Linen in the museum

Last week I had the opportunity to visit the Open Air Museum in Vorau, in eastern Styria. The museum presents old buildings and objects related to traditional rural life in the area – and as it turned out, quite a few of these objects had to do with textiles. In the “old days”, the growing

Walking in Surrey

It has been noted by a friend of ours that most of my recent posts – and I use the term recent in the loosest of senses – have been about graveyards. So you probably won’t be surprised to learn that our recent excursion into Surrey saw us visiting two nice country cemeteries as well.

England, c. 1963

Back in the first half of July I spent a few days in Leeds where I attended the International Medieval Congress, the big annual gathering of medievalists from all over Europe (and elsewhere) which has been hosted by the University of Leeds ever since 1994. The whole thing took place at Boddington Hall, one of

Dear 19th century…

…I’m aware that in the past I have, occasionally, spoken somewhat dismissively about some of the architecture, especially some of the castle architecture, you have produced. Now the thing is, dear 19th century,* I don’t have anything against you and your castles, but as a medievalist I do sometimes find it frustrating when, for instance,

Deleted Scenes, pt. 1

While we all are waiting for the grand anniversary prize draw*, we figured that in order to review our first year in the blogosphere we’d show you some Deleted Scenes. So over the next few days we’ll be posting photos which for one reason or another didn’t make it unto our blog in the past

The Medieval Sartorialist: On the Street… Wise & Foolish Virgins, Bern

Last Saturday, on his Medieval Hungary blog, Zsombor Jékely pointed out some exhibitions about dress and fashion in the Middle Ages which are currently taking place in Los Angeles, New York City and Paris (France). This has made me realise something slightly odd about our own blog: While we’re frequently writing about medieval stuff and

Splendours of the factory

Monday evening we went to the opening of an exhibition of contemporary art at the Zacherlfabrik. However, as much as we loved the artworks on display, it was the venue itself that somehow stole the show. The German Zacherlfabrik translates as Zacherl’s Factory, and that’s exactly what the building once was: A factory built by

A far cry from Tiepolo

With hindsight, I rather regret not having visited the Residenz when I was in Würzburg last week – after all, it features a world-famous fresco decoration by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) which is rightly considered one of the greatest examples of Baroque painting in Central Europe. Man, what a blog-post I could have written about

A conference and a fortress

I’m just back from the Deutscher Kunsthistorikertag, the big biennial conference meeting of art historians from Germany or, more precisely, the German speaking world which, of course, includes Austria. This year, the meeting was held in Würzburg, and like most large scale conferences it featured a disproportionally high number of papers that were mediocre if

Stained windows & strained faces

On my way back from Basel to Vienna I made a stopover in Bern to visit some friends. But, of course, I also used the opportunity to visit Bern’s late medieval Minster, built mostly from 1421 to 1521, which is considered the most important piece of late Gothic architecture in Switzerland. Probably even more remarkable