October, a Medieval Month

It's been an incredibly busy month for me. We had a visit to Kentucky for Days of Knights, a fairly large medieval tournament and living history event. And I also attended Hoplologia's much smaller medieval trek in the Adirondack Park of upstate New York. If anything in the coming post really doesn't make sense, the Hoplologia website should offer some solid background information. 

I was able to create some belts and belt fittings as well as garters and some brooches and rings to sell for Days of Knights and it was great to get a chance to meet so many engaging medieval reenactors. I was especially impressed with Cedric The Potter, who makes beautiful reproduction medieval pottery. I had to seriously refrain from buying everything he had for sale.

The most epic thing I think I made for this event is this medieval belt. I made reproduction brass fittings mostly derived from finds in the River Thames. The finished belt has 45 fitting including the buckle and belt end, and took about 8 hours to assemble. Each fitting was hand finished and hand riveted to the belt by me. I can't help but think of it as the uber belt, but in reality it is a pretty standard middle culture piece of medieval bling. Maybe we should take some fashion tips from our forebears and bring back the epic belt as fashion accessory. Seriously I have to stop myself from wearing it around every day.

45 fittings. Wow.

Our Medieval Trek was a lot more of a roughing it sort of situation, but my work still got a lot of use. For example these custom buttons and this ring, made it into and out of the woods.

A brass heraldic button on the cuff, and a silver gilt enamel tournament ring.

And this pair of tablet woven garters with silver medieval buckles held some stockings in place. I am just beginning to learn to tablet weave, and it is super fun and challenging.

That's all for now. There's lots happening in Handmade Revolution land, and I hope to have some fun new work of a more modern persuasion to post soon.

Keep trekking...

Gearing up for fall

It's been a very busy summer at Handmade Revolution, but we are excited to get back into gear as fall rolls around. We have a craft show coming up on September 24th, at The Center for Social Innovation. We are really excited to get the chance to participate in this even again, since we had such a great time at the Spring pop-up and met such great people.

We really hope you will join us to see some of our new wares or just to say hi. We love seeing you in person!

If you take some time to browse around our site, you will notice that we have added some new products to our shop page, and we have added a section that talks a little more about some of our custom projects.  It's been a great summer for custom work and we are eager to talk about some of the inspiring opportunities we have had to make unique and special jewellery for our clients. Like this bold cocktail ring we made from up-cycled amethysts.

We can't wait to see what kind of fun new craft adventures the fall has in store.

Stay tuned.

It's been a busy month for Handmade Revolution. I was lucky enough to be able to participate in a small day camp last week, which gave me a chance to up my own artistic skills and help some excellent young people with explorations of gilding and oil painting.  There was also much swimming and playing of ultimate frisbee and a good time was had by all. This week, we are honored to be able to support a really excellent theater company, Outside the March, by donating a pair of earrings to their silent auction fundraiser, taking place this evening. I have been really impressed by some of their past productions and I am very excited at the chance to be able to help them continue to do their work in a small way.  Us arts people have to stick together, it's a cold world out there.

Said earrings, by Lauren Hanham

At the moment I am in a tizzy preparing for the Red Knight Tournament,  a Medieval recreation which will take place in a few weeks. There is much sewing and jewellery creation to be done, and I am working flat out to prepare. I've been dabbling in embroidery and weaving, and it's a fun new challenge every day. Pictures to come, so stay tuned.