Painted backdrop

Despite the pain of the painted doormats not having totally failed. I was asked to be part of one of the local teams for the Caid Pentathlon. I ended up painting a HUGE backdrop based on period tapestries. The frame has the devices of the members of the team and a selection of local fauna and flora.

The center shows the 4 members of the team in a desert landscape.

I won’t go into too much detail as the mechanics of it was much the same as all my painted endeavors. – Painters drop cloth with acrylics.

Of cause I got totally slammed for authenticity. The main reason there are so few existing period painted cloths (despite thousands being painted and commonly used) is because the correct period paints actually “ate” the canvas, hastening its destruction. But the huge partition has proofed to be very useful in camp as a divider to hide stuff.

Painted Entrance Mats.

I have not updated anything I have done for more than a year … bad me. So I am just going to scroll through some photos on my phone for a start.

 

My local SCA group has a camping event: “Talon Crescent” that they were updating into a war for the first time. Talon Crescent War I. Our amazing local Arts and Sciences Minister stepped forward and said that the local Arts and Sciences community would produce gifts for any teacher at the war. When this was first discussed the thought was that we were looking at 25 – 30 teacher … then 30-35 then 35-40. In the end we produced 48 gifts. Slightly too many and the last few went to the Royalty attending.

I had the idea to paint entrance mats based on period tile designs.

Materials:

* Good old cotton painter’s canvas drop cloths: I cannot overstate the usefulness of painter’s drop cloths around a camp. They are cheap yet sturdy and super easy to paint up. Any hardware store has them and you can get 6ft by 9ft for just over $10.

* Acrylic Paint: The cheaper the better. Years ago when I started to look for paint to adorn my canvas tent I looked into many specialty canvas paints. A long time SCAdian told me to stop stressing. They had painted their tent more than 15 years before with cheap school acrylics straight out of giant jars, and I while the canvas has seen so much camping that it was now dying the paint still look fine. I painted the dags of my tent in cheap acrylics and it has since stood up to some serious use. Acrylics is basically plastic, and if you take the time to set it well it will last you a lifetime.

*Heavy cotton backing.

*Bias tape.

I divided the surface of the 12 squares. The middle 2 would be a T and a C (for Talon Crescent) and the other a combination of designs. I drew and cut out about 30 (maybe even 40) designs (I really should pay more attention to details like this) and arranged and traced them onto the canvas with pencil.

I had a fair bit of help with the actual painting. Painting almost 50 welcome mats proved to be a HUGE task. After the painting is done the paint is set with a hot iron. Take your time. You can actually feel the texture of the paint change before and after ironing. Afterwards it has a much slicker plastic feel.

The backing was attached by sewing along the “tile lines”. Then the edges was finished by bias type (usually homemade – just strips of fabric).

I am not sure how many of the mats I painted, (very near to 20) and I prepped and tranced each mat and then ironed and finished them all.

Painted Cloth

Painted Canvas cloths

A few years ago I was doing research into canvas pavilion when a Google search kicked out something way more interesting. It was not about the pavilion itself, but about something found inside the pavilions. Inside the King’s pavilions, as dividers and also just as decorations, could be found beautifully painted canvasses. Most of them were seen as temporary and changed as the design styles at court changed, but these few examples survived because they were re-used at Henry VIII’s Nonsuch Palace and then it seems re-used again at Loseley House.

The panels were painted in the Grotesque Style (a style I love) with images of Gods and Goddesses, but what also caught my eye was the description of similar panels to employ the King’s arms and badges and garter and suitable animals around the garter. Clearly, as is often the case in the time period, the panels were not only meant to be idle decorations, they were also meant to clearly show any visitor who’s tent they were in.

This inspired me to start work on a set of similar panels designed to highlight my own SCA history. It is always so much nicer to have something that has a personal meaning and so often we forget that for much of the middle ages a lot of the populace might have been illiterate, but they were well educated in the imagery of court, mythology and even the plants and animals used.

Further research into painted cloths showed two more common uses for them. The one was as an alternative to a tapestry and often were done to look like a tapestry. The most notable of this is the Chapel at Hardwick Hall.

Of the other one unfortunately only descriptions remains, but the logic behind it is very clear. As long as the king lived styling yourself “Kingly” could have fatal consequences. In fact even if the king was laying on his deathbed and you were his acknowledged heir doing anything that seemed like you were wishing the king dead (like getting your royal regalia together) would be seen as wishing the king dead. However the moment the king died you (and a few of your cousins and a few apposing families) had to proclaim yourself as king with all the associated glitter straight away. We know that even the Royal Arms often changed with different monarchs. So while the Royal Tapestry makers and embroiderers were often feverishly working away, the first cloth of state were often painted canvas.

My Device

While my device is by no means a cloth of state, painted canvas does make for a cheap and easy way to add some medieval atmosphere to a campsite.

After entering my painted cloths in a competition a household in the area came to ask me if I would mind if they used “my idea” to paint some panels for the king and queen. I found this very amusing since it is not my idea at all, it is in fact a proven Tudor idea. I of cause gave them my full permission, and also to anyone else who wished to paint and they were kind enough to name me as inspiration when their panels were presented.

For the article that originally inspired me go here:

<http://arthistorynews.com/articles/1149_A_rare_Tudor_survival&gt;

 

Tent Doors

My period pavilion is a French Double Bell Wedge. Mine is blue and yellow, my best comrade in crime’s is purple and yellow (as you can see above) I love it. It is huge. I think 15 feet by 23 feet footprint with rounded ends. Obviously you loose some space due to the sloped sides, but not there is still lots of space. The pavilion has 2 center poles (That fit next to the driver seat in our van and can thus be transported as one piece.) and a ridge pole that is made as 2 pieces with a sleeve (thanks partner).

When we get onsite we put the ridge pole down, then we have a piece of rope with a knot in it that we use to figure out 6 points around the ridge pole. We pull the canvas open and put down 6 stakes. All this can be done by one person. The we find a strong person and borrow them for 2 minutes to raise the poles. This is the only part of raising the tent that requires more than one person. After this we go around the outside of the tent and add the other 18 or so stakes. This tent has withstood gale force winds and just about anything else mother nature can throw at it.

When we go to an event that we know is going to be really cold out night we pack our 4 person pop-ups and put them up in the bell ends of the tent. Or the bell ends are big enough that one can be used as a kitchen, one as a bedroom and we still have the whole central area (10 feet by 15 feet open). Now I am going to add a shameless plug for the maker of this tent: Midwest Tents <http://midwesttent.com/ps/index.php?id_category=8&controller=category&gt; where you can buy this tent for under $500 (just the canvas, no poles of pegs or ropes, but everything else we needed cost us less than $100). My household now have 6 Midwest tents and we love them.

This is not why I am writing the blog though. The one problem we found with the tent is that the “door” is also the “porch” and we hated having to open and close it every night. So I said: “Why don’t I made some doors?” They would not have to be structural or weatherproof (in really bad weather we could close the real door), but they could be really nice. I decided straight away that one of the doors would be our household device (and it just happens to do double duty as a huge banner when we need it) and the other door would be personal devices.

Finding the fabric for the household device was easy, painter’s canvas (they are on sale at Harbour Freight right now – 9 feet by 12 feet for $15.29) and the left over green fabric from making the dags. My device was also easy, painter’s canvas and black trigger (who does not have black trigger laying around?) But my friend’s device required both yellow and purple. The yellow was easy, she actually had some. (yes, our craft rooms are scary), but she mentioned from the start that she had always had trouble finding purple trigger. SO I started searching and literally went to every fabric store anywhere near my house. They would tell me that they had some, and show me blue, a really dark blue. This also made me very scared to order online since I might not agree with their definition of purple either.

Purple is a strange color. Being a combination of red and blue on the color wheel it can veer towards either color. I am no expert in dying, but my friend who knows more tells me a lot of purples in the middle ages veer more towards the red side of the wheel than we think of purple with our modern eyes. Just as I was about to give up and order online I got a call from my local fabric lady at Walmart to tell me they magically got in a very “crimson-purple”. (It helps when you know the fabric lady at Walmart personally). So I went in and it was perfect.

My friend had actually registered her device mumble, mumble, mumble years ago when she thought yellow and purple and butterflies and suns were the height of cool. Although she still liked all the elements she had mostly fallen out of love with the overall look of her device. I think a big part of it was due to most heralds and heraldic artists. When I draw my device, witch has 2 mullet (5 pointed stars) around the top, the starts are huge, their point just barely not touching. When a herald draws my device the starts are tiny, each taking up only a 6th of the width of the design. Whenever anyone had made or drawn my friend’s device they had always made the sun and the butterfly tiny. A busy little circle in their diagonal space. For my friend’s door I went even further. This was not in fact a device. It was a piece of art representing her device. So I did not even try to fit in their diagonal spaces. I made them happily stretch out. This was also because I was doing applique – and bigger is easier.

I have posted before about my applique process and the butterfly was done in much the same way. For the sun I did a lot of math and made templates (a triangle and a ray) that repeated. I also almost gave my husband a heart attack. Everything was cut he looked at it and said: ” shouldn’t the sun have a face?”. So I took the circle, folded it in half and freehand cut out the face – did not even draw anything first. If after 30 years of art I don’t know the most basic proportions of a face I might as well hang up my paintbrushes, and pencils, and needles …

When I gave my friend’s doors to her she almost cried and actually confessed later that they had made her fall in love with her device all over again. We can not go to a camping event without people complimenting us on the doors. They are bold, they are colorful and thus they fit us perfectly.