Reenactment park near Cluj

VIRTVS ANTIQVA NGO has launched the website of their reenactment park in the making - Camp Virtus. The site is located 8 km from Cluj-Napoca, by the village of Salicea. It will have special areas for arrow shooting, Roman games, presentations of ancient equipment and costume replicas, an arena for shows (amphitheater-like gladiatorial shows, religious ceremonies, Roman dances and various types of entertainment), a Roman garden, ovens and kilns of different types (for cooking, for pottery, a forge), and replicas of ancient dwellings. Stay tuned for the grand opening! And you may also support the initiative, there are various way to do that - see HERE.

Leather accessories

Working with leather always generates scraps and odd pieces of material, so all artisans turn to creating small accessories in order to minimize the losses of the expensive primary material. I am going through the same phase and therefore though of researching the topic a bit on Etsy and Pinterest. The Etsy treasury of such inspirational finds - "Leather Accessories" includes catchalls and trays, key holders and coasters, dishes and earphone holders, various organizers and leather bowls. The Pinterest board of the same name is more varied, with leather chess pieces, key-shaped leather key fogs, dip-painting of various articles, and some exquisite types of knots and braiding.

The design of some of them is rather appealing, so let the adaptation / invention process begin!

The Elixir of Love

A couple of hundreds years ago, the elixir of Love could be bought from pharmacies / apothecary shops. The History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj-Napoca preserves eighteenth-century small bottles in which the Elixir of Love was sold. They are hand-painted with different romantic depictions: hearts, doves, couples holding hands, and flowers, and accompanied by German inscriptions. But maybe it was just good product branding, a nice gift, and nobody really believed in the power of the  magic elixir.

Old pharmacopoeias and dispensatories (specialized books for pharmacists) reveal several related recipes of this potion. To prepare the elixir apothecaries boiled different kinds of spices in red wine: cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom, pepper seeds, orange peel, etc. After the wine cooled down the bits of plants were strained through a piece of cloth in order for the product to remain clear. At the end they added sugar (which was at that time rather expensive and pretty hard to get by) or honey (which was easily obtained).

Read the full story in Romanian HERE. For help with the German inscription please drop a line! I understand "Liebe" and "1744" :)

 

Pinch pots

Another Etsy treasury that I have enjoyed created recently relates to my passion for miniatures, as it focuses on pinch bowls. Such small bowls, mostly made of glazed pottery, are used for spices, salt and pepper (cellars), dipping or preparing food, or even as catch-all. Enjoy this selection of miniature mortars and pestles, scallop bowls, simple bowls and cups, in wonderful colors and materials.

 

Another online art shop

In the spree of web shop making, I have added a special page on my website with various art works available in my studio. One can arrange a visit or order online and I shall send the items via the post, in Romania or abroad. I think people are a bit shy to esquire about prices or visit art studios that might seem "alien" spaces, so it might be good for artists to come out, show some art pieces and provide a general price for them.

I have just started filling in this page, so do check again from time to time, to see what's new on Dragalina Street in Cluj-Napoca :)

 

 

Leaf-shaped earrings

The leather earrings has continued with the variants (in both color and shape) of the leaf and feather types. Due to their irregular yet organic shape, these types are easy to make yet of an appealing design. Using a cardboard pattern I mark and then cut by hand the pairs (flipping the pattern to obtained a mirror image of the left and right earrings). The finer cuts mark the contours and then the punch is the place for the common metal accessories. Ready to wear, light, colorful, and warm to the skin!

See all available types on my ART LEATHER EARRINGS online store!

"Feather" handmade natural leather earrings

"Vine leaf" leather earrings, entirely handmade

Special design - multiple layers of leather.

Bookmarks

As  a passionate reader, I've always thought it made perfect sense to create bookmarks - the only problem is that nobody really buys them :)) Still, I live designing, producing, and using them myself. For some I turned to linocut printmaking, though it was rather a lot of effort to cut the paper into standard trips and then to manage to imprint the model centered and cleanly. So the second attempt was more freely, with a larger linocut pattern applied to stronger paper and then cut around. Decoupage makes it possible to use smaller, uneven pieces of paper and even leftovers from over project. The final idea was to create bookmarks out of leather - the central model cut and then glued to a support of different color. These look good but again, the cutting straight and perpendicular is tiresome and some types of leather, softer one, bend and turn, so half of the bookmark is actually rather...hanging.

 

Prints

Original contemporary prints are a continuous source of delight! Here is my latest Etsy treasury dedicated to light etchings, drypoint prints, linocuts, and a couple of other techniques. Paraphrasing Milan Kundera's famous novel, I'd say this treasury is about the incredible lightness of prints :)

 

New art leather earrings webstore

I have started a free web store dedicated to my leather earrings, inspired by medieval architecture, ancient symbols, or born purely out of the game of shape, texture and movement. Though historian by profession, I have always painted and created various types of artifacts. Leather earrings are one category I especially enjoy creating, as the result are immediate, the effects of texture, shape, and movement are impressive, and the pieces of jewelry are light, easy to wear, warm to the skin, and fun!

See previous blog posts on leather earrings and the technique of leather carving and tooling.

Happy houses part III

The only drawback of this project was the bent paper. For lack of proper storage in my studio, I keep printing paper rolled up - and it seems this large sheet of black paper has been rolled up for quite some time. Working with such sheets is not impossible, but it does present one with certain issues, especially while working with small lino fragments. This tend to get messy, slipping of and sliding around, so I must take into consideration acquiring a nice cabinet, preferably open for easy access, such as those HERE.

See more on the "Happy houses" linocut project: 
part I
part II
introduction - "City tracks in the mud" project

 

Olfactive workshops

For the Feast of Love at the History of Pharmacy Collection in Cluj I have prepared a series of olfactive workshops, for people to smell and guess several ingredients used by old apothecaries in Transylvania. Some are delicious spices, exotic and expensive during the Early Modern period, while others are harsh and rather odorous, like the Valerian root. Inspired by such ingredients and by the story of Amortentia, the most powerful love potion in Harry Potter that smelled different to each person, visitors are invited to invent their own recipes. The winners shall receive small bottles with the ingredients of the actual Elixir of Love sold in hand-painted jars by the apothecaries of old.