Robin Hood the movie, they didn’t drink from bowls.

I watched the movie last night and was probably the only member of the audience to be rather disappointed not to see more wooden bowls.

My big 18″ diameter wooden bowls featured well including one shot where Cate Blanchett as Marian was washing her feet in one but the many smaller bowls didn’t show up much. I guess in the editing suite they went more for fighting than eating which is probably understandable. What I was most disappointed by was that in the scenes of drinking and revelry (of which there were quite a few) no one was drinking from bowls. They used all manner of things from glasses to leather pint pots but not bowls. This is a shame as the vast majority of medieval images of people drinking show folk drinking from bowls and that is backed up by the archaeological evidence.

I had hoped since the set designer had worked through my book on the history of bowls and ordered lots of drinking bowls that we may for the first time see on screen folk drinking from bowls but it was not to be. Ridley Scott always said he “was not making a documentary” and the image they went for was a reinforcement of the public image of merry old England  with folk songs and quaffing pint pots of beer, it would not have surprised me to see a Morris dancer.

I now realise the set I visited at Shepperton was London and my lathe turners workshop was just outside the castle doorway I didn’t see it in the film though.

The film covered only the start of the Robin Hood story and was left waiting for a sequel so we will have to wait and see how well it does at the box office.