I started out in the SCA as a sword and knife maker back in the early seventies. When I'd research a particular sword type from a particular time I'd see numerous examples varying in blade, guard, grip and pommel length, width, thickness, shape, and detail. So my rule has always been to make something that falls within those ranges. I rarely ever made an exact copy of a particular surviving piece. I also don't think it is necessary to make an average piece, since what has survived may not be indicative of what actually existed centuries ago. For instance, surviving swords in museums tend to be ornate and may not have been of the form most common at the time of manufacture. Unlike later objects, from say the US Civil War which were mass produced to specific tolerances so as to allow for interchangeability of parts, objects made prior to 1600AD were simply made to a pattern.

First of all, I think you need to step away from the "Quotation Marks."

As a performer, I cannot possibly know whether my interpretation of a medieval song is in any way accurate. Music scholars more skilled than I are still trying to puzzle out what exactly is represented by certain musical notation systems and how much was simply assumed to be known by the singers and musicians, thereby not requiring it to be written down. I have to take my best shot and hope that my modern audience (who are, after all, the ones who have to suffer through listening to it) at least can connect with it.

As someone who is fascinated by medieval Japanese textiles on an extremely limited budget, I take the path that probably makes Laurel councils in 18 kingdoms cringe and fake the look of brocade, embroidery and gold leaf with fabric paint.

Ultimately, YOU are the one who has to decide what compromises you can live with based on your skills, budget, time, research, etc.

To me, period is something that looks as close as I can make it to the particular period item I am trying to re-create. This to me does not mean copy exactly. This means learning what is available to know about the item, how it may have been made then, and making it using what modern materials are available to me, with methods now used. Should I be inclined to make something completely from scratch, that would be a worthy goal to someday achieve, but is not a requirement.

And while my garments and embroideries may not be a copy of a surviving garment (since very few items survived from the time frame I work from) I think they are still worthy of work, and study, and to put into an A&S competition. For me, the pleasure comes from doing the work, and the competition is the incentive to get it done by a certain deadline. If it wins, that would be sprinkles on the cake, but not needed. YMMV.

Thank you, all for the input.

It is very much appreaciated.

You ask a lot of questions that begin with "Do you have to....?" but really, there _IS_ no "have to" in the SCA.

How accurate you want to make your clothing, equipment, campsite, accessories, food, et cetera -- really, it's a decision everyone has to make for themselves. Some people are made happy by anything that looks or feels medieval. Some are made happy by exact copies of existing medieval artifacts from their persona's specific century and place. And there's everything, and I mean *everything*, in between. The SCA is a very big "umbrella" that has room for lots of different people and ideas.

Historical accuracy is also NOT a black-or-white thing -- there are all shades of gray. Something that was common, well-known, and typical in one century may have been completely un-imaginable or unfashionable or simply not known in a different place, or at an earlier or later time.

Most people in the SCA also don't feel they have to make ALL parts of their re-creation equally accurate. I'm sure we all know people who wear impeccably made, extremely accurate clothing and subsist on cheese sandwiches and soda. Others make food from carefully researched period recipes but don't really much care what they're wearing. Either or both may enjoy medieval motets or 19th-century sailor songs (or both!), or wear handmade chain-mail or modern hockey gloves (or both!). Each person does what is comfortable, affordable, interesting and fun for themselves.

Some medieval things could not be re-created in modern times because the materials simply don't exist any more, or are prohibitively expensive. Some medieval techniques are probably not wise to use today because we know NOW that they are very unsafe -- mercury-based paints, for instance. Some medieval artifacts require years to create, or years of experience before someone has the skill to do them, and most of us simply don't have that kind of time. All of us have budgets and have to consider what to spend our money on, too. (You know, like rent, cars, families, computers, all those complications of life!)

This doesn't even consider the limitations of our knowledge. Some medieval things are harder to re-create than others because we simply don't have 100% information about how they were done or what kind of variation there was at a particular historical place and time. So we do research, we share information, and we make guesses about what might have been done.

You are asking some very big questions, and they don't have easy answers.

That said, there is also lots of debate about the role of creativity. Certainly medieval people did not feel compelled to make only exact reproductions of existing pieces. But in being "creative" and making new works, we always run the risk that, unknown to us, our 21st-century ways of thinking and seeing may lead us to make some quite un-medieval choices in design, construction, and technique. To counteract this, many of us do extensive research so that we have lots of examples to look at, which helps to train our eyes to see what kinds of variations people in our period felt free to make -- and then we try to make our own creative steps stay within that range.

But again, there is no black-and-white distinction. I think in this particular tribe you will find people who mostly agree that, all other things being equal, Authentic Is Good, More Authentic Is Better, and the fact that we can't do it perfectly doesn't mean we can't have fun doing the best we can. By necessity, everything we do is at least a few steps away from exactly how things were done historically. The focus here is going to be on (1) knowing what those differences are, (2) deciding which ones are important to us and which aren't, and (3) making the differences as small as we think we can. I personally hang out with people who articulate the goal as "to produce something that, if dropped through a time machine into the year 1327 (or whatever year you pick), would not seem out of place to the people who lived there." We may not always get there, but we have fun trying.

Card weaving is a good example. We have quite a few period examples of card weaving to look at, and a fairly wide range of designs. We can reproduce historical designs exactly, using the materials we have. We can combine parts of one design with parts of another to create something we're pretty sure a medieval person would find unremarkable. We can try to imagine how a medieval person would create designs, and create some of our own along those lines. All of these are valid ways to proceed, and we can make any choice we want.

That probably doesn't answer your question, but hopefully it may help you think it through and find your own answers.

Amusing update...I was informed at a party over the holidays that my own group's encampment was originally termed the "Dis-Enchanted Ground" since it was founded by folks who used to camp at Enchanted Ground and were involved in a dispute regarding how dishes were to be washed...their desire for hygeine was deemed too non-period in how it was gone about and so they split off. At least that is how the story goes. I found it quite interesting, especially if one gets really period and looks at the eyewear of folks.