| Current mood: |  cheerful |
Awesome resource for SCA newcomers
Whilst surfing teh intarnets, I came across a website that would be completely fabu for SCA newcomers and it's not even SCA:
http://www.abbeystalls.com/index.html
The week-long Abbey Medieval Festival is sponsored by the Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology in Brisbane, Australia, and so is tremendously focused on history and education. This particular site is for vendors, aka "stallholders". They offer spiffy clothing guidelines and suggestions for appropriate medieval goods. They have primary source documentation to back up their clothing suggestions, as well as documentation for a medieval market stall. Best of all, when you look at photos of the festival, you can see that while people do follow the spirit of the guidelines, there's a good amount of variation in persona and clothing choices while retaining an appropriate medieval appearance. I'm really impressed. I'm also a bit jealous because apparently they're allowed to sell wines and meads from stalls in Australia. Darn our Puritan heritage. Darn it to Heck, I say.
The clothing guidelines are simple, well-reasoned, and offer different levels of economic class. The clothing they show is very basic and not specific to any particular place; definitely not laurel-level stuff but extremely satisfactory as entry-level garb. I think this kind of clothing would help newcomers feel like they fit in at events and looked good. It would also be an improvement over the pirate/goth/fairy/furry tail stuff running around (geez people, save that stuff for SF/F conventions). Another good thing about the Abbey Festival's guidelines is that they spend much more time on what to wear than they do on what not to wear. They make it easy to put together a nice-looking outfit. The shoe suggestions aren't as good, but shoes always seem to be the hardest part to get right.
As for the medieval goods suggestions, I sincerely wish that the SCA would adopt the same kind of merchant guidelines and enforce them. There's so much schlock out there. I adore our skilled artisans who merchant at events. I'm happy to see the beginning craftspeople who are brave enough to offer their products as they learn. After all, everyone has to start somewhere. I even think the thrift store re-sellers have a place as long as the goods offered are period and appropriate; they're an inexpensive source of necessities like feast gear. All that said, the resin dragon statues, fairy dresses, pagan goods, etc., really aren't appropriate and detract from the atmosphere we're trying to create.
Anyway, great resource, feel free to share.
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young_raven) wrote,
