Honk, Honk! An American on London Roads

Tuesday I did it: I drove in London and beyond. I survived. I made mistakes, but none caused permanent harm. I photographed three churches, and they were all wonderful.

My adventure started earlier in the morning than I would have liked. I was taking a Zipcar, and the cost of reserving it from 7 to 7 was the same as taking it out for most of the day, so I just reserved it 7 to 7 even though I planned to use it 8 to 6. I wanted to drive toward Suffolk and Essex, so I picked a car as far east in London as I could, hoping to minimize my driving in London time. The car even had an auspicious name – Gilgamesh.

Unfortunately, at 6:30 a.m. I got a call: Gilgamesh was undrivable. No worries, though, they’d reserved another nearby car for me. A manual. Um, not OK. I learned to drive stick shift when I was sixteen, enough to not stall out as I drove the familiar country roads by my house. But sixteen was…well, two decades ago, and I’ve never owned a manual. I already was facing driving unfamiliar places, on roads marked with unfamiliar signs, in a country that drives on the left side of the road, in an unfamiliar car. I needed an automatic.

He found me one. Within walking distance of my house. On the NORTHWEST side of London. I would have to drive up Finchley Road to Brent Cross and around the North Circular (not the M25, the road that circles and defines the boundary of London, but the inner circle). Busy, busy roads. I also had to coordinate with my co-pilot, Ruth, who is a UK native with an interest in history but who (living in London as she does) does not have a driver’s license. Thanks to that snarl-up (figuring out where Ruth was meeting me would have been so much easier if we had both not just woken!) we were delayed getting on the road.

I find the Zipcar parking spot…I figure out how to unlock the Zipcar…I find the key…I start the car…I pull out of the parking space…and drive down the street on the wrong side. Oh well, minor side street, the car coming at me didn’t seem to care, and Ruth got me straightened out. Then I had to navigate Finchley Road (shudder). Made it north…got to Brent Cross…missed my exit. Arg! Find a side street, turn around. Every time I have to turn or merge I’m scared, I feel as if I don’t know where to look or when to go. The lights are different – they turn amber (they don’t say “yellow” here) before they turn green, to warn you to get ready to go. None of the lights are on lines over the street, but on posts on the edges of the road. Which is fine except that sometimes there are lanes beside you that, because of how they are merging or turning or whatever, might have a red light while you have a green – and I have to figure out, QUICKLY, whether the red light I see out of the corner of my eye applies to me. Even the straight stretches of road are a problem, because the driver’s seat is on the right side of the car, and my mental cues for how to center the vehicle in the lane aren’t working – I’m going too far to the left of my lane, and the lanes are narrower than anything I’m used to driving. I even drove up onto the curb (they spell it kerb!) once, and I accidentally folded back the passenger side rear view mirror twice, although those were on narrow village lanes.

So I’m driving too slowly, responding too slowly at turns, probably not staying well centered in my lane, and other drivers are letting me know. As they pull up behind me, or as they pass me, they honk. Ruth and I try to figure out what I’m doing wrong each time, but we aren’t always sure. Then I finally make it onto the motorway – the really big multi-lane highway – and there is much more honking. Before I can figure it out, a police car pulls up behind me, flashes lights at me, pulls alongside me, and waves at me. I nod OK, I see him – and assume he wants me to follow him off the road – but as I move over to exit, he zooms on down the road. I take the exit anyway, only to realize it is marked with a do not enter sign. At the bottom of the ramp I stop, look around my car and verify that nothing is wrong with it. I find that I’m beside some sort of police center with lots of vehicles; someone must be able to help me? I must have been doing something wrong, but what? Thankfully an officer pulls up and offers to help, assuming that I’m lost. As soon as I explain, he asks which lane I had been in, and it all becomes clear – I had been traveling in the lane that is reserved for “overtaking” (passing). Whew! I can solve THAT problem. Later I was thinking hard – how had I ended up in that lane? I think the “slip road” (entrance ramp) for the motorway must have dumped me into that “fast” lane, and since I didn’t know better I stayed there, not really wishing to change lanes or deal with merging. After all, every NC highway with which I’m familiar has me merge in on the right, into the “slow” lane.

After that, there was much less honking. Every time I got back into the car, though, I tended to pull out onto the right side of the road, until Ruth would correct me. Since we always stopped at tiny little streets not even marked with lines, this wasn’t ever an issue, just a reminder of how much driving is instinctual, and how much my “instincts” were leading me astray. Once I almost pulled out into oncoming traffic because I was turning right and looked to the left to see whether anyone was coming. I went through a ton of roundabouts, too – which are not totally foreign to me, but are still unfamiliar. Ruth did a LOT of coaching as I drove, and I asked a steady stream of questions. I’m usually a good driver, and with a little practice I think I’ll be OK driving here. Going to the churches certainly makes it worth the effort! Even though there was plenty of honking, I also found the drivers to be more polite than I expected – if I needed to change lanes or merge, I put my signal on and the driver behind me always let me in.

Driving through the small towns was another whole adventure, especially the parking. The first place I tried to go had a small church parking lot, and I pulled into it hoping for a space, without luck. Turning around to get back out was a nightmare! The space was so tiny and so tight, and the rented car had sensors both front and back to warn me when I was getting close to things. Ruth got out to direct, and it was almost like playing a tune with the car, setting off first the forward sensor tone and then the rear one as I inched back and forth and turned myself around. Thank GOODNESS the Zipcar was just a little VW Golf.

It doesn’t take long, once you get out of London, to be in the countryside. Narrow lanes, minimal signage, no places to stop for a toilet. Ruth was terribly amused by how awed I was to see thatched roofs on houses that are currently in use and updated with electricity. Thatched roofs! She drove me nearly crazy, though, pointed out Tudor buildings that we passed, because I couldn’t comfortably look away from the road to enjoy the sights. We saw a good number of them, exposed black beams sagging with age.

Due to the lateness of our departure and the extra driving necessitated by our west-side-of-London start, we only made it to three churches before the daylight faded. I had to refuel before parking, and although I knew EXACTLY where to find a petrol station on Finchley Road – I walk by it all the time – I missed it because it was behind a bus when I rounded the corner. Doubling back to get to it was a real nightmare, and I’m not completely sure that was a legal U-turn I did, but I had to do SOMETHING to get headed back south before the time ran out on my rental.

I guess my driving wasn’t too frightening, because Ruth says she’ll come with me next week when I drive down to Kent. Should be fun!

Westminster Abbey and Lady Margaret Beaufort

Over Christmas break I photographed my first monuments, which I just edited and put online. I learned that I have a lot to learn.

The first monument I photographed was that of Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. She died in 1509 and was memorialized in bronze by Italian sculptor Pietro Torrigiano; he made the effigies of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, so I knew the quality would be exceptional. Because Margaret was a vowess, her head covering is different – more like a widow – and since I want to recreate married woman’s dress, I’d never made seeing her effigy in Westminster a priority.

My mother-in-law and I visited Westminster Abbey  while the boys were in school. It is easy to get to, but with a £16 admission cost I needed either company who wanted to tour the Abbey or some reason to prioritize the visit. Also, the Abbey forbids photographs, and I’m not ready to write for permission to photograph in places that normally forbid it. First I need more experience visiting churches where I don’t have to get it right the first time.

The site advises budgeting an hour and a half to tour, but we spent more than twice that, listening to every stop along the audio tour. As we walked, I pointed out common themes and interesting features of the funerary art. There is a large Victorian brass on which the figures wear armor and costume from the mid-fifteenth century – but the lettering (and date) are 19th century. There were some unlabeled medieval effigies whose  anonymity tormented me. The Glastonbury chair with the patina of age made me smile…our chairs are well made, but I doubt they will ever look so venerable. The mosaic floor of semiprecious stones in front of the altar really drew my eye. I could only recognize the iconography on some of the saints; I should review my art history.

I realized almost immediately why photographs are forbidden – although it wasn’t unpleasantly crowded, the flow of tourists would be nearly impossible if people stopped to snap images or to avoid stepping into another person’s photograph. I honestly felt relieved that I could not possibly document the wonders I was beholding, because there were so many things to photograph, I would have taken all day just to make it out of the transept.

There are three early Tudor monuments with effigies at Westminster Abbey: Gyles 1st Lord Daubeney (+1508) and wife Elizabeth, Margaret Beaufort (+1509), and Henry VII (+1509) and Elizabeth of York (+1503). The latter three figures I knew reasonably well from the quality online images and the replicas of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York on the stairs at the National Portrait Gallery. I also knew that the original effigies of the king and queen would be obscured by a decorative metal screen. The first monument – Gyles and Elizabeth – I could only find a small image and snippet about online, but I doubted it would yield much costume data.

When we made it to Gyles, I found a beautiful and well-preserved monument. If I cared for armor I would have studied his form, but hers was not what I sought. The lady wears a medieval sideless surcoat, a fashion that I believe did more to indicate her rank for posterity than to reflect actual clothing she may have worn in her lifetime; a cloak further obscures the details of her dress. Her hair is down and flowing under a strange coif that I do not know how to interpret. The brim is thick, like a wreath or the turned-up edge of a knitted winter cap. I believe that as I explore other monuments, I may find actual wreaths of carved stone leaves; her style is neither the norm nor an anomaly.  The top of the coif is an ornate net, probably decorated with pearls or beads at the intersections of the threads. Is this a fanciful object that, like the sideless surcoat, conveyed a message to contemporary observers? Is this a style of headwear she sported in life? I don’t know, but it was not the hood or transitional English gown I came to photograph, so I admired the monument, puzzled out the inscription, and moved on.

Next we passed Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Thank goodness I had spent plenty of time studying them at the National Portrait Gallery, for they are almost invisible behind the screen.

Margaret of Beaufort’s effigy came next, and here a familiar sight yielded fresh new ideas. My mother-in-law stood patiently while I talked through what I had never seen before, and theorized about possible construction methods. She supplied pen and paper with which to sketch the headdress, and helped me estimate the dimensions of different points on the effigy. The most fascinating feature was that the cloth around Margaret’s face folds under itself, creating a smooth edge to the front of the veil by layers of fabric, instead of folding back to reveal a lining, a technique familiar to me from other 15th-16th century hoods.

After soaking in all that I could of Margaret Beaufort, I continued the tour, jittery with the excitement of discovery. I wanted photos to refer to when, months or years hence, I attempt to recreate that hood. When we returned our audio guides and stepped outside to the cloisters, I stopped. I had to ask for permission; if they said no, I’d just be where I was now, with no photos. I asked. My interest in the effigy for researching historical costume seemed good enough to the staff member, because he assigned a cheerful young volunteer to go with me, and I got to take my photos. I promised I only needed two or three shots – odd angles like looking down at the crown of her head, not the views I could buy in the gift shop – but my companion urged me to take as long as I needed. I explained what I was doing, and what I was seeing, as I photographed, and she suggested additional shots (Have you gotten her shoes? How about that deer thing at her feet? Do you need one of the other side?) We discussed Margaret Beaufort, and what an incredible lady she was. It was simply delightful.

Afterward I rejoined my mother-in-law, toured quickly through the gardens and the cloisters, finished the last little bit of the tour where one passed the coronation chair, and we made our way toward Tom and lunch and a tour of the London Google offices.

The Simple Beauty of a Map

Last November I enjoyed several weeks devouring books at the National Art Library and the British Library, but then I stopped going out, and I stopped posting. Why the quiet? I was crunching data. (And Christmas happened, with three straight weeks of visiting grandparents, during which time everyone in my family got sick with annoying upper respiratory afflictions; we’re all better now.)

I’ve been thinking recently about what qualifies me to do embark on this research project, and I think it might be simply my skill at doing research and managing data. I’m certainly not trained or exceptionally talented as a costume designer, seamstress/tailor, photographer, cultural historian or art historian. I’m not even particularly skilled at web design, for sharing my findings online. The only time my biology background has been of even the remotest use is when I noticed someone incorrectly capitalizing the scientific names of animals used as fur in the sixteenth centuries. As anyone familiar with my penchant for volunteering can testify, I can organize, I can collect data, and I can process that data to get things done. So I suppose it is only natural that I’ve attacked this church monument photographing project not by driving through the countryside with a camera, but with spreadsheets and maps.

The libraries provided me with the software I used to create my starting database of monuments and brasses. I set up a spreadsheet and started sorting, deleting, organizing, classifying. I created Pinterest boards for all the funerary monument and brass images I could find online, so that I could better determine which churches were most worth visiting. Using this data, I rated the monuments and made an initial classification of the clothing styles represented on each.

Then I tracked down church data. Websites, contact info, open hours or keyholder information (when available), addresses (mostly “Church Street, name of town” although often the name of the town is somewhat questionable, as little hamlets are for postcode purposes classified as belonging to larger nearby towns. I honestly have no idea how mail carriers keep from going nuts.) and — most challenging of all, exact latitude and longitude. I did this step twice, once quickly finding a lat/long for each town, and then this past week I spent two days painstakingly using Google Maps to find the latitude and longitude that would place a little arrow right on top of the church I wanted to visit. Sometimes this was easy, because the church had already been officially added to Google Maps. Sometimes this involved finding the little town and then skimming the satellite view until I located what was most likely the church (I looked for the regular pattern of small shadows that indicated a graveyard) and going to streetview to verify that I was indeed looking at a church, not a large community hall. You would think that steeples and bell towers would be good clues, but they don’t show up well in satellite view, and only a few of the churches I hunted were large enough to have the cross-shaped transept.

I recruited my wonderful and patient husband to figure out how to create a custom Google Map (and to help me debug it every time I made changes and broke it), and this is my result: Map of Monumental Effigies of Women from between 1475 and 1550, rated by color (green is best quality, light blue second best, dark blue third, and very worn/poor quality effigies are excluded). To me this map is beautiful, useful, crammed with data. But when I think of how much time and effort this map took to create, or at least the data to be collected, it seems like a pitiful result. So I wouldn’t write another blog post until I’d gotten a little more done.

After all the work I’d put into making that map, I thought I should finally write up more clearly what I’m trying to research, where and how I’m looking for data, and what I’ve learned so far. This meant many hours spent frowning over my website, trying to write summaries about subjects in which I have no expertise, such as illumination and portraiture and church monuments. It meant lots of searching my head for sources, because I took only fair notes last fall during my library days, and none of them had yet been transcribed. It was, as I hoped it would be, motivation to better document what I’ve learned so far and how I know what I know.

Going through my library notes reminded me of books I want to purchase, so I placed a couple orders at AbeBooks.co.uk. Finally, I found something that costs LESS in the UK than it does in the States — niche books about English art and costume history that were published in the UK! Huzzah! This makes me want to find used bookstores and go browsing for more…or go to the library and better ascertain which tempting titles are truly worthy of purchase. I need to update my LibraryThing catalog…if I buy books too quickly, this might be useful for me to be able to check when I’m out at a store so that I can remember what I’ve found so far.

But this is somewhat of a distraction: the most important thing for me to do, now that I have a working map, is to figure out where I’m going to go look for monuments, and then do it. I’ve already started just a little bit.

Getting ready for Christmas

Getting ready for the holidays has been different this year, no surprise. Even though we’ll have three solid weeks of grandparents visits spanning the kids’ two week semester break (the day we take Tom’s mother to the airport we’re collecting my parents) and although I’ve had to navigate my cluelessness about where to shop in London, I’m feeling prepared.

Partially, I’m less busy than usual. I spend most of my days when Weyland is at preschool working on my database of early Tudor monuments and effigies, but I also have time to take care of house cleaning,  cooking,  shopping and such. I’m not in charge of any Christmas pageants this year, so I don’t need to sew, rehearse, build scenery, coerce volunteers, find more singers, or encourage actors. We’re part of a singing group that is casual and fun with no holiday gigs. There are no “historic Christmases” happening that I should be volunteering in costume at this year. I’m rather surprised to see that we’re so far into December, because there is so little stress and madness around me, both in my home and on the streets of the city. Back home I’m used to feeling “booked” from late November on.

We didn’t have Thanksgiving. At all. We had a video chat with my family and then Tom’s brother, but there was no fancy dinner, no travel, no time off school. That is one thing that shocked me when I first looked at the school calendar: it is so orderly. You start in early September, go until a one week break in October, and go again until a two week break in December. No holidays, teacher workdays, or wiggly calendar. With the exception of the first week of the quarter when the teachers get Monday to set up, either you go to school that week or you don’t. They get quarterly bank holidays off, too, but that won’t occur during a week that isn’t already a break week until next May. One day next February they have off so that parents and teachers can have conferences. It is so simple, straightforward, and UNLIKE the school calendars I’m used to in North Carolina!

I don’t have many parties to attend. Moving brings with it a chance of being a tad lonely; thank goodness for the SCA. We have weekly SCA singing practices that nourish both my social and my musical sides. We have monthly “revels” (themed afternoon learning something, followed by a potluck feast in garb and dancing and maybe singing). At the Christmas revel last weekend I got to sing a good pile of music, mostly holiday and mostly pre-1625. Weyland seemed to love the dancing. Dragging a toddler around while learning new 15th-century dances is a bit awkward, but his giggles more than make up for it. That was the sort of Christmas party I wanted to attend. Tom’s company party, where I would know no one and would have to find a babysitter on a school night, I skipped. No idea how to find a sitter here, other than to sign up for some expensive service. I just don’t know many neighbors or any teens.

Taking care of the Christmas prep at home is almost entirely my job. I have almost all the Christmas presents ordered, bought, procured…um, except for the handwork that I’m obviously putting off doing just now. Some of it we’re getting “imported” via grandma. Our DVD player and Wii won’t play the movies and games we can buy in the UK, so I’ve  shipped orders to my mother-in-law. Most shopping I’ve done online. I’ve pulled off two successful in-store toddler distractions where I let him choose a toy and got him to forget about it by the time we walked out. The one today was really funny, in part because I didn’t think I’d be able to do it. He is a train nut. When he saw the Chuggington-themed playdough set, he announced that it was “MY Chuggington toy that I going take MY house.” When I walked out without buying it — cashier needed to do a price check and we needed to find the only nearby toilets across the street at McDonalds — I guess he gave up. Somehow it didn’t connect for him that we went straight back to that store, to that cash register. The transaction and bagging happened on the counter above his head, AND I quickly refocused him on choosing a chocolate at the discount store next door where I was picking out candies for future gingerbread decorating.

I’ve been slowly acquiring the necessities for holiday cooking and baking, and planning meals that will appeal to my extended family. Gingerbread potentiality is now under control. However, I do NOT understand why I cannot buy chocolate chips in huge and inexpensive bags like I can back home. Don’t Brits know how amazing home baked chocolate chip cookies are?

Decorating the house has been a real conundrum because of what got left stateside. Almost everything got put into storage when we moved except what fit into our attic and outside storage shed. When we realized that we were going to have a huge shipment sent by sea, I asked a neighbor to collect a small number of items from our house and take them to the storage facility to be shipped. Thanks to her efforts the boys have bikes, scooters, trikes, bows and arrows; I have a suit coat that I forgot and one shoe of Weyland’s that got left in the corner of a luggage item we decided at the last minute not to bring; and I asked for the one really important box of Christmas ornaments and stockings. The little china village, the Christmas books, the wrapping paper and bows, and the tree stand got left behind — and the last item has made me shake my head over my poor planning. I suppose I was thinking that we’d somehow acquire an artificial tree while here, but no go — the only ones that look passable also cost something like $100 and up. The real trees are also expensive, but I signed up months ago for a couple of those daily deals emails, and through one of those got a tree “80% off with free delivery”. We’ll see how good it looks when it shows up, but it is at least a start. I figured that I was paying so little for the tree, give up and buy and inexpensive stand for it.

And now my unsolved problem: the lights. I actually have strings and strings of tree lights, but they won’t work here. If I were to plug them in, even with a “tourist adapter” so that they’d go into the wall, the difference in voltage would, I think, fry them. Lights are EXPENSIVE, and if I bought proper British ones I’d only be able to use them one year. We only have two voltage converters in the house, and they’re in use. Hmmmm….

Doing much more decorating is out of the question, since nails to hold garlands would displease the landlady. We might get around to making paper chains and snowflakes and just taping them on the walls, but I think my always subdued decoration scheme will be even more scaled back this year. Which at least means less cleanup.

The reduced decor will blend well with our British surroundings. Here is the extent of the “Christmasy” at the closest mall-like collection of stores. This is so unlike the huge trees decked with gaudy kid-sized baubles and the little animatronic snow-covered scenes that I grew up seeing at Hanes Mall that I almost want to laugh in relief.

Although at my house there has been much rehearsing of the trombone part of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” (which mostly sounds like blorp, blorp, blorp, even when Garrett gets it right) I have heard hardly any Christmas music in stores. When I do, it isn’t the blaring Christmas music of the 60s and 70s, and so I’ve not really been bothered. No one’s grandma has gotten run over by a reindeer (shudder) within my earshot, and no little kids are bragging about how they’re going to blab about momma kissing Santa. Because divorce proceedings at the holidays are just SO in tune with the Christmas spirit.

You know, I was in a better mood before I started remembering what Christmas is like back in the U.S.

Crunching through Data

For two weeks I have inched my way through thousands of data points, trying to make sense of where I will travel to look for costume information. Late this week I hit my stride, and data editing took over my brain. I couldn’t walk past the computer without wanting to work. I put off eating, wanting to get just that little bit more accomplished, to run one more search, and oh maybe I wasn’t THAT hungry…. I displayed a similar disregard for the concept of a “sane bedtime.”

My goal is to recreate women’s costume between the time at which the English gable hood became fashionable (probably the late 1490s, when Elizabeth of York was queen) and the time when nobles began flipping up the lappets, like the women here. I want costume during the reign of Henry VII, not his son Henry VIII. No matter how often people refer to Henry VIII’s reign as “early Tudor,” his dad did some fantastic work stabilizing the English monarchy for 25 years before the young, unprepared king took the throne in 1509. Not many costumers try to research Henry VII’s reign, because there aren’t many portraits painted during this time. Holbein didn’t show up in England until 1526 to paint Henry VIII’s queens and leading nobles. There was almost no illumination happening in England in 1500, only a handful of books being published with woodcuts, and few people commissioning busts as artwork for display in the home. To find images of English people wearing typical English costume in 1500, I have to look at what remains: funerary monuments.

To find which monuments I want to see and where they are, I started with the output of a program that catalogs every feature described in the Pevsner’s Architectural Guides. It would only allow me to save 100 or fewer results in each .csv file, so although I could use the software at the British Library instead of buying it, I had 63 files to combine before I started sorting. Copy, paste, copy, paste, etc.

Once I had a spreadsheet with tabs for the different types of queries I had run (15th century and 16th century lists of brasses, monuments, church windows, church wall paintings, and church woodwork), I had to trim the entries I didn’t need. If the date of death was before 1475 or after 1550, I cut it. I have to look well outside my target years because monuments are not always made soon after death, but many monuments are made within the donor’s lifetime, especially if a spouse died. I also think that accurately recreating the hood circa 1500 will require me to know well what type of hat it evolved from, and what it evolved into. I have no interest in clerical costume, so I deleted priests and bishops (how very Henry VIII of me, I thought). Men whose monuments did not include a wife also got axed. I found that the glass, woodwork, and painted walls did not have subjects of use to me — I want images of the rich nobles who were funding the churches, not allegorical scenes, animals or inscriptions.

Then I started searching for images of the carved stone monuments. I am most interested in seeing these, as effigies are the most realistic art I can find. The monumental brasses of the time are not only two dimensional and smaller than life size, but the art on them is simplistic with inaccurate human proportions and very little perspective to the line drawings. They not only ARE flat, they LOOK flat. Although the brasses are what I knew best from my research time in the UNC Art library (there are far more good books about brasses than about memorial sculptures) they are not the ideal resource for recreating three dimensional clothing and accessories.

Oh Google image search, how I love thee. Many of the monuments on my list do not have effigies, and some of the effigies are so badly weathered or defaced as to be impossible to interpret. I can only judge the quality of a monument, and decide how hard to work to see it, if I know what costume details I might be able to glean from it. I also finally found a use for my Pinterest account — when I do image searches and find effigies or brasses, I save them there.

Once I had images, I began sort the monuments and brasses into four costume types: 1 is solidly 15th century dress (a Burgundian gown or a sideless surcoat, headgear is not similar to gable hood, but one of the other crazy styles). 2 is transitional dress (between Burgundian and Henrican) without a gable hood, but often with a hat that features a wide band on the front similar to the lappets on the gable hood. 3 is transitional dress with a gable hood that hangs down in front. 4 is anything later, more Henry VIII in style, including large sleeves, a gable hood with lappets flipped up, or a French hood.

I am most of the way through my first attempt to find the monuments, with over 100 images found. Those I cannot find, I will look up in the printed copies of the Pevsner Guides (conveniently located in my local library, a 10 minute walk away). I have looked up a few of the hard-to-locate monuments in the books and found sometimes an alternate spelling of the name, a revised date of death, or a more complete description of the monument which helped me locate an image. I also plan to search for images of brasses, but if I don’t find them easily, I don’t plan to scour the internet for photos — brasses just don’t attract as much attention as monuments, so fewer of them are online.

Once I rate the monuments according to how useful they will be for my research, I plan to make a map and start planning church-combing adventures. I’ll have to figure out which churches are locked and which require keys, and whether any have restrictions about photographing or making brass rubbings. It wouldn’t hurt me to learn a little bit more about making good digital photographs in low light, and I need to buy paper and wax for brass rubbing. I’ll need to read up on each church, getting as many clues as possible about where to look for the brasses, which are sometimes on walls behind furniture or on the floor under a rug. I have a lot to learn. I’m thrilled to be making progress.

 

Stuff that Shapes our Lives

We’re getting settled in. I know I’ve been saying that, but we really still are “settling in.” Last Friday movers brought us some furniture and everything that had been in boxes in the storage unit in the U.S. Even after a marathon unpacking session yesterday (which I punctuated with passes through my research notes, making plans for future outings) there are boxes lingering in all the corners, along the walls, over the flat surfaces.

The books we have mostly tamed, in part because the bulk of the adult library is still in the attic in Durham. I’m just a little sad to not have all my books, but the most important ones (music and some of the history) are here. I can live without the fiction, classic literature and poetry, computer textbooks, parenting books, and nature guides. All of the children’s books showed up. All 1500 of them, by Tom’s estimate, ranging from a few board books to full-length young adult novels and everything inbetween. They don’t fit well on the built-in bookshelf we have; many are both too tall and too deep. I swear, I will winnow them down a bit this year, although my mom and I did trim our collection a great deal last summer.

As I unpack I am continually grateful that I purged so much before moving. Yes, I have cubic yards of fabric to unbox, refold, and put away (the tubs I stored them in back home won’t fit in the cabinets here) but at least I left many large trash bags of fabric in other people’s hands! Yes, the contents of my homeschool cabinet (math manipulatives, workbooks, puzzles, science equipment) are here and frustrating to store, but think of how many boxes of stuff I gave away! Yes, all the papers from the filing cabinet are here (but not the cabinet itself, as per our request) but this means that I have a chance to go through the contents and recycle as much as possible. As I unpack I am finding still more items that we can do without, and setting them aside to pass along when I can find time.

I’m great at giving things away to friends, family, or freecycle. But I’m also fantastic about finding free stuff. The streets in my neighborhood are a never ending buffet of temptations, because it is a fairly nice place and people have a habit of putting their usable castoffs on the sidewalk, free for passersby. I brought home a wooden riding toy for Weyland, a stroller with a little life left, a small bookshelf (and sore arms the next day!), a bendy cube toy, a brand-new oven mitt, styrofoam for a craft project, fleece blankets from IKEA, and a large rolling bag that is great for packing SCA gear in for events. I have been sorely tempted by some rugs that I would have loved to use on the floor of our pavilion, but decided against them.

My craft supplies also taunt me, even more than the fabric, reminding me that I have materials for many more projects than I have time in which to do them. I must make time this year to use more of it up, AND resist buying additional supplies. This will not be easy. Although if I do start scrapbooking again, I will probably permit myself to buy more albums. It would be nice to go through and scrapbook the keepsakes I’ve been saving since highschool, since they also moved across the ocean with us. Sigh.

Getting Down to Serious Research

I haven’t been ignoring my blog, I just keep composing in my mind while away from the computer, and no one has yet invented a method for me to transfer the results onto the screen.

I’ve been lurking in libraries and trolling online catalogs. Last week I spent two days at the National Art Library in the Victoria and Albert Museum. That museum is big, and confusing, and pieced together like a multi-story crazy quilt. I got lost and had to ask for directions four times just to find the library, and then got lost trying to find the cloakroom to check my bag, and then got turned all around trying to find the restroom. At least when you get lost at the V&A, there are interesting things to see. Distracting exhibits on silver, stained glass, jewelry, Buddhist sculpture, ballgowns, 20th century art…so I even enjoyed getting lost. And once I figure out a route once, I’m good with directions and usually get it right when I retrace it.

The staff at the V&A were quite helpful and the computer system is easy to work with. I went to the prints and drawings library (totally different part of the museum; more getting lost) and the librarian seemed genuinely remorseful that he couldn’t produce some tidbit of art that would inform my research. I thanked him and told him that it was OK, finding nothing still was a data point for me, since it meant I had an adequate grasp of what images might be available.

This past weekend I grappled with bibliography issues. I have pages and pages of call numbers and titles of books at the UNC Libraries; many of the books on them I at least looked at, others I never got my hands on. Some I have thoroughly plumbed, digitally scanning every image that might help and scanning or summarizing the text; others could not be checked out and required more time than I could devote on that library trip; still others were in storage and I never requested them, or in circulation and I never went back after they had been returned. My trips to UNC were irregular, and my research areas varied. When I was pregnant, I looked at books about birth customs. When I was preparing my Italian men’s clothing research, my sources were Italian or German. When I worked on English women’s costume, I looked at art from England, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. And I had plenty of tangents into other topics — learning about Margaret of Beaufort so that I could write poetry in her voice, or looking for 16th century Turkish art so that I could make the boys clothes to attend a Middle Eastern themed event. (I love UNC libraries.)

I sorted these library lists and made a single long list on my V&A library account of books that they have that I want to see because I think they’d be useful for my English women’s costume in 1500 research. Some I know I have seen before, but it has been so long, I should look at them again. I made a smaller list of books that the V&A didn’t have, but the British Library did.

I also started a Librarything account, on which I am only attempting to list the nonfiction costume and history related books that I own. (I’ll have to list lots more once our furniture arrives from the U.S. — it still isn’t here.) I already love the feature where they recommend other books based on what you own; I certainly could spend a lot of money on books, despite my deep and abiding love of libraries and their “free books.”

This week I spent two days at the British Library. I’ve been just a little nervous about applying for a reader card there — I mean, I’ve never before had to go through an interview to prove that I’m worthy to read books in a library! But it was easy, the staff was helpful, and I got what I most came for: the searchable database of the Pevsner’s Architectural guides. Which I could have ordered, but then I would have had to pay for it AND wait for it. The software is a bit of a pain to use — I messed up the first time and I had to ask them to hold the disk for me a few more days, but the second time I got everything I wanted. Now the data awaits me, sitting on my computer in a nice spreadsheet, just begging me to go trolling through it looking for interesting churches to visit and memorial artwork to scrutinize.

I also got one image I’ve been wanting for at least a year and a half. It is a full color version of this illuminated page from the Writhe Garter Book. The British Library has one of the facsimile versions that was published in the 1990s. I wondered why I had to go to the Rare Books room to see it…until they brought it to me. It had to have been more than two feet high. Huge. Beautiful. Vibrant color. With really intelligent discussions about how to date the artwork. It was almost too big to fit onto their super-duper digital imaging scanner thingy, but it did! For 36 pence, that image was mine (with a British Library watermark across it, but I can handle that).

I’ve been reading the bibliographies of the books I’ve requested almost more carefully than the articles inside. Today after enjoying The Illuminated Page: ten centuries of illuminated manuscripts in the British Library by Janet Backhouse (really lovely book, great color reproductions, nice overview of a large span of time with just enough text to inform with bogging you down), I looked through her recommended reading list and realized that I had read every book on her list that related to my time period, except for one that I hadn’t seen yet but already had on my list at the V&A.

I looked at The Depiction of Clothing in French Medieval Manuscripts by Patricia M. Gathercole but found little there that a SCAdian with a penchant for costume research couldn’t tell me. But the book did have a bibliography, so I started jotting down titles…only to glance over to my left and see one of the listed books sitting on the top of the stack I’d just picked up from the reservation desk.

Which means that, I have really got to organize my references. Now. I believe there will be hours of playing with Endnote in my near future, since that is the software we already have sitting on our computer.

Ah, the happiness of making progress, getting things done, figuring things out. My head is so full of names of kings and queens, painters and printers, images of art, dates and places. I looked through a book with the complete paintings of Holbein today, satisfied myself that I had seen every image in there, and kept going. I wonder how many images I’m storing in my head related to this research? Holbein isn’t someone whose work I’ve delved deeply, because he worked in England long enough after my target date that the costumes really had changed and what he depicts looks radically different from what I see on c.1500 funerary art.

I also realized this week how important it is for me to be present in England, learning the real and current geography of London, for me to comprehend what I read. I was skimming/reading an article about printers, scribes, writers, bookbinders and their ilk in England between 1475 and and 1500. I wanted to see whether there were any names that I should be searching on, any artists whose corpus I had not perused. But the discussion was more about the mechanics of who set up shop where and why. To slog my way through the academic paper, I had to create a mental map, relating the guildhalls of London to the Inns of Court (just outside the City walls, and thus their jurisdiction), and thinking about the travel time between Westminster (where William Caxton set up his press) and the City.

Which I know, because I’ve walked it. Wow.

Hampton Court Palace

This week has been wonderful. Last weekend I met a fabulous assortment of “big names” in the field of medieval and Renaissance textile and costume research (more on that later!) and during the week Tom took off work for family adventuring, making the most of the boys’ half term break. Monday we went to Hampton Court Palace, Tuesday we left Weyland at preschool so that we could experience the International War Museum, Wednesday we saw Brave in the movie theater (an unusual treat for us), Thursday we spent a quiet day at home, and today the older boys and I returned to Hampton Court Palace.

We had a fantastic time. Hampton Court Palace is mostly about Henry VIII (especially now, when the recreated crown just went on display last weekend) which is early Tudor enough that I have a natural affinity for the place, but a nagging fear that I’m dragging my kids along on my adventure. But Tallis asked to go back there again. He asked to go back. Those not living with him probably cannot understand the magnitude of that request; we did something historic and unique to England and he liked it enough to want to do it again. I think the only other repeats he’s requested since arriving involved food.

Monday we began by taking our first train trip. The half hour ride was made more engaging by an impromptu game in which we “collected points” for things we could spot out the windows: one for a train, two for a bridge, five for a bus, ten for a church. We debarked to a day both crisp and beautiful: the bright blue sky, the swan landing on the water as we crossed the bridge, the deep red  ivy on the wall, the ornate and varied brick chimneys on the palace, and dozens of other things delighted me.

The kids went first to the historic maze, and all enjoyed running up and down its paths. A little game of tag in the gardens went fine with a morning snack, but when grouchiness impeded our ramble we realized that we’d have to stop for lunch. We left the palace to eat at Pizza Express, a much higher end joint than the name would imply, which wins great approval from our children because its kid’s menu comes with not only a pizza and dough balls, but ice cream and a bambiccino — steamed whipped milk sprinkled with cocoa powder. The adult options are worthy of repeat visits, too.

After lunch, we joined in the costumed living history activities, and the kids joined forces with the English courtiers to “play spy”. I left them with Tom and checked out the chapel with Weyland, and smiled fondly at the portraits in the gallery. Weyland delighted me by identifying Elizabeth of York in the copy of the Whitehall portrait as “Mommy”.

All three boys decorated crowns, dressed in the loaner “gowns” the palace provided, and tried out the children’s audio tour, though we made little progress through it before the next living history scene we wanted to join. (One packing failure: my camera stayed home. My smartphone can’t take good photos in a dim castle.) While I made crowns Tom  checked out galleries about Mantegna’s Triumphs of Caesar and the young Henry VIII, but when we finished enjoying the theatrics in the Great Hall and had to leave — the palace was about to close! — it felt as if we had hardly begun to explore.

I still feel that way, as our return today deepened our experience more than it broadened it. The train ran smoothly, the weather was nearly perfect, the maze hadn’t rearranged itself at all (which Tallis proved by leading us through unerringly on his first try) and the living history experience was even more magnificent now that we knew what to expect.

Museums and historic sites all over London advertise special  half term activities, but those at Hampton Court are unlike any I’ve ever enjoyed. Seven costumed interpreters play out one day in August 1546, when the ailing Henry VIII welcomes French ambassadors to his court, hoping to sign a peace treaty. The degree to which the youthful audience is included in the script amazed me and delighted my children so much that almost all that we did today was to participate in this reenactment.

We joined an English gentleman and his lady wife, relatives of the deceased but still lauded third wife Jane Seymour, in the courtyard to greet the two noble Frenchmen, heralded in fine style by the costumed musician. The Spanish Ambassador was hanging around, cracking snide jokes but downplaying his presence. The entourage moved into the Great Hall, and then the Great Watching Chamber, where we met Henry VIII and his sixth wife Catherine Parr.

During a lull while the actors retreated for negotiations, the boys discovered the game Fox and Geese. We played it quite a while before meandering down the hallway toward the next reenactment, pausing only to enjoy the portraiture and pose Garrett in the Page’s Room.

When the French unexpectedly demanded the return of Boulogne (a place on the continent that Henry’s troupes captured at great cost) the peace seemed derailed and we were treated to one of Henry’s famous tempers.

After lunch the boys, having noticed that the spying parties split and followed three different actors to interrogate different suspects, wisely selected an alternate adventure to the one they enjoyed last time. On Monday they asked the French Ambassadors about the reason for the changed demands, but today they asked Princess Mary what she knew of the whole affair. When the spies convened in Henry’s council chamber to advise the king, Tallis boldy reported the findings of his contingent: Princess Mary knew that the Spanish ambassador opposed the peace accord, and yet told no one.

Soon after, the children again called on Mary and found her fretting. Her lineage, half English and half Spanish (her mother was Henry’s first wife Catherine of Aragon), made her suspect, since it was logical that her kinsman the Spanish emperor might wish to disrupt peace between France and England. The English courtier summoned from their number advisers for the king. Henry truly asked them about how to repair relations with his daughter, listened to their suggestions, and spoke with feeling about the complexities of being a king. My children, now comfortable with the actors and with scenario, were of course sitting in front and quite vocal.

After an awkward attempt at reconciliation between Henry and Mary, we proceeded to the Great Hall where the children rehearsed a masque. Garrett and Tallis participated in this on Monday, too — they had been in the chorus and had danced the simple celebratory Pavane. Today they knew to volunteer more enthusiastically, and Garrett got picked for one of the main rolls: Saint Denis. The story was simple, told in rhymed verse by one of the Frenchmen: Saint George (England) and Saint Denis (France) were friends but when a terrible worm (dragon) showed up it cause such a stink by farting that each country blamed the other and seemed near to war. Saint George and Saint Denis rode out looking for the worm, but it hid until Saint Denis challenged it to a farting contest. The contest went fine until Saint Denis soiled himself (as you know, when you work hard at farting, you “risk the follow through”). Saint George rode to his friend’s aid, put his sword “where the sun don’t shine” and the worm, full of gas but unpleasantly plugged, exploded. This play was a PERFECT level of potty humor for most of the children in attendance. Tallis again joined the chorus and dancing. Henry entered wearing his fantastic jeweled crown, a peace was worked out — the French agreed to pay a great sum for Boulogne — and the play was performed.

This whole story took the entire day — we arrived just after the palace opened and left as they were closing. Today I brought my camera, but due to the complexities of our still not having all our furniture, the computer that has the photos does not have internet. I will have to share pictures later.

Getting Research Rolling

Last week Weyland started preschool and I started research. Finally!

I joined the The Medieval Dress and Textile Society and will attend their Autumn meeting Saturday. The topic is linen undergarments, including those German bra-like garments everyone has been buzzing about. Since I have been known for my reconstruction of undergarments…or at least the display of said product…I have great interest in the presentations.

I joined the Monumental Brass Society, and will attend their November meeting. I need to decide which of the many books about brasses I wish to buy. UNC’s Art Library had a good collection, so I checked out what I wanted. Now I want to own some of the books. My next difficulty is to figure out where to preview copies of the books, because even ones I’ve seen — and there are many that I have not — I need to open to know whether they contain material relevant to my research. So many incredible libraries around, and yet I don’t know where to start.

I need to pay for membership in the Church Monuments Society, because I’ve already gotten a wealth of information from members (I emailed my research proposal to the main contact person, who forwarded it). I have seen images of a great many memorial brasses from 1480-1520, but the art on them is not only a flat line drawing, it often poorly conveys a three dimensional perspective, and proportionally crafted human figures were clearly not a primary concern. Carved tombs, if I can find them, are a better source for costume information. Because the images I want are not the standard “pretty view of the face” and because printing photographs is more difficult than black and white artwork (like a brass rubbing), I haven’t seen many useful images of monuments. I’ll have to go out and see those tombs myself, which means figuring out which churches have carvings I’d like to see. This is quite a daunting task, since I can only name one place with women’s tombs of my era: Westminster Abbey, which has both Elizabeth of York and Margaret Beaufort. I can’t take photographs there, and I have to pay to get in, so I’ll let that visit wait a little while. Some day when I need to soak up beautiful architecture, I’ll go.

But since the point of being in England was to SEE THINGS I also went out last Thursday to the National Portrait Gallery. The image I wanted most to see, Elizabeth of York’s portrait, is off display. However, I walked into the early Tudor gallery just after a class of 11-year-old students, and their teachers were leading a most interesting and in-depth presentation. So I lingered, and lingered, and listened. I was impressed by how much the children knew about Tudor history and how many visual cues they were able to read from the paintings.

I read all the wall plaques in the room. I stood really close to the cartoon of Henry VIII so that I could see the pin-prick holes they would have dusted chalk through to transfer the outline onto a wall. Then I went downstairs to the digital area and read ALL the information online about the portraits of Henry VII and the young Henry VIII. And then I went back upstairs and looked at everything they mentioned, found the little daubs of paint and the irregular gilding they had described. I just LOVE these details, when people analyze pigments and tree rings to figure out when painting were painted! Makes me wonder why I wasn’t an art history major. I noticed (for the first time, which is sad, as the information is on the NPG website) which of the “early Tudor” portraits are actually copies from the late 16th through 18th centuries — and immediately these images got mentally marked “less reliable” in my mind.

Then I sought the other object I’d come for, the reproduction of the effigy from Elizabeth of York’s tomb. It took help from two staff members to find it, perched high in a recess above the front stair, but once I found it, I stared at it. Stood, and stared. Thanks to the stairs I could view it from many different angles, including from above. So I stood, soaking it in, describing the angles of the gable hood in my mind until I couldn’t focus any more. And then I’d move to another spot. I even left, wandered idly through other galleries, other centuries, and returned.

I made a few connections about how the hood goes together. I am also getting a sense of why the French hood and gable hood could be contemporary styles that switched back and forth depending on who was queen. I have always looked at them as being SO DIFFERENT…and I think this is because I’ve seen far too many portraits that were painted late 16th century or later (and thus painted by people who had never seen the actual garments) and because I didn’t reject ENOUGH of the design that the Tudor Tailor proposed for reproducing the early style hood. I’ve always questioned their pattern a bit, differing on how far this edge should extend, or what angle these two pieces should join…not just completely saying “sure, it looks good, works on stage — but it is just plain WRONG if you’re trying to reproduce the actual bonnet.” Need to adjust my head…sort out the images I know and put the ones that aren’t painted by contemporaries further in the back…. Which is why I’m bopping around doing all this looking at stuff!

Right now I’m seeking portraits in museums. No good telling everyone that I have to work from funerary monuments because there aren’t any portraits if I don’t go LOOK at the museums with the most likelihood of having such early Tudor portraits. A family trip to Hever Castle should happen soon, just so that I can check out the Tudor paintings they have there. Because THOSE aren’t available online in any decent size!

I’m at the point where I can say: I’m sure there are things out there that I want to see, but for the most part I don’t know where they are. This is particularly true of sculpture — I do know vaguely where to find many of the brasses published in books. I need to comb libraries and websites to figure out where the churches are that I want to visit, and then secure permissions and plan trips to see them.

I got a great thrill during the visit two weekends ago to the Tower of London. In the chapel, built early in Henry VIII’s reign, is a tomb to a husband and wife. Although I couldn’t linger long — had to clear out for the next tour group — I was able to walk up to within inches of the monument and study it. Garrett asked me as we walked out whether I had learned anything, and I gave him an enthusiastic yes — the monument shows two pieces of embroidery down the lappet on the hood, one along the front edge, the other along the back. Different patterns of embroidery. I couldn’t take photos, but I got the address that I should write to request permission to photograph.

Having a great time. Learning lots. (Learning more about living in London than about costuming, but still, learning lots!)

Trains for Weyland

Weyland loves trains. He has loved them with a passion ever since we visited Tweetsie Railroad a year ago. Show him paper, he asks you to draw a train. Favorite board book? Freight Train by Donald Crews. Favorite toy? Wooden Thomas the Tank Engine train tracks. Favorite Android app? Rail Maze. Favorite thing to do in London? Ride the train (subways count).

Tuesday I took Weyland to a museum just for him: the London Transportation Museum. It doesn’t usually show up on lists of child-friendly things to do about London, but it should. I thought of it because I used to take toddler-Garrett to the Wilmington Railroad Museum, a low-budget place that is really just an excuse to house model trains in a building with a few historic items, and a couple retired railroad cars outside. He’d push buttons, start trains, watch the figurines go round and round, and play in the toddler corner.

Though I went with little knowledge of the exhibits available, the London Transport Museum did not disappoint.

We started the day with Weyland’s most-requested activity: riding the tube. We live by the first above-ground stop on the Jubilee line. After dropping off the older boys, we hopped on the tube headed north (away from our destination, but through an above-ground section that gives plenty of entertaining views). I took Weyland off my back and let him ride in his own seat, and he exclaimed with delight over the sights. “Look! Railroad! Look! Train! Look! Tunnel!” After a while we got off at a small station that makes no connections with other lines. We walked across the platform, waited a minute, and got on the next train south. Weyland always counts how many different trains we ride, and since we had to transfer from the Jubilee line to the Piccadilly, we enjoyed THREE trains that morning.

Inside the museum, we started with the 19th Century transportation exhibit. Although climbing into the antique conveyances initially appealed to him, the talking (and sometimes slightly animated) mannequins unnerved him, and we left. The exhibit about the history of the London Underground was perfect. Here were familiar sights (escalator models, tunnels, historic versions of tube cars) and the best sort of museum feature: buttons and levers. Below he is pushing buttons that send out models of underground trains.

The museum is in a lovely old warehouse that used to be the flower market. Three levels have been carved out around the edges, but the center portion remains open. When we walked into the middle of the ground floor Weyland spotted the model subway train going back and forth on the edge of the first floor, and this required that we dart back and forth the length of the room to watch it for a while. Eventually I lured him up to the first floor and showed him where he could see it much closer. He really was happy to sit on the floor, nose pressed to plexiglass, and wait several minutes for the train to complete its trek to the other end of the line and return to the rail just feet from him. The actual full-sized train behind him, while worthy of notice, simply could not hold his attention like this miniature animated one.

There was, as I’d expected, a train table. But this one, instead of being mass produced, is a miniature version of London! There is the London Eye (the huge ferris wheel that my children could see so clearly from our City of London apartment), the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge, the River Thames, the Transportation Museum, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and some skyscrapers that I have to admit I recognize but cannot name. There is even a recessed portion that represents the Underground.

An aside, because it is too funny not to share: while living in the City, Weyland learned to recognize St. Paul’s Cathedral from all its angles. Besides its being one of the more distinctive parts of London’s skyline, seeing it up close meant that we were nearly home! Recently I noticed a depiction of St. Paul’s on a small cartoon and showed it to Weyland, saying “do you see St. Paul’s?” He told me, “No. One St. Paul.” Oh well, I laughed, and I’m positive he understands the plural S.

The museum also has a considerable collection of antique trams and buses that Weyland completely ignored, choosing instead to fixate on this animated model tram. He stood by it, followed it back and forth, exclaimed every time it went into its “tunnel”, sat on the floor by it, made ME sit on the floor by it. I have read every single exhibit within sight of this annoying little tram, I’m sure.

When Weyland started to get tired, the only way I could pry him away from the museum is the promise of a tube ride. We will be going back!

Another train story to tell: in Durham, we have ridden the small train at the Museum of Life and Science a handful of times. At first Weyland liked it, but one morning this summer we rode when the train was full of elementary age children. When they went through the galvanized steel tunnel, they followed the driver’s suggestion and screamed. Loudly. Shrilly. Terribly. I had clapped hands over Weyland’s ears, and my unprotected ears were literally ringing for minutes after exiting. Weyland hated it, cried, and was scared to ride the train from then on. A couple weeks ago, though, he began narrating while playing his favorite Rail Maze game on my Android. Every time the train went through the tunnel, he said, “people say aaaahh!” When we ride the tube, every time we go from light to darkness, or even under an overpass, he will — quietly, smiling, so that only we notice — say, “aaaahhh.”