Re: punching hot buttons

["Terry L. Neill" <longshipco@hotmail.com>]

Poster: "Terry L. Neill" <longshipco@hotmail.com>

Elen Prydydd wrote:
>I don't wind up with replicas, ever.  I have a couple of costumes >that 
come close, but close is a relative term.


Oh, boy!  One of MY hot buttons.  

Although I appreciate the effort put into exact (or nearly exact) 
replicas of period items, and as a learning tool (proof of concept I 
think Daffyd calls it) the exact replica is unparalleled, I don't like 
them nearly as much as I like original designs made in a period (or 
nearly) manner.

Of course, deciding to spend my medieval life in the Viking Age means 
that I *have* to do this.  There are no wonderful lifelike portraits of 
Eric the Red hanging in the Louve (sp?) for us to copy.  We *must* 
research the basic techniques, then come up with our own interpretation 
of what they wore.

But even with the items we have that survived intact, I don't like to 
see "authenticlones".  You know that splendid Thor's hammer with all the 
really neat-o detail that you see hanging around the neck of half the 
Vikings you know?  Well, there was only one of them ever found.  If you 
magically went back to the Viking Age, you wouldn't see them around the 
necks of half the men in Ribe.  You would see lots of different kinds. 
The kind made by that two-crosses-one-thors-hammer mold would be more 
prevalent. 

Personally, I'm more excited by an item that LOOKS 100% authentic, but 
is not a copy of something in a book.  In a very few days, I will 
receive in the mail a trilobe brooch made by Don Downie.  If found in a 
grave today, one would have absolutely no problem identifying it as 
Norse.  The design elements are all true to form.  But no trilobe brooch 
ever found looks like this one.  He has made his own design, based on 
Norse design elements, for a truely unique brooch.  Not a clone of an 
actual piece found.  

Now, the Norse were past masters at copying things ad infinatum, so the 
arguement holds less weight in my time period than in ones where items 
were less mass-produced.  But I'd rather see an elizabethan gown BASED 
on that painting in the Louve, using other researched elizabethan 
techniques, than a knock-off copy.

Derived designs tell me that one understands the ideas of the period, 
which IMHO, is not as frequently a found skill as being able to copy 
directly.

Regards!

   - Anarra Karlsdottir

P.S.  Feel free to forward to the Atlantia List as I notice my posts 
aren't making it through in a timely manner again.  Sigh.


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