Going to Colonial Williamsburg again reminded me of how weak & pale our attempts to recreate history are! At least at W'burg, their trades apprenticeships are 6+ years long, full-time jobs, before an apprentice becomes a journeyman (at least, that's what it was for the wigmakers, who I took a day-long class from). They have to work in the shop, learn the historically-accurate trade, plus teach / demo for the public. And in the 18th-c., children would have been apprenticed at about age 10 & work until their 20s or early 30s, by which time, their hands would have been shot & useless from the work (in trades like wigmaking, embroidery, lacemaking, particularly), & they had better hope they had their own apprentices & saved up enough money to open their own shops.
Kinda makes the SCA's laurel look a bit puny ;-) Or at least puts things in perspective about why most of us, in this modern world, may never be as expert in a historic field. Unless we quit our modern jobs & restart our lives over, hahahahahaahaha!
I basically do my medieval art for a living (cure meats etc) and It is one of the saddest thing about Charcuterie in America... we are having to basically RELEARN the art of hand crafted cured meats because it has been largely the domain of factories and mass production. It has survived tucked away in small shops, but primarily you will see American charcutiers go study in Italy or France to try and reconnect with that knowledge. In two or three generations I am hoping we once again have this anchient art as a birthright in this country.
More than twenty years...etaine_pommierMarch 25 2011, 16:00:52 UTC
My mother taught me natural dyeing, but I think I did my Very Own first dyeing when I was about ten. I patterned my first garment from scratch 26 years ago. I started making historical recreations of garments in 1991, and was immersed in German renaissance by 1993. My first forays into late 14th century French/Burgundian began in 1995. There are always side trips along the way, but I keep coming back to those two things as my passion. I'm lucky that my academic field is related, and that I had (and continue to have) the support of my professors. I've made recreations for a living several times throughout my adult life, which I suppose puts me in the realm of "professional
( ... )
One of the discoveries of my young adult life was a week I spent in northern Italy with my parents. My stepdad made friends with the maitre d' at our hotel in Florence, and because of that friendship, every evening we got a surprise first course, which was always WONDERFUL. That hotel's kitchen is where I was introduced to pasta making from scratch.
That is where I learned that northern Italy cooks with butter and cream, not with tomato sauce over everything. So the story that Medici girls took their then-modern ideas of cooking to backward France when they married French princes makes perfect sense to me, whether it has any truth to it or not.
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Kinda makes the SCA's laurel look a bit puny ;-) Or at least puts things in perspective about why most of us, in this modern world, may never be as expert in a historic field. Unless we quit our modern jobs & restart our lives over, hahahahahaahaha!
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That is where I learned that northern Italy cooks with butter and cream, not with tomato sauce over everything. So the story that Medici girls took their then-modern ideas of cooking to backward France when they married French princes makes perfect sense to me, whether it has any truth to it or not.
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