Creative anachronism

[telerib]

A while back, some members of our barony kicked around the idea of the members of our Orders having some kind of regalia - say, a cloak. Just about every era has some sort of cloak-like garment, and you could easily make one to suit an individual's persona. By keeping the colors consistent, and using the badge of the order as decoration, you could show "this is our group."

The idea didn't go far, but I liked it, and have finally started to move forward with my Order of the Owl cloak project. I already had some blue wool and since I'm early period... hey, the cloak is done.

I want to embroider a white owl on the back. I'd like to style it in an Anglo-Saxon fashion, possibly after the style of the Bayeux Tapestry or after the fashion of bird ornaments in use. There's actually not much difference in the two styles - the metalwork seems to have a clearer "cell" structure than the embroidery. That's about it.

The difficulty: The order's heraldry includes "an owl displayed," which is to say, an owl looking straight at you with its wings outspread. Every freaking Anglo-Saxon bird has its head and body shown in profile. (Some of the bodies might be somewhere between profile and 3/4 view.) It seems especially important to show off the beak and perhaps the tail.

So I can either:
- Draw my best "owl displayed" in Anglo-Saxon style
or
- Change the pose of the owl slightly (which makes it "not the Order's heraldry")

If the main difficulty really is the beak... I'm tempted to go with Option 1. A costuming page for a PBS TV movie gives this adorable owl button as a detail, and I can easily see converting that cute li'l screech owl into a metalwork-inspired design.

Bonus amusement for you: Check out the birds boogying down at the center top.

Comments

Bayeux images?

[luscious-purple.livejournal.com]

Why am I not seeing larger images when I click on the thumbnails of the Bayeux sections? I just get individual pages with rotating "Image ##" animated GIFs and lots of verbiage about copyrighted images.

(I guess they want to prevent ripoff artists. Yes, this icon comes from the Bayeux, but I've had it for so long that I can't remember where I got it.)

Re: Bayeux images?

[telerib.livejournal.com]

I don't know. It works fine for me (on Firefox). I can't right-click the larger image to copy it, but I have a CD with a high-quality image of the whole tapestry, so I don't much care. :)

Here (http://rubens.anu.edu.au/htdocs/bytype/textiles/bayeux/), try this one. I think it's someone's sketched reproduction, though. There's also the British repro (http://www.bayeuxtapestry.org.uk/) made in the Victorian era, but it's kinda small pictures.

Eh... there's plenty other sites (http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=bayeux+tapestry&btnG=Google+Search), too.

[luscious-purple.livejournal.com]

Thanks! The Reading Museum repro's not too bad for an overall view.

By the way, speaking as a fellow Order of the Owl member, I think this is a totally cool project! I'll be very interested to see how it all comes out.

Now, when I put on my heraldic hat, I don't know offhand whether "Azure, an owl in profile argent" would conflict with anything else out there in the Known World, but maybe I should look it up just for grins and giggles (and heraldic practice).

[telerib.livejournal.com]

Owls are apparently weird, heraldically. Something about the head being defaulted "guardant" even if the body is specifically blazoned differently?

The trouble - and where a herald needs to develop a good eye and artisanship, I think - is that I'm trying to adapt a charge from the High Middle Ages to a display for a 8th or 9th century persona, but the display will be in the Current Middle Ages. So, were I to consult a herald :) , it would be to get advice on balancing that all out.

This charge would look weird to my persona, it seems. You just don't draw birds that way! If told to "embroider an owl, with the wings stretched out," she'd do one of those bird-in-profile, wings-on-display bits. I don't know how she'd deal with the lack of a neck and odd-shaped owl head, though - owls looks very different from other birds of prey.

But, as a good subject of their Majesties of Atlantia and the baronage of Storvik, Teleri is motivated to conform this heraldic display to the image selected by the barony and approved by the SCA, Inc., even if she privately thinks that it's quite odd. If she had to draw it, how would she?

So my current plan is to study some of the "wings out" birds in the Bayeux, sketch them out myself, and try to get a feel for how they would usually be drawn, and then draw the owl displayed as like to that as I can.

Not actually being an artist, we'll have to see how it goes. :)