Friday, May 16, 2014

Recreation of a Merovingian Necklace

Source:Multimedia Encyclopedia sponsored by the Royal Academy of Belgium. Essay called, Glass Beads from Merovingian Gaul (5-8th centuries). This site is not in English, but Google Translate works well enough. In addition to the pictures, there is some nice general background information on this website about Merovingian beads.

Original Necklace: The necklace I choose to partially recreate from this website is image 8 (pictured below). Translated, the caption for this image reads: Bead Necklace. Glass. Verlaine "Oudoumont" (Liège), grave 245. Verlaine is a region in Belgium, so this caption is referring to a grave found at a specific dig site in the Verlaine region Belgium.

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Period Necklace


Background Information
Cemeteries are the primary source of our information about beads from Merovingian graves. This is because during this time period people were buried, not cremated, and they were interred with their belongings. This type of burial practice occurred primarily between the Seine and Rhine rivers, where the majority of Frankish people were located. However, by the 7th and 8th centuries, this type of burial declined as Christianity became more popular. Beads have been found primarily as necklaces or bracelets, occasionally there were found stitched to clothing. Graves have been found with only a few dozen to a 100 or more beads, and they have been found in single or multiple strand (Pion).


According to Pion's historic overview, the necklace that I have chosen to recreate likely dates from the later 6th century to the mid 7th century. It was during this time, he says, that Merovingian bead styles became very innovative, changing from the small monochrome and transparent style favored by the Romans (and often intended to imitate precious stones), to a much more colorful and polychromatic style. By matching the style of beads found in this necklace with a chronology of Merovingian beads created by Siegmund, it is possible to narrow down slightly the most likely time frame of this necklace. The beads in this necklace come from Siegmund's E, F, G and H bead clusters, leading to an early to mid 7th century date.
Merovindian beads types arranged in groups by date (Siegmund).

 Sources

Siegmund, Frank. "Merovingian Beads on the Lower Rhine." Transl. C.J. Bridger. Beads: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers, 7. p. 37-53 (1995). Retrieved from: https://www.academia.edu/1202844/Merovingian_beads_on_the_Lower_Rhine

Pion, Constantin. "Glass Beads from Merovingian Gaul (5-8th centuries". Koregos: A Multimedia Encyclopedia sponsored by the Royal Academy of Belgium. Retrieved from:
http://www.koregos.org/cgi?usr=cg6bgn3q8m&lg=fr&pag=1861&tab=317&rec=78&frm=0&
par=secorig1803&id=5269&flux=26505549
 



 My Recreation

I chose to recreate this necklace, not only because I loved the vibrant color combination, but because I liked the contrast between the small and large beads.

The original necklace contains approximately 59 small beads, and 13 large beads.  I chose not to copy this necklace exactly, as I felt it would have then been too large for me to wear comfortably. Instead, I chose to produce a smaller version of it, and to so I started by picking 5 of the larger beads to recreate.

When deciding how many of the little beads to reproduce, I chose to arrange my necklace a bit more symmetrically than the extant piece (modern tastes!). In the extant necklace, the number of small beads in-between each larger bead is very uneven. However, there are approximately 4.5 beads for each larger bead. I chose to place 5 beads in between and on each side of the larger beads in the necklace, for a total of 30 beads. All together, this necklace has 35 beads in it

When choosing how many of each color of the small beads to make, I  calculated the percentage of each color from the larger necklace, and matched that percentage in my smaller recreation. The goal here was to achieve the same color balance of the original necklace.

I then strung the smaller beads on the necklace relatively randomly, to achieve the random but coordinated effect of the original necklace.

My Recreation








Monday, May 5, 2014

Bead Bling

Bead string made for Bruni in heraldic colors (red/white/black)


 

The necklace was inspired by the string of beads pictured below. The picture is from Birte Brugmannn's Glass Beads from Early Anglo-Saxon Graves. The necklace contains both glass and amber beads, and they come from a Grave in Germany (Issendorf Grave 3549.1). The beads are included in Brugmann's book because a few of the type of polychrome beads shown in this picture (the beads labeled 1) were also found in England.  

The beads labeled 1 in the picture are called Candy beads by Brugmann. They are a common early type of Continental bead (5th century). They are characterized by their translucent base (green, yellow, or blue-green) and opaque decoration (mostly in white or red). I have used black as the transparent color, because many of the beads in the picture below are dark enough to look black. I tried to include in the necklace I created one of each polychrome design found the picture below.. I also included ribbed and annular/barrel shaped beads in my necklace, as the historic necklace also has a few types of these beads. I put in a few bicone beads, because Bruni made necklace out of Bicone beads that she entered into this winters K&Q's A&S. I also played around with the colors to include more white in the necklace, and I made my designs much more symmetrical than the string below to fit with modern tastes.



Friday, May 2, 2014

Philosophies of Recreation

Below is a link to a brief opinion piece that I published in the East Kingdom A&S Newsletter, called "Philosophies of Recreation."

http://aso.eastkingdom.org/issues/aso8.pdf



 


K&Q A&S 2014




I entered projects that I had displayed before, but I updated some of the documentation, particularly for my older projects, for this event. Below is the documentation as I entered it.

Buckland Documentation
Mucking Documentation
Castledyke Documentation