Jocelyn,
A while ago, I did a great deal of research into medieval cottages.
I looked at all the pictures I could find of medieval cottages and
their furnishings. Interestingly, most of them had pictures of a
canopy bed in the cottage. I assumed that the artists just liked to
draw them - made the drawing more colorful. Then I built a medieval
cottage with a thatched roof, camped in it and I discovered that while
a canopy bed seems frivolous in modern times - it's essential in a
medieval cottage. It provides privacy, provides protection from bugs
dropping off the thatch into the house, rain dripping in and it also
allows you to regulate the heat. By moving one curtain half open,
you can drop the temperature in the bed 5 degrees - very handy. So I
guess the moral of the story is if the drawing doesn't depict what you
expect to see, it doesn't necessarily mean that the drawing is wrong
- perhaps your perception is.
The parallels of thought, and how it is all sorted out, between
understanding depictions of ancient instruments and old buildings is
intriguing. Authenticity of historical recreation is a very curious topic.
We worked on a small 'hut' structure in Northern Manhattan, New York
City, that was built by an amateur archaeologist in 1909 to depict what
that person believed was a rendition of a Hessian Hut from the 18th
century, American Revolution period. There was no evidence of any
description, no drawings or photographs in particular to go from in 1909
to show what the original had looked in the late 1700's other than a
ghost of foundations of stones found in the ground in that general
vicinity. The hut was not even built where they thought it had been, it
was moved over to make way for an apartment building. Regardless this
folly of the imagination is now considered an historic structure in and
of itself. There is no way that anyone would ever want to camp in
this... which is kind of the point of their message in the recreation of
history that the Hessians who camped there, particularly in the winter
may not exactly have been happy campers.
--
Orgrease-Crankbait <http://orgrease-crankbait.blogspot.com/> Video,
audio, writings, words, spoken word, dialogs, graphic collage and the
art of fiction in language and literature.
