[Sca-cooks] Serving Royalty, was Cakes

[Stefan li Rous]

Back on December 30, Alys Katharine replied to me with (among other  
things) when I talked about how good her cake sotelties were:

 >>>
So, having zapped into Laurel-teaching mode, I would say to look at the
cakes, find something that looks fun to do and try to copy it - or e- 
mail
me and ask for hints about how I did it.  I'd like to inspire, not
intimidate.  (However, I will say that I'm tickled to receive praise!)
<<<

Okay, I perhaps expressed myself a bit strongly. Still, I can't see  
myself doing such artwork with such finesse and beauty. But then I  
just sent a photograph in an email of the site tokens I will be doing  
for the Ansteorra Kingdom A&S Competition in February to the Event  
Steward. And her comment was "They look AWESOME!!!  Thank you, you  
did a great job.". These are pewter castings done in a soapstone mold  
and I'm having trouble with the soapstone crumbling and I can pick  
out plenty of problems in the carving and the resulting tokens.

One of the reasons I started what became the Florilegium, oh so many  
years ago, was so that folks could build upon the experiences of  
others and we didn't have to keep redoing the same mistakes and could  
stand upon the shoulders of those who had done some work before. It's  
just a mighty tall leap to your shoulders Alys. :-)

 >>>
 > I wonder how likely this link is to change, Alys? I'd hate to have
 > these wonderful examples disappear. I'm wondering if you might be
 > interested in letting me put a copy of this file into the
 > Florilegium? If you want to add more info to it, to make it more of
 > an article, now or sometime in the future, I'd be willing to do that
 > as well.

 >>>
As long as I keep my Earthlink account the link will be valid.  I'm not
planning on changing it and have had the same e-mail address for over 10
years.  However, you certainly can put a copy of the file into the
Florilegium.
<<<

Thank you! I haven't done anything with your cake picture file yet,  
but I will. Even if you stay with Earthlink, I have seen times in the  
past when the Internet provider went out of business or simply  
changed its URL.

 >>>
FYI, there are some modern cakes in another section on the
web site and my favorite of that is a yellow straw hat cake that exactly
reproduced a hat my mother had back in the 70s.
<<<

Yes, another Wow picture. It looks very real.

 >>>
You are also welcome to link or copy the articles that are in another  
section.
<<<

Thank you, thank you. There are some excellent articles there. Some  
of them I had downloaded previously, like the "Of Course, it's  
course" or something like close to that. In that case I didn't have a  
clear record of whether you had given me permission to republish that  
article or not and I hadn't gotten around to writing you about it.

However folks, I was most struck by the last article in her group of  
articles and felt that it was important to get that out to the folks  
in the SCA. I also felt that many of you might find this useful, even  
if you will just be working with someone else who will actually be  
handling this. *This* is serving the head table and how that is done.  
One of the things I noted, although I had heard this in my reading,  
was the fact that in period the folks serving the Royalty often were  
fairly high in the social order themselves being barons and Counts  
and such. I think it would be great to see the SCA do this more.

Since Alys has been on both sides of the head table, I think her  
suggestions carry even more weight.

Anyway, I thought enough of this article to push it to the top of my  
stack of things to do and get online. It is available in the FEASTS  
section as:
Servng-Roylty-art (10K)  1/ 1/06    "When Royalty Graces Your Head  
Table" by
                                        Dame Alys Katharine, O.L., O.P.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FEASTS/Servng-Roylty-art.html

Alys, if you could check this and make sure I have your contact info  
correct I would appreciate it. I know I probably have some other  
articles of yours that I may need to change your contact info in,  
including adding your new rank of "Dame".

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****