I just had an idea for a very useful/fun book that needs to be written!

A combination index and travel guide to all museums with significant medieval collections.

I've been struck by the fact that while many of the museums that have interesting bits and pieces of medieval material culture (purses, spoons, shoes, armor, etc.) are well known for their collections, many of them too are small and virtually unknown.

Imagine having a book that lists the locations of, for example, all the extant 14th C. bascinets. Same idea for shoes, etc. Cross-indexing for time period and type of material would be a must, as would the museums’ addresses, web sites, and opening hours.

With this book you could plan a theme based trip (probably only in Europe) to see all the extant leather cases, for example. Then the next trip could be to see hand tools, etc.

Me, I'd love to have this book so if I'm in a certain area on business, I can look up what medievalia is in the vicinity, without having to rely on the touristic information at the train station. I imagine this book would be limited to European collections because the American ones are well known, no?

Obscure collections would be better visited, and the reenactor community would have a better idea of what we're trying to reenact!

Just a thought - anyone want to write it?

Regards

"Imagine having a book that lists the locations of, for example, all the extant 14th C. bascinets."

Wasn't there a book under way cataloging all the extant 14th C. armour which was to be published next year or so? I saw it come up once or twice on this board and thought, HEY! I need that book!

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Yes, I used a poor example in my post (the bascinet). Doug Strong is compiling a catalog of all 14th C. armor, and it seems to be coming along quite well. Check out the discussion on the 14th C. bascinet at Wawel:
http://www.wolfeargent.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=000114

My idea was to have a book indexing the locations of all pre-17th C. artifacts, especially ordinary household items (NOT documents - that would be even more monumental). With it one could see where all the extant 15th C. leather items are located, for (a better) example. Cross-indexing would allow you to search either under "leather" or "15th C."

Then again, perhaps a web-based database would be more useful - it's easily searched, updated, and would be used by more people than a book would.

Just a thought

Most of it is related to items of clothing (such as hoods and sideless surcoats) and occupational costume (including fools & jesters), but there are a lot of item-specific pages (from aquamaniles to waxed tablets).

The URL is www.geocities.com/karen_larsdatter/karen.htm

Because I've been swamped with other projects, I haven't been able to develop a whole lot of new pages on this subject on the site. I realize the pages aren't terribly thorough, but if you have any suggestions, let me know (though it may be a while before I can really act on any of them).