Mood boards: Comfort

Looking at the interior of Bodiam today, particularly if visiting on a cold wet day, it is hard to imagine it being a comfortable space. I brought together images of furnished space: such as Dover Castle with manuscripts of household scenes. These I felt elicited a feeling of warmth and comfort similar to those used in stock photography as seen here.

Mood Board: Comfort

Comfort visualisation

Image sources:
Detail of a miniature of the birth of Alexander the Great, at the beginning of book 5, from the Miroir Historial (translated by Jean de Vignay from Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum Historiale), Netherlands (Bruges), 1479-1480, (British Library, MS Royal 14 E I, vol 1, f.177v-178r) (BritishLibrary 2014f)
Delilah shearing Samson’s Hair, by the workshop of the Boucicaut Master (Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M 394, f 112) (TheMorganLibrary&Museum 2014)
Griet
Penshurst Guidebook
Newboult, J. & Newboult, E., 2014. Rye Jug. Trinity Court Potteries: Medieval Replicas webstire. Available at: http://www.trinitycourtpotteries.co.uk/1Contact details.htm [Accessed November 21, 2014].
Griet, 2012. Augustinus, La Cité de Dieu, Paris, Maître François, c. 1475-1480. Wikipedia. Available at: http://wiki.reenactor.ru/index.php/Изображение:Augustinus,_La_Cité_de_Dieu,_Paris,_Maître_François,_c._1475-1480(9).jpg [Accessed December 1, 2014].
Photo of the Barley Hall, York courtesy of Alexis Pantos
Northern Dutch Book of Hours from 1489. Haarlem manuscript with miniatures by the hand of the Dutch artist Spierinck.
The Hague, KB, 76 F 10 fol. 42r The deathbed of St. Hubert of Liège

Mood Boards: Eating

It has been a long time since I have updated. I completed my PhD at the beginning of December (2014), viva’d in February and finally had my corrections confirmed at the beginning of the month. Having spent a busy month somewhere in between working at Winchelsea (http://cma.soton.ac.uk/events/2015/04/winchelsea-medieval-port-project/) and Bucklers Hard (http://cma.soton.ac.uk/events/2015/04/shipwrightery-at-bucklers-hard/)

This post is going to discuss the first of a series of mood boards I created as a way of engaging with the 3d model of the private apartments at Bodiam as part of my PhD. The idea was that discussions (and critiques) surrounding archaeological visualisation have tried to engage with subjectivity and uncertainty in different ways. I suggest the presenting the representations of the past alongside some of the source images used to create them. Each of the boards I have created is themed around some element of medieval life or experience.

The board in this post relates to eating. Stock images from sites such as GettyImages tend to focus on people physically eating rather than things associated with that task.

Image sources:
Queen Elizabeth receiving the Dutch ambassadors. Painted between 1570-75 the artist is unknown. It is currently at Neue Galerie, Kassel, Germany. (Jokinen 2008)
Luttrell Psalter Featuring the Lord at Dinner (Copyright 1989 The British Library Board)
(British Library, Royal MS 14 E III, f. 76v) (BritishLibrary 2014e)
(Royal MS 19 D II f. 273r)(BritishLibrary 2014g)
The Book of the Queen – Christine de Pizan in her study – by Master of the Cite Des Dames in 1410 (British Library, MS Harley 4431, f. 4r)
The Coronation Chair, Westminster Cathedral (BBCHistory 2014).
The Portable Antiquities Scheme/ The Trustees of the British Museum (TheBritishMuseum 2011b)
British Library Royal 14 E iii, miniature of King Arthur’s Court.

First renders and thoughts on beams

I had a supervision yesterday with my supervisors Prof. Matthew Johnson and Dr. Graeme Earl where we discussed the first renders I had produced of my model so far. These images just detail the internal space: windows, fireplaces and doorways, and my first attempts at putting a roof and floors on the building.

I had been reading a lot around the subject of timber building construction to try to understand the appearance or these types of building. My first port of call was Richard Harris’s Discovering Timber-Framed Buildings this excellent little book explains the construction of these buildings in great detail with lots of helpful, clear diagrams. Based on his writings I started to plan the distances and shapes of my beams and how they would slot together. The following image is the results. I have just added some basic textures and materials to the renders to give an idea about the space that is not bright pink. I also realise that my smoothing groups need playing around with a bit.

Shape of beam bays

Internal beams upper floor

Ground floor showing beamed roof

A window and fireplace from the upper floor

The space the beams need to cross is quite short (about 5m) so there was no need to think about having to bridge the gap using a tie beam or similar approach. The distance the bays are placed apart does not seem to be set. I choose to space them evenly across the entire span about 5m apart as this “looked right” based on photos of other Medieval Roofs I had been using for reference (see below). Before spacing them apart I had to also consider the shape of this part of the frame. I had been looking at the above images of roof beams and decided to not go with a Crown Post and instead use 2 slanting Queen posts.

Wilmington Priory timber roof

Portchester Castle

Brockhampton Estate: The Great Hall

Presenting these images to Graeme and Matthew highlighted a few errors. Matthew suggested that the angle I had used for the Queen Posts was much too slanted, which is indicative of later buildings. Instead he suggested that it would be much more interesting to include a Crown Post or make the Queen Posts vertical.

As there are a number of options instead of just making one decision about how the roof is structured Graeme suggested that instead I create a number of different models with different roofing options, including a crown post and not, moving the number and position of bays around a bit to see if there are any obvious options for lining them up. We also discussed whether there would have been a ceiling concealing these beams. I had always assumed that the rooms would be open to the roof as this is common in halls. I had not really considered putting a ceiling in place on this upper floor.

What I had not considered was how much this changed the appearance of the upper apartment. Until now I had been thinking about them as looking fairly similar situated one above the other. However. when the roof is in place it will transform the upper apartment making it feel much larger and more open. Whereas the lower apartment will feel much more contained.

The second discussion point coming from the meeting was in reference to the beams and how decorated they were or not. We had been discussing them in terms of ornamentation of the type found at Ightham Mote (see previous blog). I asked whether, considering the lack of architectural ornamentation found at Bodiam, the beams, which would be cheaper to carve, would also be devoid of decoration. I had been thinking about it a lot as I need to decide whether I am going to shape them sooner rather than later. Matthew suggested that the question was even more complex as unlike a lot of slightly earlier buildings the household was not a peripatetic one, it was solely based at Bodiam. Which we would have assumed that more of the building would be decorated as it would not have had to have been moved around. So wondering whether the more decayed areas of the building are as plain as the rest of it is a very hard question, which I have yet to find an answer for.

3/10 things you didn’t know about Bodiam Castle: Ornamentation

Unlike at Ightham Mote ornamentation on the architecture at Bodiam is virtually none existent. Despite the scale of the building and its presence in the landscape there is just one piece of decorated stonework remaining: a leafy boss.

Leafy Bpss

Again unlike at Ightham it is not on display in an obvious entrance or public room, it is concealed in the on the right side of the gatehouse on the second floor. It is not in a room, but more of a passageway which only remarkable feature (other than the boss) is one of the new style gun loops. It is so concealed that few visitors notice it (and even so called experts *myself* spent a good morning wandering around looking at ceilings before I found it!).

Size of Room

It is curious that it is found in this location. As I have already stated at Ightham the majority of the ornamentation is on the public areas of the building. This area of Bodiam is so concealed it is not a display of ostentation as it is in other buildings. It is so concealed and so small we have to question why it is there. The room is tiny it could even be considered a corridor, its only feature is that the gun loop lighting it overlooks the gatehouse: which have been suggested as some kind of porters lodge use. The room itself is very dark even during the day, there is no space to sit in the room, or anything to do there except look out the gun loop. It required such a trained eye to find it it seems wasted here in this part of the building.

Courtyard Windows

The work on the model continues, I have been working on the complicated courtyard windows. As discussed in a previous post I had been thinking about how I was going to make the windows overlooking the courtyard and as they no longer exist in the area I am focussing on. The windows overlooking the courtyard all appear to have been of a similar “type”, so my first decision has been to model them all on that design as unlike the exterior the courtyard seems to have been fairly uniform.

Second Floor Windows

First Floor Window Seat

I then had to decide on the number of windows that would be present along this side of the building and their positions. For this I have worked from a combination of observing the standing remains and looking at other reconstructions.

The building itself only offers one clue for these windows right at the northern extreme of the range. Here can be found the bottom of what appears to be a window seat detailed in the photo below. Apart from this much of the standing remains are below the first floor level.

Bottom of window seat at northern extent of range

Moving onto other peoples representations of the building. The National Trust provide a couple of sources for visitors to look at to try and picture that area of the building. The first is featured in the official guidebook and can also be found in John Goodall’s book The English Castle. It shows a cutaway reconstruction of the entire Eastern Elevation from above in a hand drawn style and in another image the courtyard. You can see areas of the courtyard walls detailing windows that are no longer present and internal areas of the building. The view is from a height above the building. The windows shown in these representation are of the same type I have suggested and are pictured below. They position the windows for the second floor directly above those for the first floor and there are four sets spread along this length of wall before you reach the spiral staircase.

The second is used as an aid for the guided tours for children as an interpretation tool. It is a series of stills used in the film shown at the castle and for sale in the shop. The images are based on a 3d model built of the castle by a digital media company for the National Trust. The ones we are concerned with show the courtyard and one of the rooms of the private chambers.The image of the courtyard shows the walls on the eastern edge of the courtyard. It shows the same type of windows as I have intended to use and the same as feature in John Goodall’s book. Again this image details four sets of windows along this section of the building.

Guided Tour Reconstuction

The final source is the model of the castle found in the Northeastern tower in a room above the introductory film about Bodiam Castle. An image of the model can be found below. Instead of lining up the windows on this model they are alterate on the first floor and second floor and on the first floor show alternating single and double windows.

Model of Bodiam

I have decided to go for the same approach as John Goodall as I think this fits more in the style of the other areas of the building. I have decided to feature four sets of windows and space them equally out along the range as I feel this reflects the buildings projected symmetry.

Moving on from these windows the final piece of wall that I had to produce was the gap between spiral staircase and the southern wall. I firstly inserted a set of doors (one on each floor) at the point where the staircase would have been entered. As a reference I used the same doors that had been used one above the other as used for the entrance to the eastern tower as there is no evidence what type of door would have stood there. I felt that if these doors were found in the same space they would look fairly similar.

I made one final decision and this was to place a squint in the wall overlooking the Great Hall. There is no physical evidence for this existing as the wall is entirely gone. I decided it would be appropriate having visited a number of other buildings which have this feature including Ightham Mote and Great Chalfield Manor. I decided as a similar feature is found overlooking the chapel at the other end of private chambers it would make sense to model it on this window.

Ambiguity

Over the last week I have been continuing working on the elevation, after an illuminating discussion (baby tutorial!) with Grant Cox I realised I had been thinking about modelling in the wrong way instead of working from the largest size and inputting features into it, I should be thinking about the smallest parts and building out and up from them. As a consequence I have been building each window individually and expanding the walls out from these frames which I have found a much easier method for creating the complex shapes and dealing with the chamfers.

Following this amazing discovery I have completed the entirety of the eastern wall and stuck it all together which took a lot less time once I had got the hang of it!

I have to begin to think about accuracy and ambiguity. While producing the surveyed area of the building I found that I had to make decisions about parts of the shapes of windows that had been worn or broken away along the edges. I found I was thinking that obviously the edge of the window would have been straight… something that I do not in actuality know. For example this window the edge of the window is much dilapidated I know that at some point on some of the windows of this type bars ran across them and these were probably removed (forcefully) after the castle was abandoned causing much of the damage. But how much of the damage can I rebuild just by looking? To get around this problem I have been comparing the windows to others of the building where evidence for the bars still exists forming a fairly accurate edge and shape for the frame. I need to keep in mind what decisions I am making about rebuilding these shapes and think about how I am doing it.

Photo of window

Survey Data of the same window

Moving on from these areas which I have survey data for I have to think about my method for rebuilding windows in areas firstly where I know there are standing remains for such features and then secondly for where there are not. Building windows on the northern and southern walls has been and will be reasonably easy using a small amount of conjecture, I have photos of the windows themselves taken from both the interior and the exterior, positioning them will be more challenging, I have been using a combination of images and lining up planes in the 3ds max model to try to position them in line with window positions on the eastern elevation.

Much more tricky will be the western wall which is no longer standing. I know positions for windows at basement level (however, this does not indicate position for anything on the upper floor as can be seen from the eastern wall). I also can see evidence for one window seat from the lower level which is a good position to start. I also know that I will have to include the entrance to the spiral staircase on this wall, which links the great hall and both sets of apartments. Currently I have examined other areas of the building with windows overlooking the corridor such as the following, from these I should begin to be able to justify the style of window.

Overlooking from western range

Windows overlooking courtyard from Kitchens

Window overlooking courtyard from Great Hall

I have also been looking at other reconstructions of this area to see how other people have pictured the scene. The main image that appears was produced for the National Trust Guidebooks and was also reused in John Goodalls book: The English Castle. Which uses the same windows that are pictured above. (note: I will be critiquing this image in more detail later when it comes to decorating and furnishing the apartments.)

In essence I need to begin to be thinking clearly (and carefully recording) every decision I make about the construction of the rooms as their construction particularly from this point on will include an element of ambiguity.

2/10 things your didn’t know about Bodiam Castle

Having moved on from looking at the window seat I am starting to look at fireplaces and thought that I would mention a feature found in Eastern Tower. There is a fireplace in the First Floor Apartments which has an opening in the side of it leading through into the Eastern Tower.

Fireplace with opening on right side into adjoining tower

discussions with other have led to confusion there is no real understanding of what this is or why it is there. One thing suggested to me by Dave Potts a fellow PhD student is that if a fire is burned in a fireplace for 48 hours the whole chimney stack will heat up and act as a radiator for the adjoining rooms. Maybe this was one step further and was used as a double fireplace. However, the interior is a little odd as the position where the opening appears is right next to the door. Photo to follow on next trip to site!

1/10 things you didn’t know about Bodiam Castle

Following a supervision a few weeks ago I have begun to think about posting 10 things that are not commonly known about the architecture at Bodiam Castle. This is the first, and one I have just discovered from working on the Digital Reconstruction of the Private Apartments:

The upper floors window seat is actually much taller than the one below. I hadn’t noticed this at all when I was recording it only became apparent when trying to reuse the window seat for the floor above that the ratios of height and width are very different.

Exterior of window seat windows

Interior of Window Seats

Starting over

After having a play around today I came to the conclusion (which I had i think decided on a while ago) to restart. My reasons for doing this are that as I have gone along I have realised that errors with the shapes of the walls were going to cause me a lot of trouble later on with rendering and a lot of what I had done had been hacked together a bit as I had gone on to just make it work. The final realisation was that I realised that the reason I was having issues lining up the survey data with my walls was because I had forgotten the walls are not straight! This has come from me remembering (albiet a bit late) that the way medieval ceilings/ floors are constructed is based on *balancing* the edges of beams on an overhang. the following image shows the east elevation and the more mossy strips of masonry show where the line of bricks at the top of each floor before the wall falls back.

So I have started from scratch again to make sure I include this. I started by importing the survey data again but this time grouping it all together and moving it to (0,0,0) as well as aligning it to the grid. This should make future modelling easier than it has been as x,y,z now should be moving either along, into or up the walls of the elevation. I next imported the wall file I had used before which was constructed of basic shapes such as extruded rectangles to create the space of the rooms. I deleted all but the main rectangle as I decided until I had lined everything up and generated the right shape for this basic space there was no need to try and create the tower rooms as they would probably need editting at a later point anyway. I then shrank the wall down to just the basement level. I then created a copy of this shape by selecting and moving along the x axis, than had to just extend it to the right position. I then selected the polygon of the wall and moved this backward to make the wall thinner and generate the step on which the floor would stand. I did this again to create the 2nd floor. This has solved all the problems I was having trying to line up the window guidelines on different levels.

I am now going to start modelling the window on the lower floor. I think this time I will try a slightly different method for creating the right shape as I realised the method I was using wasn’t generating the most even shape.

Lessons in a sensible naming convention

I have been away on holiday for a week and then went on a mini adventure to London to do some important *research* at some museums (I went to the BM, V and A and Museum of London looking for medieval *stuff* to fill my rooms). The trip wasn’t that successful as there is a bit of a lack of the things I was looking for (beds! See http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O9138/bed-great-bed-of-ware/) but it did give me a nice break and the odds and ends I did see were helpful.

Just before I went away I had a bit of a play around with walls on the model as I realised somehow I had made them a bit too deep and hadn’t joined them in a sensible manner to the tower. I have now added them using the probooleon create tool however, I have not done it in a particularly senesible manner. Having looked clsoely at it the walls have not lined up well and not are not smoothing properly. I think the best solution for this will be to start again before I had tried to make combine the two objects and do it in a more careful manner (mainly checking they are lined up before I start). But I am quite happy with the newly edited walls in terms of their general shape and positioning.

My next step was to insert the window object I had made into the walls. I used the create ProBooleeon command again and subtracted the window from the selected walls.

My next step was to begin working on the chamfers that decorate the window. I started on the one on the upper edge of the window. I had to again convert the object to an editable poly and started by experiemnting with applying the chamfer modifyer to the edge. But I realised this wasn’t actually the most effect method to deliver the desired effect. Instead I found that by playing around with the polygons and moving a few of the edges it appeared much better. I started by pulling the outer edge of the curve up. I then took the next line of polygons and moved them clsoer to the outer edge. The only issue is that instead of appear as a nice sharp edge (like the aris on the wall) the edge is smoothing.

The first window!

Having come back from holiday I have since learnt a harsh lesson in correctly naming my files. I have spent the morning running over what I had done to create the previous window on the next window only to find I had been working in the wrong .max file. An error we all make and vow never to make again. I think its time I introduced a more ordered storage method for my files.