My Feast Box

 Feasting at the SCA is an important part of the experience, and we try to do it in a reasonably authentic way, using cutlery, crockery and other table-ware appropriate to the period.  Thus the "Feast Box" is an important part of anybody's kit, a means of conveying all the necessaries for participating in a feast.  Such boxes need to be identifiable as there are many participants at a feast, so Mary encouraged me to paint my coat of arms on mine (such personal heraldry as an important part of SCA culture).  I did, and went a bit overboard.  As I entered the box in an "Arts and Sciences" competition, I included the following documentation.

Painted Feast Box

 

 

Richard of Salesberie

 

15^th Century “Cassoni”.

This project was never intended to be a re-creation of an authentic-looking Period artefact, but rather to decorate a functional item that I use at SCA events in a manner that recalls elements of period design.  The box itself especially makes no pretence to authenticity… it is an off-the-shelf item from B&Q. The decorative motifs which I have used come from two sources: a late 15^th century illuminated book, and a late 15^th century glazed plate, both of Italian origin, and neither anything to do with boxes. I therefore make no claim to represent an authentic-looking box of the era. 

That said, the painted wooden chest was an established genre in late 15^th century Italy.  Some fine examples exist, so much so that a number of the “paintings” in the National Gallery and equivalent prestigious collections are in fact panels from dismantled wooden chests. These boxes are called “Cassoni” (singular “Cassone”) and were often created to mark a wedding.  Common motifs would be the coats of arms of the couple and scenes from mythology… so in fact, my chest, which includes my arms and a panel showing the birth of Venus (probably… see below), is not so far wrong.

Example of a 15^th Century Florentine Cassone from the Victoria and Albert Museum.  Note panel showing classical imagery and gilded surround, elements found in my feast box.

 

Painted panel from c 1445 showing David in triumph by Francesco Passelino, originally from a Cassone, now displayed in the National Gallery.

 

­Milanese Book illumination motifs.

The lid and three of the sides of the box use motifs all taken directly from the same illuminated manuscript page.  I found this as an example in a practical book on Illuminated letters (“Illuminated Letters: a treasury of decorative calligraphy”, Margaret Morgan, published A&C Black 2006).  There it is referenced as being from a volume of Petrach’s “Trionfi” illustrated in Milan in the late 15^th Century, British Library Additional MS 38125 fols 33b-34.  I regret I have been unable to find anything more about this superb manuscript, and have had to work with only this rather small and low-resolution copy, which I have scanned for the benefit of this article.

I have rearranged the motifs from the manuscript page as required for my purposes to fit onto the box.  The lid is based on the lower panel (with the arms changed to my SCA arms).

The front combines the top panel with the illuminated letter (changed from  “N” to “R”) and lettering based on the beautiful humanist hand used in this manuscript.  The inscription on the box was made deliberately lengthy to allow this lettering to be used.

The box sides use the decorative motifs from the side panels of the manuscript page, in each case divided up into three sections placed side by side, because of the constraints of the proportions of the box.  All drawing was freehand copy.

 

Majolica Plate motif.

The material from the Milanese manuscript gave me enough to decorate the top and three sides of the box, but that left the back still undecorated.  Inspired by the “cassoni” described earlier, I decided to go for a full-sized panel with a mythological motif.  I had shortly before photographed a majolica plate in the Victoria and Albert museum that I had thought might be the basis for a painted plate of my own, but decided instead to use it as the basis for the missing panel, since its aquatic theme tied in with the merman and dolphin motifs that I had used elsewhere on the box.  I regret that I did not make notes on the provenance of the plate, but I believe we are again dealing with late 15^th century Italian work.

 

I am not certain what the plate depicts.  The naked figure on the seashell immediately suggests the famous image of the birth of Venus, best known as depicted by Botticelli.  But elements of the scene (the fact that the seashell is borne by dolphins, the surrounding horse-tritons, the cloaks and Cupid flying overhead) are all absent from that image but found in Raphael’s “Triumph of Galatea”.  See below for comparison.

Adapting the image from the plate to the box was obviously not straightforward, since the one is circular and the other rectangular.  Moreover, the colours available in glaze and the techniques used to paint with them place constraints on the plate decorator that don’t apply to a painter on a wooden panel.  I wasn’t aiming to make my box look like glazed ceramic: I wanted it to look something like the tempera painted panels of which a “Cassone” is constructed.  So though I took motifs and the overall composition from the plate, and to some degree the colours, I copied freely and adapted as necessary for my purposes.  Here is the end result:

 

Materials

No attempt was made to use period materials: the priority was to produce something that would look attractive but be robust enough to endure the sort of treatment a feast box must endure.  The box itself is plywood and an off-the-shelf item from B&Q.  It was undercoated with a water-based acrylic primer/undercoat, and painted with acrylics.  The gold bordering is acrylic metallic paint.  The whole thing was finished by spraying it with a considerable number of coats of acrylic gloss varnish for protection, and thus far it has done the trick… the box still looks good despite having attended several events.

An original “Cassone” of this period would probably have been painted in tempera (though oil painting was just coming in around the end of the 15^th century) and decorated with gilded gesso.  Artists of the day had access to a wide range of pigments and a sophisticated understanding of how to mix them, so there were in effect no colours that I have used that would have been unavailable to them.