Osanna's A&S blog

Honorable Goodman Osanna Cissilia Gaypass | Barony of Namron, Principality of Vindheim, Kingdom of Ansteorra

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One of my small nitpicks is bare, undecorated wood when we have so many examples of decorated or painted furniture and boxes

Which leads to my sewing box. The existing one was covered with stickers and was otherwise bare, but has been traveling with me for nigh on a decade and at this point the hinges have fallen off.

So, I picked up a new box at a garage sale. Plain, bare wood, but with working hinges and a latch that actually latches.

Before I allowed myself to put any supplies within the new box, I needed to solve the issue of the lack of decoration. I'm not the best at painting, but with a bit of inspiration, a dollar tree brush, and acrylic paint, I have a colorful box.

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working on a newer style of embroidery, all silk and gold thread

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Recreating a 14th Century German-inspired Aumoniere (Part 2)

Construction

With the embroidery complete, it next needed to actually become a pouch. Some examples place the fold of these purses on the side, as can be seen in figure 5 where the seam has shifted over the years to lay diagonally. Others place the fold on the bottom, where the joined sides can be decorated or covered with trim. 

I opted to go that secondary route, as I wished to practice fingerloop in this project of new skills. As a result, I first basted the purse together, using a whip stitch along the edge to join the lining and exterior layers together at the side, then folded the panel and did the same to join the two halves of the purse. This simple joining method can also be seen on the extant from figure 5, which has a faint line of whip stitching joining the two halves of the cloth

As can be seen in figure 6, excess of the silk lining was folded over to create a place for the drawstring to be fed through. Though some of the extant purses show no additional fabric band for this, by this time I’d handled the fabric panel for so long and observed how stiff it was, and as a result did not think it suitable to be the foundation for a drawstring closure. This would allow it to close easier, and resulted in less tension needed on the silk drawstrings to close the purse. 

Once eyelets were added (as I was not confident that modern silk would perform well with drawstring fed through holes punched through with an awl and no additional reinforcement), the base of the purse was ready for the fingerloop and tassels. 

The drawstrings were worked in a white 60/2 thread.This was a simple 4 loop strand, of a source I’m not sure is entirely period, but is a pattern picked up to make a simple, round cord with as little thought as possible. In this pattern, I just exchange the loops from the left pointer to the right middle, then from the right pointer to the back of the left middle. It creates a durable, thin cord, perfect for drawstrings that will be running in parallel to one another. 

Then, all that was left was the tassels. These were made with the same red silk thread seen in the suspension cording. This was wrapped around a piece of cardstock and then tied together, cut off, and then tied into the traditional tassel shape. The top tie of the tassel was then pushed beneath the whip stitching along the sides of the purse to secure them, with the finished fingerloop stitched down on top to cover the rough edges.

Conclusion 

This began as a labor of patience, with a project that, from the start, was new territory. It became a piece of new techniques I had not used on previous projects. As a result, the bulk of this project consisted of finding mistakes to learn from. 

The aforementioned aida cloth was the biggest one, resulting in a purse stiffer than even my most supportive corsets, and the discovery of extants using unevenly woven linen has resulted in my using regular linen from the scrap pile for all current brick stitch projects, as I’d like to see the result of a project with a smaller scale on the embroidery side of things.

There are other errors in the purse–a quarter of the fingerloop pattern is incorrect due to having misinterpreted how to take a loop reversed, the tassels are uneven, and the eyelets are possibly the worst ones I’ve ever done, but it’s still an item that has inspired me to use more historical finishing methods, make more use of embellishments on other projects, and truly lean into the theater of status. 

As it came out, while I’m quite proud of this purse, I do think I would end up creating a smaller pouch, one that would work for just coins or other small largesse items. That way, in addition to having the look of an aumoniere, it would serve a similar purpose–that being, if one could compare the SCA’s form of largesse as a way of crafting small social bonds to medieval gift-giving.

references:

“Bag 1567-1902.” Victoria and Albert Museum , 1300.

“Bag 8699-1863.” Victoria and Albert Museum , 1300.

Cynesigesdohtor, Cynehild. “German Brick Stitch.” [email protected].

“Fragment of Silk 8646-1863.” Victoria and Albert Museum , 1400.

Greenia, George D. “Bartered Bodies: Medieval Pilgrims and the Tissue of Faith.” International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage, vol. 7, no. 1, 2019, pp. 38–51, https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.21427/HRMH-KX63.

Greenia, George D. “Bartered Bodies: Medieval Pilgrims and the Tissue of Faith.” International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage, vol. 7, no. 1, 2019, pp. 38–51, https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.21427/HRMH-KX63.

Kelly, Tasha. “Aumônières, Otherwise Known as Alms Purses.” La Cotte Simple, 13 Oct. 2014, cottesimple.com/articles/aumonieres/.

Marijn. “Aumonieres and Purses from Germany.” St. Thomas Guild, 27 Nov. 2013, https://thomasguild.blogspot.com/2013/11/aumonieres-and-purses-from-germany.html. Accessed 4 June 2024.

Schuler, Eric. Almsgiving and the Formation of Early Medieval Societies, A.D. 700-1025, University of Notre Dame, 4 Aug. 2010, https://doi.org/10.7274/j6731259k2b. Accessed 28 May 2025.

Storm, Kathy. “Pattern #7 and Some Comment Responses.” Medieval Arts and Crafts, 23 Nov. 2009, https://medievalartcraft.blogspot.com/2009/11/pattern-7-and-some-comment-resonses.html. Accessed 2 June 2024.

Swales, Lois, and Zoe  Kuhn Williams. Fingerloop Braid Patterns, fingerloop.org/patterns.html#n01. Accessed 29 May 2025.

Unknown. “Bag 8313-1863.” Victoria and Albert Museum , 1400.

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Recreating a 14th Century German-inspired Aumoniere (Part 1)

Almsgiving was considered a necessary part of early Christian society, with theological writers often writing about how acts of charity were a way to prepare for heaven’s forgiveness and intermingle with heavenly mercy. This could be done through acts of mercy (feeding the poor, clothing those in need, etc) or also acts of spiritual mercy, though as the industry of pilgrimage grew through commissioned Itineraries like those of William Wey, the semi-holy state of pilgrims made the act of offering coins to mendicants and pilgrims one of the easiest forms of almsgiving. 

As this type of semi-unequal gift giving was considered a part of noblesse oblige, the act of charity itself became a show.  In the late 13th century, highly decorated textile purses, known as aumônières or alms-purses, became increasingly common. Often, these decorations were done with embroidery, with extants carrying the split stitch painting-like figures of opus anglicanum or the repeating geometric patterns of brick stitch. Frequently dripping with tassels or glinting with gold, these purses can be seen in several forms throughout their time in vogue. 

The first, and one of the simplest in design, is the drawstring rectangular purse. This simple purse would then be suspended by a string and looped around either a belt hanger or the belt itself. Many of these have survived, with some being made of embroidered linen, others made of velvet with embroidered appliques attached. 

Others take on a more trapezoidal shape, with a rounded top and a flap that closes the purse. These appear to have had the flaps stitched down at the top, so they wouldn’t flop open as easily. 

While brick stitch embroidery appears on both, rectangular pouches and fragments appear to be more common, likely due to the already geometric form of the embroidery itself. These purses are especially common for 14th century Germany, and it’s these extant examples that will provide the basis for this pouch. 

Materials

Based on the extant embroidered alms purses worked in brick stitch, it’s quite simple to determine the materials used in period: 

Linen* fabric (most are even-weave, but there have been finds with thicker wefts than warp)

Silk embroidery thread 

Wool embroidery thread 

Metal wrapped embroidery threads 

For this recreation of an alms purse, there were some variations from these materials that have affected the outcome of the result: 

Aida embroidery cloth

DMC embroidery floss, separated into clusters of 4 threads 

DMC metallic floss, only used for one square of the purse 

Silk fabric (for lining) 

Perle cotton 

Silk thread 

*Only one extant is described as being of silk cloth, however this fragment has been repeatedly misidentified over its years in the archives. It currently is still being described as a silk duiponi, though the silk threads have worn away to show the fabric underneath, with irregularities in the tabby that line up with the brick stitch technique

Embroidering the Purse 

The pattern (figure 1) was based off of a reliquary box from the early 13th century found in Koln. It was originally charted by Kathy Stornberg, and was a good starting point for this technique. It has threads that pass over 2, 4, and 6 threads at a time, covering the broadest range of stitch lengths seen in this technique. This is a larger pattern than most seen on the extant pouches, however, which typically had a smaller, more frequently  repeating pattern. This larger scale was in part the first effect of varying from period practice in using even weave aida cloth for the foundation for this embroidery, as the threads were significantly thicker than most linen weaves. This scaled the resulting pattern to be much larger than intended, which, while allowing the first pass at this technique to go far quicker than a to-scale pattern would, caused the end result to be a particularly bold pattern. In addition to this, the use of aida cloth resulted in a very stiff embroidered panel, one that, if one were to handle the other swatches of brick stitch displayed alongside this purse, does not reflect the drape of fabric embroidered in this fashion on linen.

Due to the increased scale of the embroidered pattern, I also increased the scale of the resulting purse. This was intended to serve a more day to day purpose than carrying alms: instead, it was to carry my phone, wallet, and keys. I dislike these being visible in a basket, so the usually small size of these purses was increased to a significantly larger scale to accommodate the size of a modern cell phone.