Artistic Showcase

The Society for Creative Anachronism began… Well, let’s let them tell the story, shall we? From the SCA official website:

The SCA started in 1966, when a few friends who were history buffs and science fiction/fantasy fans hosted a big outdoor party in Berkeley, California. The invitation stated that a Tournament would be held on the first of May, summoning “all knights to defend in single combat the title of ‘fairest’ for their ladies.”

Well, now that handful of friends are now a worldful of friends and family. We are great-grandparents and great-grandchildren! Yes, there are people who grew up in this society, not just one generation now, but two, and sometimes three or four, as people brought in their history-loving parents or grandparents, their children and grandchildren who wanted to learn and play.

We’re not only knights, either. We’re royalty, nobility, and the great unwashed masses of world-population and -creating peasants in this, our reboot of the Middle Ages. We are fighters, but we are also lovers. We are fair maidens, and we are fair youths. We are priests, vagabonds, merchants. We work with wood, metal, glass, fibers, food, pen and parchment, beads, leather, feathers. We do, in short, almost everything that anyone ever did in the actual Middle Ages.

And every last one of us has been challenged to a duel.

No, not a duel of swords. We are challenged to a duel of intellect and experience. Each of us is entreated, requested, and encouraged to create 50 things before the end of AS 50 (Anno Societatis 50). Yes, that’s really it.

Oh, all right, if you must have details, here they are.

Satisfied? Good.

I’m taking up the challenge. I haven’t worked out the details of my own challenge, though. I’d thought to make 50 sets of ceramic feastware, but then I damaged my wrists and elbows making the first 20. My last 30 objects will have to be something other than pottery, but I also will have to find a way to incorporate those first 20, because I’m just too proud of them not to count them in the total. Fifty objects my persona could have had? Fifty she could have made? Fifty objects, period? I don’t even know. But I know I’m going to count them, and I know I’m going to create 30 more things of some kind or other. I have some ideas. I’ll try a few, and we’ll see what happens.

Not all of us feel the need to accept the challenge, but the fact remains, we have been dared. The gauntlet is thrown. Dare you pick it up? Dare you refuse?

Update: I’ve decided to count the first 20 pottery pieces towards my A&S 50 Challenge as “objects I’ve made.” Why complicate things? I’ve made 7 soap batches as well, though I forgot to photograph most of them, so those batches are items #21 through #27.