Sunday = Day of Rest? Pfffffft.....

Quicko update here. Things are progressing anon on the jousting kit listed in last post. The following has been finished:

Arming doublet
Blue 'normal' doublet
One linen shirt
Max's hunting gown (turned out AWESOMELY)

Pictures and process outlines coming later in a more comprehensive post.

Today's adventures include recreating this scabbard:




















This is the scabbard for Maximilian's hunting sword, currently displayed at the Neueberg of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. I really dig the leather tooling and I would like to be able to reproduce it as closely as I can. The first step is to figure out what exactly is going on with the patterns there.

In the left image, there are some letters, reproduced more closely here:











As far as I can tell, that looks like MMILN, which would make sense. Max was pretty keen on having abbreviated forms of his name on his stuff, particularly his hunting stuff.

The rest of the scabbard features a lot of looping floral designs similar to the ones that show up on banded armour etchings in the first decade of the 16th century.

The tooling is going to take some improvisation since Tandy Leather doesn't sell stamps that will reproduce those marks.

But onwards ho! I'll try to be good and take WIP shots as I go. Can't promise miracles since this is my first go-round at a leather scabbard but I'll do my damndest!