. You’re not alone. The very funny, if occasionally puerile blog
WTF Art History was created, according to the anonymous art historian who writes it, for “everyone who loves art history but has a sense of humor to know that even great masters create things that leave us asking, WTF?” [
via] [
prev]
posted by netbros
on Feb 21, 2012 -
24 comments
After a long
personal hiatus, pithy history blog
Got Medieval recently returned (previously:
1,
2). It comes back with a new project, an
ongoing series of posts [
Intro,
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7] on the author’s dissertation topic, the role of Uther in the story of King Arthur as told in the less-than-accurate 12th century
Historia Regum Brittanae by Geoffrey of Monmouth. If you want more, the
saints feasts calendar commentaries may be completed now, but don’t worry, the
marginalia posts continue (e.g.
sketches of naked men in a nun’s devotional book).
posted by Schismatic
on Feb 1, 2012 -
14 comments
Bugs and Beasts Before the Law - "Murderous pigs sent to the gallows, sparrows prosecuted for chattering in Church, a gang of thieving rats let off on a wholly technical acquittal – theoretical psychologist and author Nicholas Humphrey explores the strange world of medieval animal trials." More on the theme of barnyard scapegoats from the BBC podcast documentary:
Animals on Trial.
posted by madamjujujive
on Jan 5, 2012 -
22 comments
NPR's food blog gets wordy:
for the origins of "pie," look to the humble magpie. Though the
etymology of pie doesn't present one clear path, the possibilities are fascinating. English surnames point to pie and pye as a baked good in the 1300s, with
a Peter Piebakere in 1320 and Adam le Piemakere in 1332. Chaucer referred to "pye"
as both a baked good and a magpie (Google books). Or perhaps the fillings were like a magpie's collection of bits and bobs, similar to haggis. You know,
like the French "agace," or magpie (Gb), and similar to
chewets, those baked goods, or
another name for jackdaws (Gb),
relative of the magpie.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Nov 22, 2011 -
21 comments
In 1992, MicroProse published their first and only CRPG:
Darklands. Set in medieval Germany, the game gives a lot of immersion,
from its innovative lifepath system for
character generation, to its use of
period music, to the importance of knowing your
saints, to tatzelwurms, quite fearsome
dragons and
raubritters. The
game play is good, with lots of different ways of handling any conflict and a semi-realtime
combat system. The game is also fundamentally open-ended; while there is a main plot (
spoilers), it's possible to ignore that thread and keep playing for years.
[more inside]
posted by jiawen
on Oct 9, 2011 -
35 comments
The Koran of Kansuh al-Ghuri is a 500 year old manuscript written on six foot square sheets of a silken, vellum-like fabric which is polished with smooth stones so that ink sits on the surface rather than being absorbed. It is considered "one of the finest, most
lavishly illuminated and calligraphically significant Qur’an manuscripts from the late
Mamluk period". Too fragile to be displayed, it is also missing two leaves that were discovered in Dublin's Chester Beatty Library in the 1970s. So a unified digitized edition is being prepared that will be freely available on the Internet for researchers. The process is being blogged
here.
posted by Joe Beese
on Jan 24, 2011 -
14 comments
Take oysters, parboile hem in her owne broth, make a lyour of crustes of brede & drawe it up wiþ the broth and vynegur mynce oynouns & do þerto with erbes. & cast the oysters þerinne. boile it. & do þerto powdour fort & salt. & messe it forth.
Three European
14th Century cookbooks:
[more inside]
posted by thirteenkiller
on Dec 27, 2010 -
46 comments
Ozark Medieval Fortress – Thirty masons, carpenters and stone carvers authentically dressed, will work all year round for twenty years, the time required to build a fortress in the Middle Ages.
posted by tellurian
on May 4, 2010 -
74 comments
The remains of a man from Africa who
lived and died in 13th-century England have been unearthed in Ipswich. Analysis of the skeleton shows that the individual originated in what is now Tunisia, but lived for at least a decade in England. This is not the only surprising recent information regarding African presence in pre-modern England. A paternally linked gene known from Mali, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau has been present in the
male lineage of a Yorkshire family for at least 250 years, and may reach back to the time of the Roman occupation.
[more inside]
posted by Countess Elena
on May 4, 2010 -
46 comments
According to legend, back in the bad old days of the 10th C,
Bishop Hatto (actually Archbishop of Mainz), decided to deal with excess mouths during a famine by burning said people alive. In retribution, he was eaten alive by a horde of angry mice, supposedly in the
Mausturm near Bingen. The story ended up in
Baring-Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (
print wiki) and has been widely celebrated in
poetry, much of it awful. It probably was an influence on Lovecraft's story "The Rats in the Walls."
[more inside]
posted by GenjiandProust
on Feb 27, 2010 -
9 comments
I have been working on and off for about 2 years building our "D&D ROOM" to hold most of our collection and give us a cool place to play...
posted by Joe Beese
on Feb 24, 2010 -
61 comments
The Soldier in later Medieval England is a historical research project that seeks to 'challenge assumptions about the emergence of professional soldiery between 1369 and 1453'. They've compiled impressive
databases of tens of thousands of service records. These are perhaps of interest only to specialists; but the general reader may enjoy the
profiles of individual military men: these run the gamut from regional non-entities like
John Fort esquire of Llanstephan ("in many ways a humdrum figure" though once accused of harbouring a hostile Spaniard!) to more familiar figures such as rebel Welsh prince
Owain Glyndŵr, who began his soldiering,
as did many compatriots, in the service of the English king. Between such extremes of high and low we find, for example,
Reginald Cobham, who made 6,500 florins ransoming a prisoner taken at
Poitiers and rests eternal in a splendid tomb; and various
men loyal and rebel who fought at the bloody
Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403.
posted by Abiezer
on Dec 5, 2009 -
15 comments
"God save me!" quoth the priest, with a loud voice, "is Tirante the White there? Give me him here, neighbour; for I make account I have found in him a treasure of delight, and a mine of entertainment. Here we have Don Kyrieleison of Montalvan, a valorous knight, and his brother Thomas of Montalvan, and the knight Fonseca, and the combat in which the valiant Tirante fought with the mastiff, and the smart conceits of the damsel Plazerdemivida, with the amours and artifices of the widow Reposada; and madam the empress in love with her squire Hypolito. Verily, gossip, in its way, it is the best book in the world..."
-
Don Quixote de la Mancha, Part I, Chapter 6 [more inside]
posted by Iridic
on Aug 26, 2009 -
11 comments
The Luttrell Psalter is the definitive example of Marginalia; the term used to describe drawings and flourishes in medieval illuminated manuscripts.
Explore pages similar to
this and
this up close.
Here is a medieval
blog which has more Marginalia, both
amusing and medievally
ribauld or
both.
For serious scholars
Marginalia
is the website of the Medieval Reading Group at the University of Cambridge which has a myriad of
online resources.
posted by adamvasco
on May 2, 2009 -
11 comments
