My new series of Book of hours calendar activities-posts is now up an running! Each month, I’ll present a bunch of illustrations from different volumes that I’ve found that has a calendar section with images. A bunch of the different books has the same kind of activity as others, and a few of them have another. Some of them have a bit more unique activities, and some has an activity that might be represented in another month much more often. But there’s some obvious themes in the different seasons, and we’re starting of with the fall! If you press a picture, you’ll get information about land origin and dating.
By far, the most common activity I could find in the sections for November is this! Watching over the pigs, and also taking your stick and hitting the oak trees so the pigs can feed on some acorns to get fat and juicy. This will also make more sense when seeing the activity for December.
We’re seeing a slight change in the wardrobe of these shepherds. They’re putting on more clothes, extra warm layers like hoods under the hat and capes.
This also seems to be a mans job, and there aren’t many women present. We can see one picking acorns and one spinning.
Another fairly common theme for November seems to be preparing flax. To make linen fabric, there’s a lot of steps from the raw material to the finished product. In these images, the people has laid the flax in a circle and then the two men in the front beats the flax that has been soaking in water for several days; this process was called retting. After retting the flax is beaten which loosens the fibers from the flax stems. The women in each image are also doing one of the steps in the flax preparation. Using a scutching knife to scutch the flax, they’re remove the outer woody covering from the fibers. So the work with flax seems more to be a joint effort, by both men and women, even if the men is doing the more physical part.
We also have few examples of baking in November as well. But it does make sense that bread has to be made all year around. But it is intersting to think about the selection process of the one making these illustrations. Or did they get a list of activities that they had to put in there?
Next up is December! Which activities do you think will be the most common ones then?
/Honorable Lady Gele Pechplumin
(Magdalena Morén)
The lazy reenactor girl 