[Sca-cooks] Wohlgemuth's woodcut

[Stefan li Rous]

Ummm. Okay.

I'm having trouble picking out any guys among the rear tables.

Basically I passed over the single guy in the front table. That  
simply appeared to be the table the servants were using to prep  
things, including the trenchers. But the guy does have on a coronet.  
An awful large amount of coronets on various heads in this picture.  
Symbolic or real?

And I would expect the head honcho to be in a location overlooking  
the hall and the feast. Not off in a corner facing away from the  
action. But the musicians do appear to be playing for him. Seems a  
rather lonely position to be in, though.

Maybe it's just artistic license, but how many of you SCA and ex-SCA  
Royalty would have been happy at an SCA feast seated by yourself  
facing away from the populous, even if the service was the utmost in  
excellence? He does seem to have all the booze, though, in the iced?  
tub?

Still leaves the other illustration though. And what the all-women  
feast was all about.

Stefan

------
Wohlgemuth's woodcut from Der Schatzbehalter represents a full blown  
feast
in formal robes rather than ladies dining.  If you look closely at the
picture, there are individuals with coifed hair (female) and others with
loose hair (male).  The central figure has loose hair, suggesting the  
person
is male and the fact that he is dining alone at a central head table  
makes
him a personage of extreme rank, probably the Holy Roman emperor.

Bear

Uh oh. There are in fact two illustrations in my master copy which  show
what appear to be lady's feasts. The one Bear described and a  second  
one.
The second one is also 15th Century but from Nuremburg.  Unfortunately,
the pictures didn't seem to make it to the web  version. I thought I  
only
had problem with one and put off fixing it  till later. Let me see  
what I
can do.

If you download the Word formatted version the pictures should be in
there.

I had not noticed this until Bear mentioned it, but *all* of the   
feasters
in these two pictures appear to be women. I hadn't realized  that  
that was
done.

Stefan