Who are Billy and Charlie?
Marianne Hansen (Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Bryn Mawr College) and the armorer Robert MacPherson. Billy and Charlie’s grew out of our involvement with re-enacting, although we are now only tangentially involved in that hobby. You can still find us dressed up occasionally, especially at the SCA’s Pennsic War.
Who were “Billy and Charley”?
William Smith and Charles Eaton were a couple of mudlarks who moved aggressively to supply “medieval” artifacts when a taste for them arose among British collectors in the middle of the nineteenth century. Their (stunningly inauthentic) products are called “Billys and Charleys” in their honor. Learn more about Smith and Eaton.
Our technologies
We cast in a modern lead-free pewter, but our stone molds are authentically medieval. We blog about our work on our Facebook page and in Tech Treats.
We base most of our pieces on authentic items published in scholarly works. See the bibliography for an introduction to our sources. We also have a collection of original pieces, some of which are pictured with the items we made as copies.
