I am just back from a long weekend selling my bowls. The event was a historical re-enactors market, these are the folk that you may have seen recreating battles from various periods or working in historic houses bringing history to life. That side of the hobby is called living history and particularly folk who specialise in the medieval, dark age or Tudor periods need authentic wooden items to eat from. Many people don’t realise that from 500AD until 1500AD nearly everyone in Europe ate from wooden bowls and dishes. Whist a lot of pottery survives from this period it is mostly cooking pots, storage vessels and jugs.
Re-enactment is a very popular hobby and all those folk need supplies of all manner of things from boots and hats to swords and armour. Here are a few photos of some of the stalls at the market.
The venue is Coventry City’s training ground and there are a couple of hundred stalls selling raw materials like linen and leather through to finished items. Quality varies from cheap imports from India to fantastic one off craftsmanship, and of course everyone tells the public that theirs is 100% authentic.
It’s an interesting experience and I like it because these folk really use their bowls and appreciate them.
In the top photo, bottom right, do you know what the object with the pegs is? It looks interesting
looks for me like a holder for swords .
Nice pics! I’ve tried several times to go to a re-enactors market but somehow it never works out. Looks like a lot of fun.
Not sure about the rack Robin but henak could have it with sword rack. Rika the re enactors markets are quite an eye opener…you would not believe some of the things you can buy there. The quality various from plastic swords to serious pattern welded replicas costing £1000s and hand woven and stitched clothing to more mass produced machine made products.