The Painted and Gilt 7th century Box is Finished

More than seven years ago, I began working on my "7th Century Box" project. At the time, I had no idea that it would be this long in the making, but this past week, it finally got "finished". Actually, it really is not finished yet, because it still wants hinges, a handle, a lock and some textile lining.

 

 

The finished front (minus a lock)

 

 

The main reason for making this box, besides that I wanted to, was to demonstrate the potential decorative qualities of  objects from a time when so few are available; and to show that the world was not as drab bleak and crude as what people are want to portray it, through their own cultural ignorance and biases. 

To be sure, this was no "ordinary" man's chest, but it is something that could have existed, and if it did, it would look, when new, just as this does; every aspect of it was crafted with tools and techniques available in the 7th century. In this post, I shall tell a bit of how I came to decorate it as I did and the thought process behind those choices.

 

I already revealed my sources of inspiration for the design in previous posts on the topic, like this first one, from September of 2018 (When I had already been working on it for nearly a year) so there is no point to repeat myself here.

 

 

 

Mosaic of Saint'Apollonair in Classe, Ravenna

 

 

The mosaic shown above was created in the sixth century, so would have been roughly one hundred years old by the time of our box, yet it shows the beginnings of the stylisation of the trees, as they appear on our box. This artwork would doubtlessly have influenced later generations, as it was on view throughout the entire span of the "Middle Ages".

In decorating this box, the overall colour theme was inspired by a couple frescoes and an "illuminated manuscript" page, all from our target period of "the 7th century". The colours, or "pallet" I chose mostly came from this manuscript. Different colours were available in different regions and according to one's budget. The type of painting that one was doing could also affect the colours that one had to work with. Some colours were available for books, but not for walls or furnishings, whilst other colours were available for any type of surface. It was those sorts of colours that I chose for this box. All of them, save the blue and black, which comes from woad and charcoal, respectively, began as ground up minerals (stones),

 

 

From the Codex Amiatinus comes several inspirations, including colours

A good source of information on horse trappings came from this fresco

Two wall paintings that lent a lot of information to this project came from 7th century fragments preserved in Santa Maria, Antiqua, in Rome. Seeing this equestrian painting, in particular, helped a great deal in better understanding where the original carver was coming from with his design, which I mostly followed, for the front panel.The harness and the saddle are the same, and the pose of the horse seems to be similar to my left-most horse. It even gave inspiration for the decoration of the rider's hose and shoes.

 

View of the front of the lid with birds

The back, with small birds and a "textile, design on the lid

 

 

Birds were a very common early mediaeval theme in the arts; since I love them as well, it was natural to incorporate them into my box.  The method of colouring them was informed by several illuminated manuscripts, of which I have included a couple pages, below. 

Birds in 7th century art

More birds and ornamental details, Note their multi-coloured nature

Details showing multi-coloured strap-work and banding

 

Speaking of colour, a series of surviving pages from the so-called "Stockholm Codex Aureus" (Early 8th century) was my main inspiration for how to go about colouring the main back panel. The above picture is a compressed view of part of two sides of an arch used as a "Eusebian Cannon Table" in the manuscript. The colours, as well as the black background where what I took away from this. 

 

 

7th century linen and wool textile with roundel motif

Since we are discussing the back, I might as well end that topic by mentioning that from the moments I saw the original carved marble slab that inspired the back of the lid, I always understood that to represent textile. There are many preserved fragments of 7th century textiles, from Egypt as well as sources along the "Silk Road" which show this basic repeat "roundel" pattern, so it was to imitate this type of fabric that I coloured it. I had a 9th century illuminated manuscript page in mind, which gave me the idea of the purple and gold, but purple was, since the Roman times, a sign of wealth, so there is no reason to think that one would not have used such a colour for this purpose. In fact, there are several surviving 7th century Sogdian silk fragments in Museums around the world, done with purple. 

Back and right-hand end

Right lid end with lions; an ever present theme as well

7th century buckle with "Daniel Among the Lions"

Right end detail

Another painting from Santa Maria Antigua in Rome

 

In 9th century illuminated manuscripts, there are many versions of overlapping circles with gradient colours, and I had seen several 7th and early 8th as well as a 6th century examples of other shapes showing the same gradient theme, (See the above manuscript from which I drew inspiration for the colours) but I was not able to find a 7th century one specifically with overlapping circles. I really expected that they would have used such a motif because it seemed to be such a popular mode of ornamentation, but I searched for a long time to find something to support my hunch. I did eventually find evidence in the fresco, shown above; some of the paint has worn off, so the gradient effect has been partially lost, but it definitely shows the concept.  Of all of the carved elements on this box, this is the one that I am the most confident in how it would have been painted in the target century. 

 

 

Left end

In the unfinished carving, it was the left end I liked best, thus I put it together this way, because I like to "read" a piece of furniture from the left corner, but after the painting, I really loved the right end, and wished I had put the thing together differently. This end panel works well with the lions above, though, and it all works well as a complete piece. I really had nothing much to go on, for the painting of this animal, other than a couple illustrations of lions and imaginary creatures, which this is. All are mostly painted in single colours, with outlines accents, as I have done here.
 

 

Gilded arcade detail on the front of the box

Gold-plated 7th century bronze medallion

Detail of a 7th century gold-foil votive cross

 

Another thing that was very clear to me, when starting on this project, was how similar the surviving carvings of the period were to metalwork, which the semi-nomadic Germanic tribes had been famous for for centuries. As this was their preferred manner of ornamentation, it is no wonder that other types of decoration would resemble and imitate that form. I also suspect that originally, a lot of the carved interior stonework would have been gilded much as I have done with this box. Once the gilding is on, it really does looks just like metalwork. In the 7th century writings, concerning St Eligius, we are informed of the practice of gilding stone altars, specifically.

 

Some people might think that this box is too elaborate and sophisticated for the 7th century, but I again repeat that that is only because we have been brainwashed into supposing the people of that time to be simple rustics living in squalor and gloom. Below, I share a couple of actual 7th century caskets that have survived to our present age; by these, you can see that my box is less involved than they are. More "man-hours" would have been spent to make these than what I spent on my box.

 

7th century Reliquary; missing many of its jewels

Another 7th century reliquary

 

Should you still be skeptical, because these are metal, not wood, I will say that actually, the first one, above is wood, and has been carved out to accommodate the metal inlay, (no mean feat, for sure) but there are other examples of fine wood carving from the 7th century as well. Here is a door from a painted cupboard Someone has sawn the eagles off, perhaps to apply as decoration to something else? Were they gilded? It is hard to say. The book cover is leather, but someone had to carve the form into which it was pressed, to create the design, so that counts, as well.

 

 

 

Cover of St Cuthbert's personal gospel book

cupboard door from the "6th or 7th century"

Some readers might note the mixture of Roman influences with that of the "migration" art of this box. This is no accident. First of all, the original carvings from which I drew inspiration also had this mixture, such as the classical columns on the ends of migration-style sarcophagi. This blending of styles was the beginning of "European art", and is exhibited in many branches of the arts, such as this 7th century illuminated manuscript page, below.

 

 

A blending of Roman and Germanic art styles

Note, also the gradient colours (red and blue), that I mentioned earlier. It would take several hundred more years for European art to fully homoginise into itself, but it never stopped looking back to Roman models, contrary to the commonly held notion of "rediscovering" it in the renaissance.

 

Videre Scire

 

 

 

 

Ten years on

  It is hard to believe, but it has been ten years since I first started this blog. A lot has happened in those ten years, but I am still in business and still making beautiful things. Over the past five years I have been so busy as to not really have time for this blog, but I have made a renewed commitment, this year, to keep after it.

The 7th century box as it now stands

Back in September of 2018 I introduced a new project, which I am calling a "7th Century Box". At that point, I had made the lid and carved part of the front face as well as one end. I had actually started the project in the late winter or early spring, before I left the country on a six month project. It was only after I returned that I made the time to publish anything about it. 

Time has marched on, as it always insists on doing, and more parts of it got done. A year and four months after the first post, I had finished all the carving, (so I thought, until I discovered this month, that I had missed a few bits) on the lid and had made the legs. By may of 2020, I was done with the front and back panels. A bit over a year ago, I finished one end, but that did not seem like enough of an achievement to be worth posting about. This past December, I started working on it, again, with the hopes of posting a finished box on the tenth anniversary of this blog.

 

All four panels finished, The end panel on the left was done in December of 2023

 

That did not happen for several reasons, but at least it is now together and ready for painting and gilding. I will be doing another post about that process, once it is completely finished. This posting was supposed to have happened last Wednesday, but I somehow messed up my editing page and had no idea how to fix it, Thank you, Thomas, for showing me what was wrong, and fixing it for me. Now I can continue with my blogging.

This past December, in addition to working on this box, I also worked on finishing up another box that I started on even longer ago. I mostly had to do the finishing, as well as making the hinges and affixing the lid.

16th century style box with painted decorations

The other end. Milk-paint was used for the decorations

I also had, in December, a lectern to restore. (Or more accurately, reinvent) It had been made from some left over parts from an old cabinet, with some added mouldings and a plywood top and back, which I found very offensive. I decided to make those parts over, and in an "authentic" manner. I got the inspiration for the carving from the above depicted box, which I did several years ago. Somehow, it seemed fitting, and the client loved the finished product.

Carving 120 year old oak was a tough job but I managed

The podium in its new home, where it will serve as a hostess' desk

Back to my box, Here are a few more pictures of it going together and getting ready to be finished.

Newly assembled

This was supposed to show the other end, but somehow it has the same end, again

One other thing that needed to happen was to make a bottom for it. For that, like the rest, I sawed it by hand, so as to keep it as authentic as possible. No machinery has touched any part of this box since the sawmill cut the timbers that were used for it. I used a white oak plank and cut it to about 15mm thick.

Good thing I got this done before all the ice and snow

After the assembly, it was sealed with "size" which is thinned down, freshly made hide glue. (I made that from soaking parchment scraps in water, then cooking the "juice" until I had glue. The size is a sort of "primer" for the gesso, to help that better adhere to the wooden surface.

With size applied

Some people will undoubtedly think I should have left this in its natural state, but I am replicating something that could have been in the 7th century; the taste at that time would have been very different than today. At that time, no one would have ever considered leaving such a finely carved box unfinished. Also, it was my intent, from the onset to paint it, or I would not have used two such widely different species of timber to make it.

The lid with a first coat of gesso

Scraping the gesso, This is the "old school" method of "sanding"

This shows the gesso before the scraping began

As of today, Sunday, 26 January, all of the gesso work is finished. I will let it cure for a few days before moving on to paint and gilding.

Videre Scire

Fabeltier

There is doubtless no definitive, universally accepted reason why, but since the beginning of time, man has been inventing fantastic, made up creatures. Forty some years ago I even once read a book that proffers the view that the dinosaurs were actually living experiments in crossbreeding by an antediluvian society, for the purpose of gladiatorial type sports. Probably a very far-fetched notion, but the point is, that somehow, humans (myself included) have always had a fascination with making up fantastic creatures, known in German, as Fabelwesen or Fabeltieren.('en' makes a noun plural in German)

Fabeltier

Some eleven or twelve odd years ago, looking through a book, I came across a drawing of an early medieval decorative motif for some metal object, in the form of an unidentified, (to me) rather contorted, creature in a roundel. I found it fascinating and wound up drawing him myself. That led to to the concept of creating a carved chest somewhat following after the manner of a small casket in the MET, which has a series of roundels with animals. With this idea in mind, I began making up additional creatures that might suit the purpose.

My dabblings with Fabelwesen. Somehow, they seem to fit more
appealingly in a roundel. They are numbered in the order in which they
were drawn over a couple of days. Number one is the one that started it all
and I believe number three was at least partially inspired by an historical
creation as well; the rest were figments of my own imagination.

The little casket from the MET which was the second part of the inspiration
for this project

That chest is yet to materialise, but in the autumn of the year of this initial conceptualisation, the organisers of a local event asked me to do some demonstrating. I decided to try carving one of my creatures, which I had recently finished drawing. In my wood-rack were several planks of pine left from a project, and as it was rather soft, seemed like a good wood to make the carving "easy". (As it turns out, carving pine is not particularly easy, - no forgiveness in grain direction and it is easily dented - oak would have been a much better candidate)

The carving progressed slowly over the course of the one day event, and by the end of day, his head and part of his body were defined inside a circular perimeter, his tail was also fairly well finished. After that day, however, he spent more than a decade in storage, almost completely forgotten.

Recently, in need of some material for a project, I was rummaging in the storage and happened upon this unfinished work. As I had been trying to think what meaningful gift I could give to my friend, Steffen, for his birthday, this suddenly presented itself as a good candidate. I got the carving out and took it back to my shop. It took me parts of four days to complete him because I completely re-carved every last millimetre in order to get the background much deeper than it had been. I "took a picture" of the piece as it was, but like many times before, there was no memory card in the camera, so no picture of how he was at that stage.

By the time I realised there was no memory card in the camera, the carving
was almost complete. The exposed dark colour is due to the 12+ years of
waiting in the storage building to be finished. Another plank of timber
 partially covered it, resulting in the lighter coloured upper half.

As I like to do with this blog, a bit of historical context to these imaginary creatures is warranted. I have no idea of the origin, and have not found any pre-medieval examples that show a very close connection, though there no doubt are such prototypes. The Gundestrup Cauldron shows on the "exterior plate A", two lion/dog looking creatures. Perhaps this is part of the tradition that eventually was codified by the early Middle Ages. The earliest versions that I know of, come from the 7th and 8th centuries. I do not profess or pretend to be an expert on the topic, however; the purpose of the following is simply to show some examples of the evolution of one branch of the Fabeltier through the course of the Middle Ages.

These characters, here shown in an 8th century iteration, will continue
in the ever changing styles throughout the course of the medieval period

It is hard to say what they are, or if they were actually, originally intended to be a real animal and, over time, became so stylised as to become Fabeltieren. Whatever the earliest intentions, by the 8th century they were already canonised as decorative repertoire for almost any ornamental purpose.

Amiens BM MS Lescalopier 030 fol 10v 4. V. 12jh Weissenau

In this late 12th century manuscript, from Weissenau Abbey, God is depicted creating the animals and fish on the fifth day of creation. (Latin; "Dies V") The interesting thing is that the "animals" portrayed are all mythical creatures. The "sea dog" and flying "sea lion" both have faces similar to our character.

Kölner Diözesan- und Dombibliothek MS Cod 83ii Fol 146r
798 (Detail)

Petrischrein, Domschatzkammer Minden
Carolingian Enamel plate re-used in an 11th century reliquary

Sometimes these creatures take on more of the characteristics we would ascribe to our notion of "dragons" such as those shown in the last example above, but often both these and dragons are shown together. Generally, the dragons will have thicker and often split tails, as well as wings, whilst the other, unnamed guys have neither of those.

Sometimes they take on more lion-like features, whilst other representations have them more dog-looking. My Fabeltier is a nice mixture of the two, which is also often found, as is exemplified in the following French miniature of the late 12th century. (middle left)

Getty MS Ludwig XIV 2 fol 126r um 1170-80 Umkreis Paris

These creatures seem to be prevalent throughout Europe, with slight regional artistic nuances, but generally recognisable as stemming from the same tradition, they can be found in all types of surviving artworks from as far apart as Spain and Norway.

Anglo-Saxon Stone Fragment from Jedburgh, Scotland, 9-10th cent.

North Italian or French Capital, now in the Louvre, 11th cent.

From a former frieze of Cluny Abbey, 12th cent.

Schaffhausen, Stadtbibliothek, Ministerialbibliothek Ms Min. 15 fol 45v
ca. 1100

One of my favourite characteristics of a sub-group of these creatures are those with a propensity to bite something (fruits, flowers, vines - see the Jedburgh stone carving above) or even their own backs or tails. In my opinion, they work best in a rounded fatter form, such as that shown in the Cluny fries-fragment above.

(A not very good picture of a detail from the) Basler Antipendium (altar)
now in the Musee de Moyen Age (Museum of the Middle Ages) in Paris
1st decade of the 11th cent., gifted to Basel Cathedral by Emperor Henry II 

In this roundel, the creature is biting his foot, which is another version of the biting theme. This is the sort of image I had in mind when designing my creatures for the box.

Taking advantage of some nice afternoon light to have a look
at the progress of my own carving

Once my animal was carved it was down to thinking about how to finish off the whole thing as a stand-alone piece of art. I took a cue from 12-13th century ivory mirrors and put "ears" (stylised leaves) on the four corners. In all, I think it worked out good. Once it was all done, I rubbed it down with some abrasive leaves and linseed oil, then I put it in the sun to give it a bit of a "tan" in an attempt to eliminate the piebald effect from a decade of being half buried and half exposed. I should mention that Steffen's Christmas gift to me aided my carving of his birthday gift; he gave me some very narrow carving chisels which worked great for getting into the gap between the border and the feet and rump. (1.5mm)

My Fabeltier - finished and delivered