Medieval Crafts

This essay examines several textual accounts of the late medieval "ars market," the commercial context of selling and buying artfully made objects in fourteenth-and fifteenth-century Europe. Ranging from a magisterial work of pastoral theology, to legal ordonnances and reglemens for crafts, to a scholastic econmium to Paris, the textual sources discussed reveal how the expertise of artists and artisans and the captivating, persuasive force of works of ars were both valued and scrutinized in the later Middle Ages. Although they were written for dissimilar purposes and different audiences, the texts examined nonetheless understand the late medieval ars market as a forum in which the mingling of artistic expertise, aesthetic allure, fraud, risk, and credulity posed considerable challenges to human judgment. resumen Este ensayo examina varios relatos textuales del "mercado del arte" de la Baja Edad Media, en particular, el contexto comercial de la venta y compra de objetos fabricados artísticamente en la Europa de los siglos xiv y xv. Desde un trabajo magistral de teología pastoral, pasando por ordenanzas y reglamentos legales para los artesanos, hasta un econmium escolar en París, [Recepción del artículo: 04/08/2019] [Aceptación del artículo revisado: 22/09/2019] 1 This essay benefitted from the lively and fruitful exchanges with colleagues that took place during the IX Coloquio Ars Medievalis (10-12 May, 2019); in particular, I thank Paul Binski for encouraging to integrate the Livre des métiers in my analysis. I am also grateful to the two anonymous peer-reviewers for their comments and suggestions. Particular thanks are due to my student Martin Schwarz, whose dissertation in progress and comments on a draft of this essay, and bibliographic generosity made many contributions to my thinking and to my former research assistant Alexis Wells for her help with matters large and small.

This paper examines the social consciousness of craftsmen in late medieval Split by analyzing
wills from the 1436–1467 period. Social awareness in the Middle Ages was most
commonly expressed by leaving goods in one’s will to needy individuals or social groups, or
to social institutions whose job was to help such people. Craftsmen from Split usually gave
caritative legates to the poor, lepers, servants and illegal children, as well as to institutions
such as hospitals, fraternities and monasteries. A closer analysis of craftsmen’s wills shows
that social sensivity in the Late Middle Ages was similarly widespread among all social strata
of the craftsman population, and didn’t significantly depend on the social or legal position
or material predispositions of individual testators. Craftsmen from Split left caritative legates
of different value, but always in proportion to their material and financial status. Thus
wealthier and humbler legates were equal in a moral and theological sense – both groups
reflected a similar desire for helping needier fellow citizens.

This paper discusses about study options of topographic concentration medieval craft in inside the medieval city Brno and its suburbs. Recapitulates the current state of research and and presents new possibilities for this research on the example of selected crafts blacksmiths, locksmiths, butchers and drapers.

M.S. Sergeeva. Old Rus woodworks from Kyselivka hill
Wooden artifacts found in 1948 in the building dated 12th – 13th c. at Kyselivka hill (Kiev) are published.
The most interesting is a big turned plate of a diameter about 44-46 cm, made of ash-tree. The remains of tare are represented by the fragments of hollowed vessels (no less than three items of different sizes) and a bottom of a small carved vessel made of lime-tree, as well as y by pine-tree clapboards of cooper’s ware.
In addition to ware, fragments of hazel trunk with a groove (supposedly the remains of structure) and fragments of two panels made of wood of the same kind were found. Panels had relief-profiled upper plane and, apparently, carried decorative functions. Fragments of trunk chopped lengthwise, with 24-26 mm and 27-28 mm diameter, with roughly whittled surface were also found. Judging by their sizes they can be regarded as work material for similar panels or for hoops of cooper’s ware. The main occupation of the owner of the dwelling apparently was a jeweller’s craft (a casting mould was found), but finds of wood with traces of processing allow to presume that at least part of wooden utensils was made by owner of dwelling himself, apparently within home crafts.