medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On 12/1/2011 10:40 AM, Terri Morgan wrote:
>> seems to me, i donno, that it is damnéd near as difficult to
>> convincingly "fake" a breathtakingly mediocre style as it is to
>> convincingly "fake" a breathtakingly Fine one.
> I forwarded the link on to a bunch of SCA woodworkers, one of whom posited
> the idea that the casket might be made of wood reclaimed from a previous
> box, such as might happen if a saint's coffin was exhumed and the wood sized
> down to create a smaller box to hold merely the bones. It would be
> difficult, I would imagine, for the devote craftsman to have to balance
> 'making it fit correctly' against 'profaning a sacred [the original box]
> object' by shaving off too much of the wood.
Thanks for asking around! This is a lovely idea, though the boards in
their current state are too thin to have served as sides/top/bottom of a
full coffin. As I noted before in response to Christopher,
,
CC: the (rather crude) vertical rabbets (groves) in both ends would
appear to have been intended to receive a thin board which would have
partitioned the interior into two parts, of unequal size (the narrowest
in front).
Actually, the groove on one side (row 5, no. 1) is at the front of the
box, and on the other side (row 5, no. 2) at the back, so they cannot
have made a partition as you describe it. I think that those grooves,
and the one on the interior of the base, may well be evidence of a
previous use of the boards. That idea would, of course, depend on
reading the gaps on the bottom as the result of something other than the
shrinking of green wood.
best,
Genevra
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