Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Project: A coronet

At St Caths 2009, Benedict was made a Baron of the Court of Lochac. I'd been wanting to do brass etching and jewellery stuff for a while, so this was a chance to work on something for him.

The general scope of the project is a basic level for me to learn new skills, and work on the ones I've already got. The coronet itself will be made of twelve brass plates, riveted to a leather base, which will be padded with wool and enclosed in silk. This is in the style of early Rus' head wear, which is definitely in use for women, but not definitively for men. The look will be of a fairly authentic piece, with the gender-anachronism. The etching, which will be of Benedict's device will be entirely anachronistic (AFAIK).

Mistress Sofya la Rus' of Calontir writes on her website;

"Banded [lentochnye] head-gear from plaques make up subtype 7. They are decorated with a number of plaques, plates. In burials they are found on the frontal bones of the skull (Kolchin)

In the Old-Russian treasure hoards are known the most luxurious models of this kind of attire. They consist of nine gold plates, seven of which are rectangular in form with a fin-shaped [kilevidnym] completion (in the form of "kiottsev") [literally, icon case], and two end plates of trapezoid form, which narrow to the outer ends. Between them the platelets were connected by threads, which penetrated holes on the sides of the plates. Head-gear was presented as a diadem with an ochel'e made from plates, which was tied on the back of the head by ribbon. They were decorated with enamel, pearls, and pendants, and they were included in the composition of ritual attire of the ancient-Russian princesses. (Kolchin)

A "koruna" [a different kind of hat] was a more complicated, richly adorned venchik (a general term?). The koruna was formed on a rigid base, covered with fabric (sometimes under the fabric was laid a bolster), and distinctively decorated. "


Therfor, with some ultra-quick image creation, I have this as a draft:



This is a headband/circlet I made in a similar style for Alison;



The next phase will be a cardboard mockup which I'll send up to Ildhafn for him to try on, and then the following stages:

~Purchase and cut the brass
~File off the sharp bits
~Etching
~Assembling onto the leather
~Stitching in the lining (which will have been riveted already)

Goal is to have this done by Midwinter Coronation.

More as I make it.

4 comments:

Dimitrii said...

Will watch this blog with a lot of interest... should I ever become a Baron, landed or court, I am going to be coming to you to help me make my Russian coronet :)

Constanzia Moralez y de Zamora said...

Yay! Looking with intense interest because getting hold of coronels is a tricky thing - you can purchase them in the states but y'no some of them are a bit common. This way you can personalise :)

Kotek said...

@Stanzi, yeah - I was interested in what B&B Rowany plan to do - they want collapsible and segmented ones, which would be a reasonably non-complex wire roll process just like in armour. Should be achievable too.

Benedict said...

Good to catch up at CF & confirm some design ideas. Don't mind pointy bits, but rounded off tips may be a bit more sensible (:
Collapsible segments? you mean I could slip it off the padding and then let it lie flat, for putting in travel-suitcase etc? Very interesting thought...
Looking forward to it !