I love it when other people post for me
Dec. 8th, 2009 07:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaI still haven't made time to type up my Stockholm adventures, but ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
clovis_t has typed up a little, describing one of the two museums we actually made it to. Granted, he neglected to mention the single most noteworthy item in that museum--a wool mitten liner, made by nålbinding. It was displayed along with its leather shell. There were quite a number of textiles which survived in the wreck, thanks to the brackish water of the Stockholm harbour area. While I wasn't terribly interested in the cuts of the clothing, preferring a much earlier style, the mitten was gorgeous, and didn't look much different from far earlier mittens.
He promises to talk about the gold room at the Historiska museet, so I won't bother describing that either (other than to note that to my eye the silver display was *far* prettier than the gold). However, I will mention the Textile room, which, oddly enough, I found a bit disappointing. Its emphasis is on flashy and colour, and it pretty much exclusively displayed beautifully preserved highly decorated textiles which have served in churches as alter cloths and the like (though not all of them were originally made for that purpose). Don't get me wrong, I love embroidery, and these were some lovely displays of needlework (some of which I've seen in books and photos on line hitherto). But I would have also loved to have seen some utilitarian textiles. Show me the surviving tiny fragments of real clothing from the early Middle Ages and the Migration period! Let me see the various seam treatments! Pretty stuff. Bah, Humbug. Anyone can do pretty. I want to see practical!
(I won't even mention the costume reconstructions on display in the Viking room--the Man's tunic had visible machine-stitched over-stitching around the neckline, doing a very poor job of keeping the neck facing inside. It wasn't pretty, and I don't really think that the technique was used in period, even if one simply replaced the machine stitches with hand-stitching.)
Perhaps I'll describe the event in another post--it was such fun that it deserves a more detailed mention than it has received thus far.
I've had a weekend with which to recover from my long weekend of travel, though I didn't expect to have. The uni was locked up yesterday and today. Apparently the 7th is a Milan-only holiday, St. Ambrogio's day (or so one of my Italian friends tells me), and the 8th is a holiday for an immaculate conception (according to a web page of Italian public holidays). The web page didn't say whose conception, but since the local god is said to have had such a beginning for the human phase of its existence, I'm guessing that it would be his. Why celebrate the conception so close to the time they celebrate his birth I'm not really clear on, but there is probably no understanding a religion in which one isn't raised. So I've enjoyed the peace and quiet of an empty building (well, other than my office), and manged to make some progress on my poster, and have even caught up on reading LJ, though I'm still a bit behind in actually replying to emails.
I also took advantage of the large table in the library across the hall from my office--it makes a brilliant fabric cutting table, and I now have some pieces cut to add to my winter coat in progress.
Two more days to accomplish everything that must be done before flying to California!
clovis_t has typed up a little, describing one of the two museums we actually made it to. Granted, he neglected to mention the single most noteworthy item in that museum--a wool mitten liner, made by nålbinding. It was displayed along with its leather shell. There were quite a number of textiles which survived in the wreck, thanks to the brackish water of the Stockholm harbour area. While I wasn't terribly interested in the cuts of the clothing, preferring a much earlier style, the mitten was gorgeous, and didn't look much different from far earlier mittens. He promises to talk about the gold room at the Historiska museet, so I won't bother describing that either (other than to note that to my eye the silver display was *far* prettier than the gold). However, I will mention the Textile room, which, oddly enough, I found a bit disappointing. Its emphasis is on flashy and colour, and it pretty much exclusively displayed beautifully preserved highly decorated textiles which have served in churches as alter cloths and the like (though not all of them were originally made for that purpose). Don't get me wrong, I love embroidery, and these were some lovely displays of needlework (some of which I've seen in books and photos on line hitherto). But I would have also loved to have seen some utilitarian textiles. Show me the surviving tiny fragments of real clothing from the early Middle Ages and the Migration period! Let me see the various seam treatments! Pretty stuff. Bah, Humbug. Anyone can do pretty. I want to see practical!
(I won't even mention the costume reconstructions on display in the Viking room--the Man's tunic had visible machine-stitched over-stitching around the neckline, doing a very poor job of keeping the neck facing inside. It wasn't pretty, and I don't really think that the technique was used in period, even if one simply replaced the machine stitches with hand-stitching.)
Perhaps I'll describe the event in another post--it was such fun that it deserves a more detailed mention than it has received thus far.
I've had a weekend with which to recover from my long weekend of travel, though I didn't expect to have. The uni was locked up yesterday and today. Apparently the 7th is a Milan-only holiday, St. Ambrogio's day (or so one of my Italian friends tells me), and the 8th is a holiday for an immaculate conception (according to a web page of Italian public holidays). The web page didn't say whose conception, but since the local god is said to have had such a beginning for the human phase of its existence, I'm guessing that it would be his. Why celebrate the conception so close to the time they celebrate his birth I'm not really clear on, but there is probably no understanding a religion in which one isn't raised. So I've enjoyed the peace and quiet of an empty building (well, other than my office), and manged to make some progress on my poster, and have even caught up on reading LJ, though I'm still a bit behind in actually replying to emails.
I also took advantage of the large table in the library across the hall from my office--it makes a brilliant fabric cutting table, and I now have some pieces cut to add to my winter coat in progress.
Two more days to accomplish everything that must be done before flying to California!
