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Just found a couple of things that I thought may interest others. There is a thread running on the British Blades forum about replicas of Viking knives with photos of originals and some stunning replica sheaths here http://www.britishblades.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52230 and following a link from...

I can recommend a book Bone antler ivory and horn, the technology of skeletal materials since the roman period by Arthur MacGregor 1985

This is an interesting discussion. I too would be very interested to hear about the context and frequency of archaeological finds. How many prickers have been found compared say to knives? I find the recreating of food and eating tends to rely heavily on the written sources and illustrations but thi...

well you could get my book "the wooden bowl" pub stobart davies which has lots of photos of original bowls. The MOL book mentioned by handbag has drawings of 25 or so bowls. Carole Moris wood and woodworking from anglo scandinavian York has drawings of a good number of med bowls too. Other than that...

My vote goes for Haddon Hall Derbyshire...not too big and grand like Chatsworth or too cold and harsh...I could live there. The best surviving Tudor Kitchen in the country (whatever they say at Hampton court) and simply incredible collections of early oak furniture. Any medievalist should plan to vi...

trencher
from Anglo-Fr. trenchour, from O.N.Fr. trencheor "a trencher," lit. "a cutting place," from O.Fr. trenchier "to cut"

yep that one comes from victory guides too, normally goes along with the unsubstantiated story that the lip was called the fiddle and somehow they get to the saying being "on the fiddle" again its a story that starts with folk doing no research but putting 2 and 2 together to get 5.

thanks for those, "I always understood that the original "Trencher" was a thick slice of square baked bread that was used by gentry folk as a plate would be used today." Indeed plenty of writen evidence for this...recipes for trencher bread etc but it is high class minority dining. The misconseption...

depends what you do...I use Ian Wallace craft insurance...about £65 a year covers me for demos, teaching and public liability.

Square wooden trenchers are very popular, easy to make, cheap, but does anyone have any securely dated evidence for their use? You know the one about 3/4 inch thick by 7" square with a hollow turned for the food and another small one for the salt. I have yet to see an example from an excavation and ...

just reading hartley's life and work of the people of england 1000-1500 which is a fantastic introduction with one of the best collections of manuscript illustrations I have seen published together. Her "made in England" is a classic scholarly study of traditional craft skills.

Robin

This isn't my period but I am just getting interested in pre iron age technology particularly woodworking. i have been asked to make a copy of Otzi's axe handle and have a suitable yew crook for the job. I am looking for scale drawings or anything that will give me the length and diameter of shaft a...

The "Becket" is a very nice mazer, it's still on display at Canterbury in "the treasury" in the crypt of the cathedral. I visited a few years ago to photograph it and was a bit embarased when they turfed all the members of public out and locked us in before de alarming and getting the mazer out. Can...

sorry to resurect such an old subject but I have only recently joined the forum and may be able to add a little here. Pre conquest we find small globular drinking vessels made in wood and rarely glass. These die out overnight with the conquest to be replaced by drinking bowls...a Norman tradition an...

yes we are talking tressle tables here...sometimes simply listed as boards. Now I am sure that for feasts, weddings special ocasions etc tables would be set up on a temporary basis, see "the wedding feast" by Breugal where along with tressel tables and simple benches a door has been lifted off its h...

Just got my copy of the York inventories and very interesting they are too though I suspect need reading with care. I was looking for Gregory's "humble husbandman" who owned tables and of the 5 husbandmen only one had recorded tables, he is by far the poorest of the five but still owning 4 horses, a...

Well I like to think of the surfaces as a different sort of smooth. A skillfuly hewn beam for instance can be as cleanly cut as a planed one, just when you look at it with the light coming from the side you can see the facets. The barber surgeons canisters from the Mary Rose are very cleanly cut but...

"I can't see why they would not use a cabinet makers scraper. After all it is only the burred edge on a piece of metal. A curved one is very useful for taking scratches out of boxes!! " Nor can I, its certainly technology that was available and it works well however I could show you many hundreds of...

"it is odd that for so many lists so few people have kit they are in theory supposed to have." who's theory says everyone should have weapons? " but then some details are missing, such as spoons even in the great and good, I can't imagine there not being spoons in such places" Now spoons theres is a...

"Interesting point Robin, you're suggesting that the growth of consumerism as rural society became more affluent is a cause/effect?" Not sure what the question is here? I was not really trying to guess at what is cause and effect just noting that plates become common at the same time as tables and t...

sorry Gregory, just found the details of York Porbate inventories you put for me on the food and drink pages, have ordered a copy and look forward to reading.
Thanks Robin

good to question this one its an area I would liek to know more about. My original source was personal comuication with Victor Chinnery author of "oak furniture the british tradition" the standard work on early furniture. I asked Vic when he would put the date at which it was normal for most people ...

I agree Jane. I am game for any amount of speculation, supposition, guesswork and discussion though I think it is always good to try to make it clear when we are making educated guesses and when we have hard facts to back them up. It's all to easy for me to make an educated guess and someone else to...

I am very interested in this post and the discusion as to why potters didn't make plates (and virtualy no bowls for that matter) I am intrigued by this talk of guild rules, which guild exactly was stopping potters making plates? There is no guild of potters and the turners (of London) were only gran...

pretty sure theophilus' shave grass is horsetail, the same as used by grinling gibbons and japanes turners today. they use it fresh and green not dried, I am told it is equivalent to about 600 grit abrasive so just for final polishing after a cabinet scraper.

I don't have clear evidence of abrasive use in woodworking before grinling gibbons in the 18th C. There is lots of evidence for lack of abrasive use, ie the majority of artefacts which today we would sand or plane such as wooden bowls and spoons, furniture parts and building timbers are left with a ...

yes interestign how many bowls are repaired. I would estimate around 5% of bowls I have seen have some form of repair ranging from huge iron staples to delicate silver wire stitching. What is interesting to me is that having stitched one bowl up with copper wire I found it takes longer to do a repai...

I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has copies of any other Household accounts or records of purchase refering to vessels...wooden, pot, metal or whatever. The commonplace items rarely show in inventories being of negligable value but if anyone has other primary source records I would...

Perhaps I could share a little of my latest research presented in a paper to the medieval pottery research group. Pots are very important archaeologically because they always survive but this can skew our view of how numerous they were at the time. Medieval account books give a good measure of vesse...

here is a little research I presented in a paper to the medieval pottery research group. Pots are very important archaeologically because they always survive but this can skew our view of how numerous they were at the time. Medieval account books give a good measure of vessel usage as they record ev...