Journeyman
26cm x 18cm x 9cm
Description
Small suitcase with metal paraphernalia: buttons, bell and bottletop, sewing machine accessories, an oval brass box with brass pins stuck into beeswax, a miniature sewing machine, a small bundle with cat charm.
Themes, comments and storylines
The case of a travelling salesman with shamanic inclinations, perhaps, of textile matters solidified, cold metal juxtaposing the warmth of fabric, yet both materials ultimately bound to each other. When the fabric has long deteriorated, metal findings provide archaelogical evidence of textile making and use. In her book Findings Mary Beaudry (2006) examines and interpretes these so-called small finds: telling us stories about pins and needles, thimbles and scissors, what they reveal about past ways of life and occupations. How much time, labour and skill was once involved in their making when a needle in a haystack might have been precious enough to search for, taking us back to times when clothes (including baby garments) were held in place by pins and women with this particular kind of prickly armour may have been as dangerous to approach as porcupines.
"In April 1440, two galleys outfitted on behalf of seven Venetian merchants docked at Southampton on their return voyage from Flanders carrying eighty-three thousand pins as part of their cargo. Documentary evidence hence reveals both trade in and use of vast numbers of straight pins, most of them made of finely drawn wire and fitted with small heads. Such pins would not have served as cloak fasteners and the like but instead were used to fasten women's veils - pinning the folds of linen headdresses or securing transparent veils to the hair or around the shoulders to the front of the gown. It is noteworthy that the trousseau of Edward III's daughter, Princess Joan, whose wedding took place in 1348, included twelve thousand pins for fastening her veils." (Beaudry 2006:13)
Beaudry, Mary C. (2006), Findings: The Material Culture of Needlework and Sewing, New Haven, CT, and London, Yale University Press
For a different kind of Domestic Archaeology
More on pins in Pins & Palimpsests and Straps, Pearls & Pins
“ On my study visit to Germany en route to the Kunst- und Naturalienkammer in Halle, I stop in the Goethe town of Weimar. Goethe, like many wealthy men of his time, undertook the Grand Tour to Italy – a journey of almost two years. My own ten-day visit to Germany seems ridiculously short in comparison. With travel on my mind and engaged in my own research journey, I browse through the books in the Goethe house, my eye caught briefly by Wilhelm Meister’s Wanderjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years). Back outside having a coffee on the shady square, I suddenly feel transported back into another age when I spot two Wandergesellen in their traditional outfit: black corduroy suit with wide legs, jacket adorned with silver buttons and chains, a white collar-less shirt, wide-rimmed black hat, earrings, walking stick and bundle. Wandergesellen, often like in the title of Goethe’s novel, wrongly translated as ‘journeyman’, are itinerant craftsmen, often carpenters. From medieval times till the beginnings of industrialisation, craftsmen were required after their apprenticeship to go on a journey, seeking employment with different masters on their way and thus working in different places and circumstances master their trade as they travelled before they could apply to their guilds to become masters themselves and settle down. I remember seeing some occasionally as a child, they were often present at the Richtfest (topping out ceremony), a colourful celebration taking place when the timber frame of a new building was completed. Intrigued by the unexpected encounter back in the hotel I go on the Internet to find out more. The tradition it seems, has continued, with ups and downs according to changing economical and political circumstances, into the present. Since the 1980s with rising interest in alternative lifestyles and often uncertain employment situations there has been a revival – and women have been allowed to join what used to be an exclusively male practice. They are still, by and large still the same regulations governing the journey: travellers have to be free of debt, child-less and single, of impeccable behaviour and reputation, they are banned from entering a 50km radius around their home town for the entire duration of their journey and are only allowed to travel on foot or hitchhiking. They have to wear their traditional suit at all times to be identifiable by the people on whose support they depend. The carry all their belongings wrapped in a special square cloth printed with the name and signs of their guild and trade, a cloth, I read, originally chosen in preference to a rucksack because it was less likely to harbour flees. Their earrings are supposed to tie them over when they find themselves in financial hardship, the silver on their jacket to pay for a decent funeral. With them they carry a book to be signed by the mayor of the towns they visit thus documenting their journey. The duration of the journey is a minimum of three years and one day, similar to the minimum requirement of a PhD. While typically associated with the building trade, jewellers, painters, blacksmith and tailors are also among the craftspeople undertaking the journey. How different, I ponder, their journey in search of knowledge and to master their skills is from that of their wealthy compatriots embarking on the Grand Tour. While the travellers on the Grand Tour, like their contemporary equivalents, followed well-established itineraries in search for particular sights and places to consolidate their knowledge of the roots of their culture, the Wandergesellen, unburdened by baggage and pre-conceived destinations, bound only by the code of their practice, exercised a very different freedom. Where the former are visitors and observers, the latter are participants inhabiting and practicing in the midst of the places they travel to.” (from my diary)
A different, yet not entirely unrelated type of journey, undertaken in speedier times: Are we nearly there?