It is a curious paradox for historians that our sources are
only as good as our understanding of them, while at the same time
our understanding is built upon those very sources. Outside of
our areas of specialty and language we are at the mercy of translators
and editors, and even if we are in a position to read a manuscript
in a rare books library in a language we understand, it will likely
be a copy of a copy of a copy, dating from hundreds of years before
that document was penned. This situation is similar for artists,
craftsmen and re-enactors. We therefore look for editors and translators
that we trust, and hope they have published an edition of documents
that are of interest to us.
One such edition for me is Theophilus' On Diverse Arts, translated
by John G. Hawthorne and Cyril Stanley Smith, and dedicated to
the great metalsmith and historian Herbert Maryon O.B.E. The inexpensive
Dover edition is often sold as part of a set along with De Rey
Metallica, and The Treatises of Benvnuto Cellini, which is a good
deal, though I find On Diverse Arts to be the most useful of the
three.
This volume consists of three works, one on painting, one on glass work, and the third and largest on metalworking. The first two show a keen understanding of their subject, though not personal mastery. The third, for the most part, reads as a work based on hands-on experience. In fact it is telling that the chapters in the painting and glass texts that have the most detail are those having to do with metals and equipment. The chapters on gold leaf for painters and on making iron molds for casting caming for stained glass are fine examples. Even so, some of what is contained is clearly medieval folklore, the chapter on "Spanish Gold" comes to mind. However, the bulk of the work is a straightforward description of how to accomplish practical tasks. It seems likely that whoever Theophilus Presbyter really was, and there is much debate on this matter, that he was in fact a metalsmith.
As an example: "Chapter 14 Chisels. Also chisels are made, of such a size that they can be grasped by the entire hand and project above the hand broad and even, and below it broad, flat, thin and sharp. Many of these are made, both small and large, and with them gold, silver, or thick copper is cut."
Of what is contained within On Diverse Arts there is much that I cannot recommend recreating, the making of a skin tone pigment by burning lead carbonate and adding sulfide of mercury for instance. However there is also a great deal of practical advice that may be directly applied to the modern studio, as well as being of use to the historian or re-enactor. Most importantly this book gives us a better understanding of the methods used by past artists. Even in our most modern artwork we are working with the accumulated experience of thousands of years, and the better we understand that experience, the deeper our understanding of our art forms, and with any luck the better our own original work.
This month I am focusing on AEthelflaed lady of the Mercians,
and The Mercian Register, a person and a document that should
be better known to history. Michael Swanton in his introduction
to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles describes the document as follows:
"Between the annals for 915 and 934, this scribe inserted
material which has become known as the 'Mercian Register' - a
handful of short annals covering the years 902-24 and focusing
on the activities of AEthelflaed, lady of the Mercians. They form
a discrete unit, not wholly integrated with the main text: they
are out of sequence (896 of the Register following 915 of the
main text), and information found in them was sometimes already
present."
For the year 918 the Register reads: "Here in the early part
of this year, with God's help, she peaceably got in her control
the stronghold at Leicester, and the most part of the raiding
armies that belonged to it were subjected. And also the York-folk
had promised her - and some of them granted so by pledge, some
confirmed with oaths - that they would be at her disposition.
But very quickly after they had done that, she departed, 12 days
before midsummer, inside Tamworth, the eighth year that she held
control over Mercia with rightful lordship; and her body lies
inside Gloucester in the east side chapel of St. Peter's Church."
It is worth noting that our scribe felt no need to mention the
Lady by name.
Who was she? The genealogies of the kings of Wessex show her to
be the daughter of King Alfred, and the older sister of King Edward
the Elder. A direct descendent of Cerdic, the first historical
king of Wessex, and she married AEthelred, ealdorman [Earl] of
Mercia. She was a powerful leader before the death of her husband,
as shown by the following passage: "And the same year [910]
AEthelflaed built the stronghold at Bremesbyrig. Then in this,
the next year, [911] AEthelred, lord of the Mercianns, departed."
She seems to have been a tireless champion of her people and homeland,
spending much of her reign building fortifications against Danish
attack. 914 was a typical year; "Then in this, the next year
was made the stronghold at Eddisbury in early summer; and later
in the same year, late in harvest-time, that at Warwick."
By her death she had made Mercia strong against attack, beaten
back the Welsh invaders, taking the Welsh queen hostage, and peacefully
taken control of much of Northumbria. One wonders what she might
have achieved had she lived longer.
AEthelflaed is mentioned little outside of the Mercian Register.
The Peterborough Manuscript jumps directly from the death AEthelred
in "910, [911 current calendar], to her death in 918, omitting
the entire time that she reigned alone. She is only briefly mentioned
when her death is noted: The whole of the entry for 918 reads:
"Here AEthelflaed, Lady of the Mercians passed away."
Some of her absence from the chronicles might be attributed to
geography, with some scribes simply being too far away to take
note, but we must suspect that this is only part of the story.
Such a powerful and popular woman must have made the monks who
were doing the writing of the chronicles more than a bit uncomfortable.
The genealogies do not show her having any children with AEthelred,
but the register states that he had a daughter, possibly illegitimate,
from whom power was taken. "[919] Here also the daughter
of AEthelred, Lord of the Mercians, was deprived of all control
in Mercia, and was led into Wessex three weeks before Christmas;
she was called AElfwynn." This daughter is mentioned nowhere
else, but the wording here suggests that for a short time, before
being sacked, she was ruling the newly expanded Mercian lands.
Though there was not to be another Lady of Mercia so independent,
AEthelflaed set a pattern of powerful Mercian ladies that would
last until the conquest, and include Godgifu (Lady Godiva) and
Wulfrun, Lady of the Mercians.
The Peterborough Manuscript is the only of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicles to continue through the reign of William, and so is
the only source for this year in the Chronicles. The last of the
others, the Worchester MS, ends in 1079, with a brief Norman addendum,
added fifty years later.
Note: the year 1125 begins on Christmas Day in the reckoning of
the time, and the final week of December would be counted as 1124
in the modern calendar. "In this year before Christmas the
king Henry sent from Normandy to England and commanded that all
the moneyers who were in England should be deprived of their limbs,
that was the right hand of each of them and their stones below;
that was because the man who had a pound could not buy a penn'orth
at a market. And the bishop Robert of Salisbury sent all over
England and commanded them all that they should come to Winchester
at Christmas. Then when they came there they were seized one by
one, and each deprived of the right hand and the stones below.
All this was done inside of the twelve nights; (Christmas to 12th
Night) and it was all very proper because they had done for all
the land with their great fraud, (the word used here can also
mean adulteration or debasement, literally bad money) which they
all paid for.
Today this seems a remarkably gruesome act, however such punishments
were not uncommon in early Norman England. In the coins themselves
we find a clue as to the reasoning behind this event. Coins of
Mediaeval Europe, by P. Grierson states of the coinage of Henry
I "the moneyers now begin to bear Norman names such as William
and Richard" suggesting that control of the currency was
being transferred, at least in some cases to Norman families.
We should remember that moneying, like most other trades, was inherited.
This act would put all of the Anglo-Saxon moneying families out
of the business, as a moneyer needs both hands to strike coins,
and none of those unfortunate men would be having any sons to
pass their trade on to. As to the allegation that the money had
been debased, P. Grierson goes on to write "…while the
design is often good, the quality of striking is much inferior
to that of the two Williams. Chemical analyses of surviving specimens
do not bear out the general belief of the time that the coins
were badly debased." It may well be that the king, off across
the water, believed the coinage had been debased, and in any case
he must have felt that he needed to be seen to be doing something
to restore faith in the currency if he were to rule England.
The Peterborough MS also mentions an envoy from the Pope in Rome,
who went on progress through the and in September held a council
in London try to get the English church to adopt new religious
rules. He was rebuffed, and shortly returned to Rome.
"In this same year on the feast of St. Lawrence (10 August)
there occurred so great a flood that many villages and men drowned,
and bridges broken down, and corn and pasture wholly destroyed,
and famine and disease among men and among cattle; and there occurred
great unseasonableness for all crops than for many years before."
This flood must truly have been devastating coming just before
the harvest. With the stresses that the occupation of England
placed on the economy, famine and sickness following crop failure
were becoming all too common.
The annal for 1125 ends by noting the death of the abbot of Peterborough,
though it fails to state the cause. As an abbot he would have
been somewhat insulated from famine, but not from rampant disease
caused by flood and famine.
At the end of the year England was still a country suffering the
effects of the conquest some thirty-eight years after the death
of William I. A country accustom to isolation, it was feeling
the pressures of broader European politics from as far away as
Rome, as well as the brutal realities of being ruled from overseas.
The other night I had a dream. I was swimming in a meandering river with high grassy banks, moving with the current. The weather was hot and the water pleasant. As I came around a bend I saw a group of forty or fifty women standing at easels. I let the water carry me to the bank, and got out to see what was going on. As I approached I noticed that they were all Japanese, some in western clothing, and some in traditional silks, and all appeared to be painting in oils on canvas. Not one of them took any notice of me; so intent were they on their paintings. In my dream all this seemed perfectly normal.
Then, as I got closer, I saw that about six of the painters were
in fact made of beautifully woven wicker and bamboo, tied with
strings. They were disturbingly sexy. For a moment all that seemed
odd, but not as odd as what was about to happen. One of the women
in traditional clothing, with her hair up and pinned, drew a boken
from her robes, and ran not at me but at the nearest wicker painter.
With elegant movements she smashed the effigy to bits, and moved
to the next. I came closer, and bamboo splinters flew as one after
another of the wicker figures fell. The other painters were starting
to look. When she had slain the last figure, she prostrated herself
before the easel amid the broken bamboo. I was quite close and
saw that the canvas was stretched on an oval frame, and the boken
was lying on the ground.
As I wondered what was painted on it one of the painters in western
clothing picked up a stretcher bar about 30 inches long. She drew
it back above her head to deliver a powerful blow that would surely
smash the skull of the woman on the ground, who I thought would
pick up her boken to defend herself. Instead she grasped the painting,
holding it behind her bowed head for protection. Then, as the
final blow fell I saw that the image on the canvas was of the
back of the kneeling woman's head, her neck bare, with a few wisps
of escaped hair, and of the stretcher bar about to strike. With
that I woke, thankful to not see what was about to happen.
It is often an artistic pilgrimage that guides us as expressive
beings, and defines the stages of our creative lives. These may
take the form of a physical journey, but may also be a place we
go within ourselves. They may be something we plan or something
that simply happens, only afterward leaving us with the realisation
that something profound has happened. We may have a goal in mind
or we may be the seeker who believes that he will know the place
when he gets there. For a long time now I have relied on this
sort of pilgrimage as a sort of quest that, if successful, will
augment the way I look at things and allow me to see what has
been obscure. I have ridden the Green Tortoise to the Haight Ashbury
to visit a textile school, walked to the home of the radical designer,
Christopher Alexander, and retraced parts of the route from the
film Easy Rider, which itself is about a journey toward discovery.
This is a story about one such journey.
In the early 1990s in the hills near Clear Lake, CA I bumped into
the goldsmith Sam Brown. We knew of one another, but had never
before met, so I introduced myself and asked what was happening
with him. He said that he had just returned from a silversmithing
workshop in Ireland, and showed me an adorable little cup he had
made there. That night we ate fresh abalone, I drank heavily,
and then promptly forgot about the whole thing for nearly ten
years, when a lover said to me, "Hey I'm going to Ireland
for work; do you want to come along?"
"Sure, but there is this thing I need to do there."
I said.
"What?"
"Well I don't exactly know what, but about ten years ago
I was talking to this guy in California, and he had just done
it."
To her credit she didn't decide that I was way too nuts to be
travelling with, and promptly did a computer search on "Silversmithing
in Ireland" The first site that came up listed Sam Brown
as a former student, and the next day I cashed out my savings
and was making arrangements to go three weeks ahead of her so
that I would have time for the classes and adjusting to the time
difference.
The day after the Nisqually earthquake, with my house badly damaged
and a new sketch book and bag of hammers under my arm I was boarding
a jet over the pole to London. By the following evening I was
in Dublin with a pint of Guinness in front of me. The next day
I walked all over town, visiting various pieces of public art,
and Picasso's Blue Mandolin in the National Gallery. Then I was
off to Kildare St. to the Museum to start filling my sketch book.
I worked without direction or aim, drawing whatever caught my
eye, and was not featured in the books I own. After a while I
noticed that I was not the only one drawing. In fact nearly everywhere
I went I could see people drawing in sketchbooks, and they were
more often than not locals. The tourists had cameras, and were
snapping pictures and then rushing off to the next stop on their
tour.
When the day came to leave Dublin I had trouble finding the station,
and so took the second to the last train south toward the mountains.
It was old, a bit smelly, and ever so iconic, with rounded cars
that had doors with handles on the outside only. When we came
into a station we were expected to open the window, reach out
and pull on the door latch. I was met at the old station in Rathdrum
by my hosts, and driven to the school in Ballniaclash, where I
was told in no uncertain terms that I would not be allowed to
help in the kitchen once the workshops actually started. I was
to focus on metal work.
The workshops were more than I could have hoped for. I am sometimes
a difficult student, and not easily impressed, but I had found
what I wanted. In the two weeks that I worked there I was kept
busy and challenged the whole time, completing eight projects,
plus a little something to leave there. I learned to make all
sorts of forms, from a large fold form vessel that looked as if
Georgia O'Keefe was doing metalwork, to a project in which I unraised
a hollow form, collapsing it down to a disc with a very thick
spot in the middle. I gained a great deal of visceral understanding
about the plasticity of metal and how it moves under the hammer.
This was something with which I already had a lot of experience,
and it is, quite simply, what is special about metals. You can
carve anything that can be cut, and cast anything that can be
melted and then frozen again. In fact an ice cube is one of the
best examples of a casting that I know. Plasticity under the hammer
is what sets metals apart from other materials, and I had no way
of knowing how much was left to learn. What is more, I got a whole
lot faster at moving the metal. After the workshop tasks that
had in the past taken me days were accomplished in hours, not
through added force, but by working with nature of the metal itself.
I had not just learned some new techniques, but had gained a profound
understanding about what metal really is.
I had many adventures there, and the company was grand. The Irish
take their time off seriously, without taking themselves that
way, and there was lots of drinking, talking and tramping about
to be done. There are far more stories than I can possibly relate
here, but this one is typical:
One evening Brian, the instructor, asked, "Well now, you
have two more days here. What do you think you will be doing for
your last project?"
"I don't really know; what do you think would be challenging,"
I replied.
He looked thoughtful for a moment or two and then said: "I
have it. Tomorrow you will start raising a square vessel."
"How?"
"Never mind that, its time to go to the pub."
"No really, how?" I asked.
He was firm. "Never mind. I'll tell you in the morning. Now
lets go have a few pints before we are late for supper."
I relented, we went to the pub, and we were not late for supper.
Good to his word, first thing in the morning Brian showed me the
process, and it was indeed challenging, and a most interesting
project.
My last night in Ballinaclash we had a new visitor, Michael Good.
We stayed late at the pub talking about politics, metalwork, Heikki
Seppa, and traveling in Europe. He asked if I wouldn't stay another
week for his anticlastic raising workshop. I told him that I had
made other arrangements, and didn't have the money for another
week. "Do you teach on the West coast?" I asked.
"No," he replied. "And you should learn this stuff
here. This is where anticlastic raising was invented, back in
the Bronze Age. Brian has been working on reproducing the process."
"You're kidding." I said.
"No. Think about those ribbon torcs in the museum. They are
a double helix and I'm convinced that they were raised on some
sort of sinusoidial. Are you sure you can't stay?"
I went back to the museum and looked long and hard at the torcs.
In the workshop I had forged a double helix, by lengthening the
edges of a flat bar so that they were much longer than the middle,
but it did not look like the torcs in the museum. What Michael
was talking about was taking a thin strip of metal and raising
it so that the middle becomes much shorter than the edges. Later
I would learn that this involves rolling the strip up into a tube
raising it to an auger shape, and then turning it inside out.
It is difficult to wrap your head around it, even when you are
doing it, and it involves a supreme effort at three-dimensional
thought. In the end I had to wait a lot longer than overnight
to learn the process, but that is another story about another
journey.
It's a gray day. Under a soft sky; everything is gray or green or someplace in-between the two. The hills are green except where they're gray, with the sky reaching down into the trees. The water is gray, except where it is green in the ripples and reflections of the trees. Alder and maple; spruce and fir and cedar, even the orange bark madrone looks gray and misty. You can only see colors up close. In the distance they soften 'till they become part of the sky. The air is soft and sweet, and it leaves little drops of dew on everything. Maybe the day isn't gray; maybe the day is silver.
The sun is down, but it's not dark yet; it's my favourite time of day. I'm picking berries next to the big blue guitar. It's got no strings, just little white lights that wink. It's taller than the outhouse, but it's the same color.
Across the road people are hauling their kayaks out of the bay. I can hear their voices and the sounds of boats and water, and I hear the kingfisher bark. He's going off to roost, and I'm thinking that I should be doing the same, so I take my berries and head off for home.
I'm walking over the bridge where the raven cracks his clams
and leaves the shells on the rail. There's a brand new crescent
moon and not a bit of wind, the water is as smooth as it ever
gets, showing me the moon that looks the other way. A fish turns
and the ripples make the moon look like it is pulling at the water.
I think about it for a bit, and I think that it is. The moon is
pulling at the water, and at the kingfisher and the raven, and
at me; pulling me toward home. I walk toward the moon and think,
and the sky gets darker. As I walk up to my house, the moon is
just slipping behind the hill, and I'm thinking that this is my
favourite time of month too.
It's hot, and I'm sleeping in the shade of the big canvas tent. Beth and Karen went down to the creek to cool off, and left me with the dog. She is barking her fool head off, which is waking me up from my nap. I open my eyes a bit and think, "hmm, bull testicles." The dog keeps on barking. Then it occurs to me what that means, "bull testicles!"
My eyes snap open, the dog keeps barking, and the bull, standing over me, keeps on eating the grass. I roll over, slowly. I get up, slowly. I try to silence the dog. The bull is big, real big, red, shaggy, and standing in the open end of the tent, looking at me. Just when I think that things are getting pretty bad: the dog won't stop barking, and the bull isn't moving, I notice something I haven't seen before. The other bull. This one is even bigger, with lots of wrinkles and big horns. He is looking at me too, though from a little further away.
I'm not sure what to do, but I'm thinking that this would be a real stupid way to die, and I wish that the dog would be quite. I can imagine the newspaper story: "Man trampled to death in a wad of rope and canvas, by prize winning bulls. The victim, identified as Bill Dawson…" And what if I don't get killed? I'm imagining myself in the emergency room trying to explain how I was gored by not one, but two bulls in my own tent.
All of a sudden the big wrinkly bull moves off, swinging his horns. The shaggy bull looks around, and then starts to follow his friend. I'm covered in sweat, and the dog is still barking. Some men have come over from anther camp to see what all the noise is about; they think it's funny. The bulls wander off into some trees, and I see Beth and Karen coming up from the creek. They come into camp, and the dog is finally quiet.
"Hi there, how was your nap?"
The weather is getting colder and the ash trees are already yellow, so I decide it's time to put winter sheets on the bed. I take everything off of the old mattress, and turn it over in the wooden frame. As I work I think that the bed is a little like my life, made up of all sorts of different things from different places, and they don't all quite fit together. And all the parts have memories that go with them.
I remember winning the frame in a contest; they carried me back to my camp in it. I put on the sheets, and tuck them in. They are the flannel sheets with the printed flowers that Beth and I bought the summer before our son died. Next I put on the Mexican blanket we got for a wedding present; she didn't want it anymore after she left. Now there is the green and black trade blanket from my grandmother who was killed crossing the street. Her and I had gotten in a fight years ago, and she gave it to me as a peace making gesture. After that I put on the disaster relief blankets from the 1964 tsunami. My father was living on the beach that year, and the day of the big wave he had gone to visit his grandmother, Zelda, in Smith River. His shack on the beach was gone and if he had been in it I would never have been borne. Next the quilt from my mother, the one made out of faded blue jeans. She made it for me after Beth left, saying "It's gonna be cold sleeping by yourself." I'm almost done as I unfold the quilt Zelda made for me when I was little, and living with her, and her mom, Ida, and her husband, Big Bill. Last I put out the big log cabin quilt that Ida, my great great grandmother, made for me when I was born. It's big, wool and hand stitched, every bit, and it holds all the rest of the bedding in place. As I smooth out the wrinkles I think that Ida was the one among all my relations who really believed in me. I was just a baby, but she made that quilt long, figuring that I would grow to be a big man. She made it wide, figuring that I would be the sort of man to have a family. She also made it sturdy, figuring that I would live a long and full life. Maybe I will.
