Archive for June, 2011

Link: A Roll of Japanese Armory

Just found an article that’s apparently been up for a while on the Academy of Saint Gabriel where the illustrious Solveig Throndardottir discusses family crests: A Roll of Japanese Armory. It’s short, but it features several pages of mon from the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, which is handy for those seeking a wider selection of Azuchi-Momoyama period (1573 to 1603) mon.

Hut in Progress

I’ve long planned on making a hut based on the one described by Kamo no Chōmei in his An Account of a Ten-Foot-Square Hut, and I’ve finally put some actual time into building it. Chōmei, after a political failure, fled the capital to become a Buddhist hermit, and while doing so wrote an account of his way of life that’s both widely acclaimed in Japan (and often compared to Walden) and handy for anyone trying to recreate such a setup. His hut is actually described as being collapsible, with hinges, for easy transport, and while mine is based more around what I can get for cheap at Home Depot than precise levels of authenticity, that is the right spirit for a SCA structure. I probably won’t have it done for Pennsic this summer, but nothing’s impossible. So far, I’ve got the frame for one wall, and it seems to be working pretty reasonably.

One Hut Wall Frame

Bridle joint with dowel

Hinges

I’ll post some detailed instructions when I’m done, but here are some tidbits so I don’t forget.

  • I seem to drill my holes with enough randomness that I can put two screws longer than half the thickness of my wood directly opposite each other without them hitting.
  • If at all possible, orient your wood such that you’re not drilling through a knot.

Link: Wax-resist Dyeing

I just found a cool description of Japanese wax resist (“batik”) dyeing (rōketsuzome/ろうけつ染め) at Blue Lotus. This way of adding a design to cloth goes back to the Nara period (710–794)(ja.wp:ろうけつ染め) and is one technique that was used to put designs such as mon on kimono. This is something I’ve been wanting to experiment with for a while, and it’s nice to see an easy-to-read description of the modern process in English.Watch movie online Logan (2017)