[SCA-AS] Book Search: Mediaeval European Jewelry

[Chris Laning]

Magnus wrote:
>For a huge book a lot of it is print as opposed to pictures.
>But they are usually stunning pictures.
>Of course in wanting to replicate things a lot of us would prefer pictures over
>many pages of print by comparison.   The guild history to me simply appeared
>boring.  Perhaps it was the Goldsmith's Company but I think I have seen that
>written up elsewhere. 

Actually, I'd be _almost_ happy if all they reprinted was the text, even without the gorgeous color plates. His chapter on Paternoster beads is the best single source of information I've found on them anywhere, in any language. It's not the sort of thing you'd sit down and read for fun, but it's packed full of citations and quotes of specific details. I've been able to mine it for a lot of useful nuggets of information -- I quote it a lot in my Paternosters blog articles. 

The chapters on badges and dress ornaments (bezants) have been equally useful. He has not one, but TWO chapters on collars and necklaces, which could be immensely helpful to anyone who wants to do period-style collars of plaques, etc. (like collars of S's, or the one for the Order of the Garter...) and there's a chapter on head ornaments that makes sense of some of the odd little coronets and diadems you sometimes see on decidedly non-royal people in paintings.

Even the mentions of guilds are helpful -- to me, at least: for instance, he notes that in the 1200s there were already _three_ guilds of paternoster-makers in Paris, divided by what material they worked in (one for bone and horn, one for coral and shell, one for amber and jet). If they've developed that far by the mid 1200s, that suggests there could have been one or more such guilds at least ten or twenty years earlier, and that's an era where every scrap of information about just _when_ paternoster beads became popular is helpful.

>Why they didn't go into reprinting almost immediately I have never been able
>to understand.  There were lots of people who wanted it and still do.

The V&A and Her Majesty's Stationery Office, who did the publishing for the Museum of London books, are government offices and they seem to have had limited funds for publishing -- which is why, for instance, the MoL books went out of print. Fortunately Boydell, a commercial house, has realized that there is much more of a market for these things, especially for serious re-enactors, and has put the MoL books back into print. (They have also been promised the other volumes of Henry VIII's inventory if they ever come out.) I think they're the best possibility for bringing _Medieval European Jewellery_ back into print -- but it would still be a dauntingly expensive project. I'd encourage people to write to Boydell and mention it -- they've demonstrated that they do listen to indications of demand.

____________________________________________________________
0  Chris Laning
|  <claning at igc.org>
+  Davis, California
http://paternoster-row.org  -  http://paternosters.blogspot.com
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