Middle Earth Ranger Forum

It's to quiet right now. Here' a project in progress.

A few years ago I built a girdle purse based off this one in Goubitz' Purses in Pieces. I thought I might use it for rangering, but the Kidney Purse shape just screams 14th c. Europe. I really wanted something that was specifically Dunedain.


One of the few non-book Numenorean design elements I really like is the pointed s-curve, I think the idea is that it derives from the sinuous art-noveau style of artibuted to the Elves. I can make a case for deriving it from Dunedain arc-lines but I feel like it's pretty tenuos.
Anyway here's one of my initial sketches.

Here are the paper patterns I built. Final size of the purse is 9 1/2" tall by 10 1/2 " wide, pretty close to the Dordecht original. Paper is just a ledger size (11x17 sheet) of printer paper.

And here's where I am now, I have cut out the leather, and started cutting my pattern for tooling on it. It's a pretty standard Numenorean lotus design with a lily borders. Next steps are finishing tooling, and then cutting out coin pockets from some goat leather I have.

I dig it! A historical pattern given a culturally-specific spin...keeps it recognizable but Not Quite...exactly what we do here.

Very nice work (both this and your long knife sheath) that tooling looks like it'll be amazing

iiiiiinteresting. It has a very high-Numenorean feel to me.

I can so verily easily see it given a nice vinegar black - even with a bit of paint perhaps - on the belt of a wealthy citizen of Minas Tirith.
I'm very curious to see how you finish it for (I presume) more rustic Eriador. I'm not at all saying it won't work - I'm just very very curious to see *how* it works.

Very cool idea, fantastic execution!

BTW - what tool do you use for your carving? I've been most unhappy with the lines I'm getting from most things I've tried.

Iodo wrote:Very nice work (both this and your long knife sheath) that tooling looks like it'll be amazing

Thanks, I've got my finger's crossed.

Elleth wrote:I'm very curious to see how you finish it for (I presume) more rustic Eriador. I'm not at all saying it won't work - I'm just very very curious to see *how* it works.

Fingers crossed. I was intending to do only incised work, as suggested by MOL's Knives & Scabbards, but I'm having to do a quite a bit of tooling to get the design to show.

Elleth wrote: BTW - what tool do you use for your carving? I've been most unhappy with the lines I'm getting from most things I've tried.

I'm using this:
It's a leather working knife I made based on the Fisher's Gate finds in York. (12th c?)

This is just too cool. VERY well done.

The tooling continues apace. After some experiments I'm really leaning toward coloring it with Vinegaroon.

Spectacular.

Oh my word... that's going to look fantastic. How very very awesome!

More progress...

Oh.... that's lovely. Incredibly lovely.

I've the pieces for a belt pouch that have been sitting on the shelf all winter long waiting for the summer sun to do some walnut dying. Thanks to your inspiration I've been thinking I'll have to do some carving as well - not that I could get it anywhere near so nice!

Really really impressive caedmon.

Wow, that looks incredible!

That is going to look Spectacular when it gets vinegaroon'ed and oiled. Can't wait.