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Parodies and Perversions

Three similar figures on horseback carrying crossbows. The riders are a penis, a man, and a vulva

We are accustomed to seeing reworked visual material in our day to day lives – American flags with the fields in various colors or with additional images overlaying the official design; blond “housewives” weeping, shouting, and pointing paired up with irritated cats; folks making improvised costumes to evoke famous paintings. It turns out medieval people were into it also – and some of those jokes ended up as obscene pewter dress accessories.

We are especially delighted by the naughty items that can be mistaken for their clean counterparts unless you are close enough to see the details – and of course, we like to make them. And bear in in mind that in a world without vision correction, many people would have to be very close to distinguish between these pairs.

Two similar depictions of a cat carrying something in its mouth - in one case a mouse; in the other a penis.

Our most popular pair includes the Good Kitty and the Bad Kitty. The good kitty has caught a mouse. The bad kitty has definitely gotten hold of something it should not have. Of course, this is not quite as strange then as it would be now – a number of medieval and early modern images show independent penises flocking in trees like birds, being offered to prospective partners, flying through the air, or being carried by a cat.

So although it might be shocking to find that your companion’s brooch did not depict the ordinary cat you expected, at least the entire idea of a detached erect penis would not necessarily disturb you.

Some types of brooches are so ubiquitous that it would be easy to conceal the joke. Ring brooches are the most popular brooch form of the High Middle Ages, and they come in all sizes from humongous to quite petite. The small Naughty Ring Brooch, with its delicate little penis and vulva, is indistinguishable from dozens of contemporary round ring brooches from more than a yard/meter or so away. Similarly, the Pussy Ring is extremely discreet – designed just like other pewter rings – or rings made in other metals – with a central setting surrounded by four tiny “pearls”.

Three similar pendant purses. The first is an openwork drawstring purse and contains a pretend coin. The second looks like a closed frame purse on one side; the other side reveals it contains three penises. The third is a small, closed frame purse.

Purse brooches and pendants are also common, and may well have been thought of as a sort of good luck piece, guaranteeing that your real purse was never empty. We have three purse pendants, two respectable ones and then the Full Purse, which is doubly deceptive: it is utterly inoffensive on one side, but the wearer can flip it over to reveal that it contains three more of those wandering penises.

Three brooches with an over M shape. The first is a nude man leaning over to display his anus and penis. The second is a letter M with a crowns and a flower. The third is a grotesque male figure with crowned head, spread legs, and pendant penis.

M-shaped brooches are frequently found, in both precious and base metals. The initial probably usually refers to the Virgin Mary, although it may have other meanings, including Minne – courtly or romantic love. The brooch in the middle of the triplet set is a characteristic example of one of these harmless brooches – and it says AMOVRS, so we can be sure it is a love token. The acrobatic Mr. M has a nearly identical overall shape, while the KingDing shares the crown but not the exact outline.

A relatively small number of naughty items present visual puns on religious motifs – although the Regina Terris brooch obviously displays a vulva as a religious icon carried in a procession, complete with a penis priest using an aspergillum to fling “holy water” around. The brooch we call Our Lady of Baloney is a brutally obscene, perhaps politically motivated, parody of images of Our Lady of Boulogne-sur-Mer.

Three similar pendant combs with differing decoration in the middle between the teeth: the first with a scene of heterosexual intercourse; the second with an openwork decorative design; the third with a number of penises arranged along a ribbon

Everyday items are more likely to be depicted in both innocent and naughty versions than are divine persons. Here is a group of three combs – one ordinary and two with tasteless decoration. The incredibly cute Wee Willies Comb was so discreet that the Museum of London listed this as a pilgrim sign for St. Blaise for years before someone finally noticed the sinuous little line of penises.

Two similar gridirons - one with two fish; the other with a fish and a penis.

And finally, a pair of gridirons, the less seemly of which takes us back to the penis/fish thing we saw in that 16th-century print with the cat. The other is part of a child’s toy kitchen.

Check out our continuously updated page of Parodies and Perversions, where you can find all the twin and triplet sets we have produced, and get a little discount on a set if you want to keep your granny happy while amazing your friends.

Comet Lacing Eyelets

Three pairs of Comet Lacing Eyelets.

Öseleisten oeseleisten Öseleiste oeseleiste

 

“lacing ring” “speed lacers” lacings laces

Cristoforo Canozi da Lendinara (n. 1448, m. 1490 c.) “Madonna col Bambino”, detta anche “Madonna della Colonna” 1479-1482;

Half-Moon Temple Rings

kolt kolty kolti russia russian slavic “temple pendant” “temple ornament” “temple ring” Germanic Switzerland

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How to Make a Mold NOT work

We were pouring some livery badges for the Belle Compagnie the other day and we ran into difficulties. Marianne made the mold in 1996 and, although it is a remarkably flat badge, which usually leads to holes and very uneven surfaces, these do not appear. This mold casts reliably, filling fully, as soon as it is warm enough.

Casting missing entire lower left corner of badge.


Why is this a problem?  Well, many medieval brooches, signs, and badges are cast incompletely. We do not offer products unless they are perfect (or near perfect) castings, because our modern customers have modern tastes – they are used to the uniformity of objects produced by industrial injection molding, spin casting, and pressure die casting. If we had a bin of pilgrim signs for St Adrian and in one of them the halo had not cast fully, most of our customers would keep shuffling through the stack to get a “good” one.

We can see from the extant historical pewter goods that the medieval customer either did not care as much or, in some cases, probably had no choice. Especially with saints’ signs acquired at holidays or festivals, it seems likely you took what you got and didn’t argue. The sign had been blessed and its spiritual value was identical regardless of the state of the casting. It didn’t matter if your saint’s halo didn’t cast or if the Virgin Mary’s medallion had a void, or if the Lamb of God was missing his knee.

Pilgrim signs with casting voids

There was probably more pressure to have complete castings for decorative items, but even there we see examples that failed to fill fully, but which were pressed into use. This ring brooch has several casting voids – bubbles where the mold did not fill. Instead of being rejected, it was provided with a tongue so the brooch could be worn.

Fancy ring brooch with casting voids

We tweak our molds for hours, sometimes working on them every time we cast them for years, so we get a lot of perfect castings. And we almost always toss incomplete castings back in the pot, rather than selling them. We do have customers who value a level of authenticity which includes incomplete castings – because they are sticklers, because it gives them a chance to talk at demos about religious practice or pre-industrial technology, because they find it amusing. In this case La Belle asked for a small number of imperfect castings of their custom mold among the complete ones, and we agreed cheerfully. That’s where the trouble began.

Mac poured the ordered badges and only managed a couple of castings where the loop at the top of the bell cast shy. He also got a few where the surface of the casting shows that the metal flow was not perfect – a place where a hole might have developed, if things were a little worse.

3-piece mold with two castings, one with a dimple in the face

Marianne’s mold was too reliable; who remembers after 27 years, but she must have spent time on careful iterations to make the metal flow in as a sheet that filled the cavity evenly without trapping any air. In any case, Mac is in the habit of fidgeting as he casts to get the perfect angle, the perfect temperature, the perfect rate for the metal to enter the mold. He is really bad at doing it wrong.

So Marianne took on the task of producing “junk” castings. The most obvious way to do this is to have metal and/or mold too cold. Starting with both mold and pewter warm, but not warm enough, she began pouring. Once the mold and metal were at operating temperatures, she went back the other way – turned off the heat under the pot so the metal became progressively cooler with each pour. She did finally manage a series of castings where the bell or its loop did not fill completely.

Array of bells with casting failures, complete with sprues

Unfortunately, in many of these castings, the retaining hook for the pin also did not cast – and no one wants a livery badge that won’t stay on. (The little tongue becomes a hook/catch for the pin; the one on the left, below, is too short.)

Hooks on pewter pieces as cast; one is too short to be used

The easiest shortfall to create is the one Mac got, where the quatrefoil loop doesn’t cast fully. That can be produced time after time by not filling the mold to the top of the sprue so there’s not enough pressure to send the metal up into the loop. Here’s a selection of castings, starting with a near miss at left (the loop almost closed) and ending with a couple of pitiful stubs.

Five bells with successively less complete loops

The failure to fill the rim of the bell to the edge is trickier – Marianne had to press one of the halves of the mold back down hard while letting the other side fill normally. This incidentally led to some casts where the loop was very flashy, but that is hardly a defect, since the flash is easily removed.

This did produce incomplete casts with crinkly edges. And the surfaces were often not what we prefer. But she never got the requested holes. Her rogues gallery of usable, but incomplete casts:

Array of bells with casting failures

We’ll see which of these the Compagnie likes and which are just too much. Meanwhile, we’ll finish up with a thought experiment about the Middle Ages: You’ve heard of re-enacting groups having a five-foot (two-meter) standard for authenticity – if it looks authentic from five feet, it’s okay. For pewter livery badges you might employ a ten-foot (three- meter) rule. From that distance you should be able to tell what the badge depicts well enough to identify whose livery it is. If you can’t, the lord needs a new device – or a new badge. If you can, even if the casting is incomplete, it’s okay!

Our Lady of Baloney Brooch

A crowned woman in a boat holding a crowned penis in one hand and with the other hand on a penis that serves as a rudder.

scrotum balls bollocks ballocks dick penis cock genitalia

erotic erotica smut dirty curiosa naughty goods

bologna