15th century bench

I am currently working on some new furniture to put in our (soon to be finished) tent. I am working on two tables (+ trestles), some tent-poles and I am also going to make at lantern.

But today I finished a small bench.

The bench-type that I have made can be seen on various 15th century paintings, and seem to be very common. It can be found in many variations, both simple and vith lots of fancy carvings.


I went for the simple style.



The construction is very simple and seem to be quite stable. So it was a nice project for a novice woodworker like me.
Again I used beech wood. And the whole thing is held togeather with wooden dowels (no glue).

The bench is 90 cm long, 25 cm wide and 45 cm high.



Here is a picture from 1475 of this specific type of bench. I am also going to make a couple of the 3-legged trestles that you see holding the table.


Hope to show you more furnifure soon!

Toolbox

This is a box that I have had lying around half-finished for a couple of months. I made the box myself sometime before Christmas, but have been waiting for at friend to make me some nails.

Yesterday I recieved them in the mail and spent the evening drilling holes and hammering in the nails.

Now I have a nice sturdy toolbox!



The box is made from beech (Fagus sylvatica). A very common tree here in Denmark.



The design came from a chest that I saw at mittelalter möbel, so I´m guessing that the technique is somewhat authentic. Although it isn't based on a particular find.

I really liked this project because it´s (almost) the first wood-working project that I have done. And thus I learned a lot from it. Now I just hope to get to do some more of this type of woodwork! Eventhough most of the sawing and planeing was done using modern powertools I sawed and chiseled the dovetails by hand.

Now I just need to fill it with tools :-)

Natural dyed silk fabric

All though I´m really should be writing on my final thesis to finish my archeaology studies I couldn´t stop my self from trying to dye on silk fabric. Mikkel and I have been collecting onion shells for a while and there were now a big pile of shells. I know that the dye stitchs really well on wool and gives a great colour. And when I stumbled on this guys flickr I just had to try dyeing on silk.

So I found some white silk that I have bought at a tailor on sale and gave it a mordant (alun). The mordant water and the fabric was moved a lot. Then I made the colour water and after an hour of boiling it was ready for the fabric. I removed the onion shells and but in the fabric. The piece was about 1 m. The colour was on the fabric right away and during the next hour is stured all the time.

The result and the colour is amazing! It was much easier to dye on silk than I thought and I´m for sure going to make more silk during this summer.

This picture is taken in our livingroom and the light is not to good.


Here you can see the white silk and the plant dyed silk.