Bringing back the Celtic Art

A few people have known me long enough to know I used to draw all kinds of Celtic stuff, all the time. This was way back in the early 90's, when if you wanted something with Celtic art on it, you had to make it yourself. There were only a handful of good printed resources about the Celts and their varied art forms then.

Not so anymore, in these modern internet times. Right now, in five minutes, I can gather nearly as much imagery as it took me ten years to amass, prior to the digital sharing of data. You kids today, with your celtic vinyl stickers, celtic stick-on tattoos, knotwork jewelry and t-shirts have it soooo easy. I used to have to paint my own jackets and draw on myself with sharpies and order expensive art books from Europe to make good celtic art. I even went to celtic art classes, which helped me to understand the mathematics behind the designs, so that I could create new ones that no one had ever seen.

I took my new knowledge and volunteered many designs for the Institute for Celtic Studies in New England, created and showed paper celtic sculptures in an art gallery, designed many tattoos, a line of pewter jewelry, many scrolls in the SCA, and even some embossing stamps for a Renfair leather merchant. And none of them were copies of existing historical designs.

I had stopped drawing celtic art years ago, because it took oodles of brainpower to mathematically construct some of these designs, and frankly, I got lazy and found drawing work that paid the bills and was much easier to do.

Recently, the siren song of the spiral called me once again... but it was so hard to get my brain to to process the designs I wanted to draw! I may have eventually lost the ability to do this, if I hadn't been inspired by my man, who needed a set of armor in order to fight upon Outlands fields this summer. He'd gotten some blank leather bracers from a friend and wanted me to help design them. I looked around online for something cool to copy, but all of it was either the same stuff I've been seeing for 20 years, or tribalish modern celtic art. None were nice enough, so I got charged with creating a new design. So of course they had to look awesome. And you certainly can't buy awesome like this in a store.


He requested it include ravens and horses. After days of research into early period British pre-Roman Celtic Art, I had a plan for a design that was not too complicated, but dynamic, as I also had his very beginner knowledge of leatherworking to consider. So I drew it, he tooled it, and I antiqued the lines. They still need to be cuirboiled, and I have no idea what color they will turn...

If you want some thing done right, you really do have to just do it yourself. I guess I'll be exercising my celtic brain muscles a bunch more soon. There's a lot more armor to make.

Building a Medieval Gauntlet

If you can't view the embedded slide show below I suggest you visit the original post at Instructables on Building a Medieval Gauntlet. Way cool!


Building a Medieval Gauntlet - More DIY How To Projects

How it's Made: Modern medieval swords and armor!

The Discovery Channel has my respect, and I realize there's a high degree of skill and craftsmanship involved in this process, but I long for the good old-fashioned 'dark ages' way of hand forged metal.

At least the mass production process allows for all of us non-nobility to own weapons and armor in these modern times.



Wow, that was pretty cool, but it sure killed my medieval buzz. At least armoring seems to involve a bit more hand-working the metal. I bet the use of power tools sure speeds up the turnaround time for a suit.

Sutton Hoo Cake

One of the very first bad jokes I ever learned in the SCA was,

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Sutton.

Sutton Who?

Yes, awful, isn't it? But that's what you get for hanging around with Saxons. Now I can't look at that beautiful ornate helmet without hearing that joke.

At one time I thought it would be nice to learn metal tooling and make decorative reproductions of such masterpieces, but a half a day with a chisel and punch taught me why blacksmiths need to be burly.

As amazing as the original is, this Sutton Hoo Cake, which I read about on Unlocked Wordhoard but was originally found on Studenta Mira, is much more my speed. I wonder if I still have my cake decorating kit...

Medieval Helmet Cam

I never thought I'd see a helmet-cam video outside of the large SCA events like Pennsic or Estrella War. But here is a recent helmet-cam video uploaded to YouTube by a chap named grahamfield who appears to be a member of the Medieval Combat Society.

Unlike the SCA, the Medieval Combat Society has a very small membership base (over 60 members!), plays with live steel and has a very narrow focus of reenactment: only the 14th Century during the period of King Edward III of England. Too bad they are all the way over there in England - I'd like to see their events firsthand. They have some fascinating links on their website as well.

Before you click play, do turn DOWN your volume first - the announcer in the background is yelling through an obnoxiously bad speaker.



More searching on their website finds even more videos.

Anachronistic modern gadgets!

I'm always on the lookout for modern gadgets with an anachronistic twist. Not that I can afford most of them, but one can dream...

Leave it to the Dutch to make a hot tub that looks like something from Fisher-Price. I'm not a big fan of orange, especially in my bathroom, but this wood-burning hot tub certainly looks as if it could have evolved from a medieval invention. I'm sure that alchemists of the past knew how to do this at least on a smaller scale.

We all know that 'hot' rises and 'cold' sinks. This tub creates its own convection current: as the cold water is pulled into the base of the coil, it is heated up by the adjustable fire basket inside the coil. The heated water is pushed out into the tub through the top coil and the process repeats itself until you've got nice toasty water. Huzzah, hot tub!

Three guesses as to what this is. It sure looks like a piece of shoulder armor or maybe even a helmet. Would you believe it's a breadbox? Yes, indeed, it is the Armadillo Breadbin! It kind of reminds me of a lorica segmentata. Those segments collapse in on itself when you lift the 'tail' of the armadillo. Protect your bread from marauding invaders! Patented anti-arrow technology! No guarantee against bread mold however.


Achieve Norse God-like powers with the Genso Kukan Aurora Borealis projector! What viking wouldn't love an Instant Bifrost projector for casting a realistic rainbow bridge effect upon the walls of his tent? The pick-up lines are just so obvious it hurts. "Hey, baby, I can show you the way to Valhalla?"

But then I looked at the product page photos. Ewwww. This could be done so much better. I good idea, really, but a very unimpressive outcome. But what do the Japanese know about the northern lights anyway? They're not anywhere near the arctic circle. They've probably only seen it in bad Anime cartoons from 1985. That would explain the lameness of this product.

Now here's something useful! Not only does this modern-looking watch tell the time, but it also doubles as a catapult. Yep, that little spoon on the watch face can launch small ammunition (like peas, dried lentils, corn kernels) up to 8 feet. Perfect for personal warfare! Of course a watch of this type pretty much guarantees you'll never be on time. You'll be too busy launching attacks on the cubicle next to yours to notice that you are late for the sales meeting.

Check out the Backyard Artillery site for animated photos of the amazing watch catapult in action!


Ok, I know this isn't really a 'gadget', but it is still pretty darn cool. This replica of the Claremont Helmet can be used as a trash bin or even an ice bucket! I wonder how many bottled ales it could hold? It has a mesh basket inside for easy removal of trash or stored items.

What a wonderful centerpiece this would make at a feast, filled with cookies or treats. Or, plant it next to your chair at the feast, and ditch the food you don't like, thus avoiding the ire of the head cook. Imagine never having to hear "Don't you like my flan?" ever again. Ah, yes, a truly useful gadget indeed. Anything to avoid the horrors of flan.

A throne fit for a King! Seriously, you know you've taken the medieval motif too far when you are actually considering buying a toilet seat that looks like a medieval helmet. Apparently there's even real chainmail in the clear lucite seat. From the description on the website, it is the last word in siege withstanding comfort! Ummm... Ok.

The Gothic Commode seat will amaze your friends and scare away your enemies! Or is it scare your friends and amaze your enemies...yeah. I hope I never see one of these in real life. I wouldn't be able to stop laughing. Though if one of these showed up in a port-a-potty at an SCA event, there would be a line to get in. Sad, but true.

Free press for the SCA!

I wasn't going to mention this, because I don't like jumping on to the 'sensational story of the moment' but, the SCA has become 'mainstream news' again.

(Has everyone heard by now, of the high school senior whose yearbook photo was denied because he was holding a sword, which violated the schools zero tolerance 'no weapons' policy? No? Well, he's in the SCA and his family is suing the school. Now you're up to speed.)

The original ACLU press release really sparked a firestorm of news online...

All of this press about the lawsuit is attracting an awful lot of attention to the SCA, but thankfully it is of the generally positive variety rather than the negative kind.

Whichever way this lawsuit is decided, it is a great opportunity for the SCA. This is a chance for us (as a non-profit organization, which supports itself through membership funds) to increase our ranks.

Good press translates into: potential members. Let's use the free press we've just been handed!

Cursed Boots of Pain on EBay!

Cursed Boots of Pain - funny, this guy has my sense of humor! I had to paste this poor mans' description of the boots he is selling on Ebay. Here's a link to the auction in question, which will no doubt go away at some point in the future, so without further adieu....

The story:

After a soggy wet Lilies war last year. I decided that it would be good to have new pair of boots. I wanted boots I could fight in, and that would last a long time. So I bought some 9-10 oz natural tan leather, the same stuff you might make armor from, and set out to make myself a pair of boots. I got the boots done, and they fit too tight.

So my buddy Aidon and I went to the local leather shop to try to find some sort of leather lotion or softener. The guy sold me some stuff called “saddle butter”, he said it would make them all soft and comfy and they would break in well. “just use a heat gun to warm them up and paint this stuff on them.” Great! So I go home, I don’t have a heat gun so I fire up the kitchen oven and warm up the boots. I start taking glops of this saddle butter and rubbing it into the boots. The smell was very familiar but did not register with me right at first. All done! The boots are very soft and floppy. So I put them out on the counter to dry. I come back 30 minutes later and they are hard as a rock. I look at the label on the saddle butter. “Bee’s wax, Carnauba wax, Paraffin wax…” F#ckin great! I just Cuir Bouilli my boots. So now they are still too tight, and they are hard as a f#ckin rock. I try to force them on with a shoe horn. I try to grease my foot with vegetable oil. I can barely get them on, but they are so tight they hurt. I try walking around the block a few time to see if that helps but to no avail.

So I call my Dad. Dad says to take rubbing alcohol and water 1:1 and rub them inside the boots and put them on. That will stretch them out to fit. So I mix up the boot stretch cocktail and, being a little impatient, I rub it all over the boots inside and out. Then shoe horn them back on. I get about five steps before the sensation of a burning fiery agony reaches my lizard brain. Unknown to me at that time I had rubbed an open blister on the top of my fourth toe in the vegetable oil attempt to stretch them out. Now the alcohol was hitting open nerves. Screaming in agony, I drop to the floor, and try to pull the boots of pain off my feet. They wont give, they stretched just enough to get a good suction and weren’t going anywhere. My buddy Aidon was there for this entire ordeal, but can’t help me because he’s incapacitated with laughter. “get them off! Get them off!” I scream. He grabs my right foot and pulls on the boot. Pulls hard enough that he pulls me down the hall way of my house. My shirt rolls up and the carpet puts a long red burn across the small of my back. He still can’t get the boot off, so he tries to put his foot on something to lend leverage so he can pull harder. Unfortunately, the item he chooses to brace against was my groin. So now I’ve got a 300 pound dude standing on my nutz while my foot is on fire. Suddenly the boot comes free. Aidon is sent sprawling backward and I’m just glad he’s not standing on my junk anymore. Then I hear that tell-tale dull thud. The sort of dull thud that drywall make when a 300 pound dude knocks a hole in it the size of his back. I look up, Aidon is holding the boot still, and “sitting” in the hole he created in my wall.

O-Kay… Here’s the deal.

This auction is for this particular pair of cursed SCA boots of pain. I’m never making another pair of these again. I’m not in the business of selling boots. I just want these gone.

I wear a size 11 Wide (EEEE). And they fit really tight. Someone who is a size 10.5 could probably break them in.
9-10 oz natural tan leather.
Dyed Oxblood Red
Cuir Bouilli and distressed with alcohol
Crepe sole

I’ll ship them UPS, unless you live in Calontir and want to meet me at an event for handoff.


I'm pretty impressed. Too bad they aren't my size.