Login

Recent searches

No recent searches

Search options

Only available when logged in.
wandering.shop is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
Wandering.Shop aims to have the vibe of a quality coffee shop at a busy SF&F Convention. Think tables of writers, fans and interested passers-by sharing drinks and conversation on a variety of topics.

Administered by:

Server stats:

912
active users

wandering.shop: AboutProfiles directoryPrivacy policy

Mastodon: AboutGet the appKeyboard shortcutsView source codev4.3.4

Ada Palmer

It’s time for the RENAISSANCE SPORK!
And the fascinating problems museums face when dealing with objects no one expects. 1/?

Sharing for my countdown to the release “Inventing the Renaissance” coming Feb UK/Mar US buff.ly/4j6qkoS

A long slender three-tined fork made of silver lies in a museum case. There is a separate piece shaped like the bowl of a spoon that slides on and off of the fork tines using little metal grippy brackets, so it can transform from a spoon to a fork. The handle is shaped like a Roman soldier. it is labeled with a card that says '"German, seventeenth-century, silver. Item number 914C."
Jan 22, 2025, 08:35 PM·Public·Buffer
90boosts·116favorites
Public
Ada Palmer

This is a real Renaissance modular transforming spoon-fork, with a spoon cavity that slides on and off of the fork tines using little metal grippy brackets. It’s nifty. And no one believes such a thing would exist in an era we mostly think of as having less silverware than modern times 2/?

Detail of the same object, showing the tines and spoon bowl in greater detail. Three brackets affix the tines to the spoon, one around each tine. There are decorative scrolls like those on an ionic column on the handle just where it splits and widens for the fork to have tines.
Public
Ada Palmer

This is far from the only unexpected weirdo object in the Bargello museum, which a friend of mine calls “Florence’s attic,” the repository for all the peculiar Renaissance clutter that is neither painting nor sculpture, and no tourist really expects to see. 3/?

The Monty Python silly Spanish Inquisition meme. At the top it says "Everyone expects the Inquisition," at the bottom, "Nobody expects the Renaissance Spork!"
Public
Ada Palmer

The Bargello is where you can look in one case and see a *real* magical talisman next to the implausible Renaissance spork next to this Swiss-army-style multiplex surgical knife thing 4/?

A bronze circular disc about 3 inches wide, with a hole toward the top to let it hang from a string or chain. The circle is inscribed with a pentagram with various letters inside it, and letters and magical symbols are inscribed around the edges. A label says "Amulet, bronze, Italian, Sixteenth Century, Inventory number 1024C."
A multiplex knife, like a Swiss army knife. Four blades with different shaped surgical tools for making different shapes of incisions for bloodletting etc. fold out from a brass handle. The outside of the brass handle has a funny frowny animal face on it, like a tiny gargoyle. A label says "Knife with surgical instruments, iron and bronze, Italian, sixteenth century, inventory 882C."
Public
Ada Palmer

And in another the city’s collection of 10-inch-tall bronze figurines of knights on horseback, and a brass jug in the shape of Saint George unfairly picking on an unreasonably tiny dragon, with a little tap for dispensing wine sticking out of the horse’s chest. 5/?

Two detailed bronze ten-inch-tall figures riding horses. The one on the right is in crusader armor and has a jousting lance; his horse has a strange mane and round ears and thin forefeet and might possibly be intended to be a lion. The one on the left is clearly a horse, and the rider wears a crown and holds a scepter.
Brass jug in the same of a horse, with a figure in armor and a helmet riding it. A tiny winged dragon smaller than the horse's head is climbing up its right back leg, and the figure on the horse is about to stab the dragon with the spear; the dragon looks about the size of a corgi, with short stubby legs and three-toed little claws. The horse looks back toward the dragon as if mildly miffed. A tap for dispensing liquid sticks out of the horse's chest.
Another bronze warrior on a horse, this one a bit bigger nearly two feet high, and imported from China, a figure of a famous Chinese general. Around it in the case are a brass jug shaped like a lion and some candlesticks shaped like weird beasts.
Public
Ada Palmer

These are objects only specialists (hobbyists, collectors, historians) care about, but they have to live *somewhere*, so the few dedicated tourists who make it upstairs in the Bargello are treated to glimpses of the kinds of objects we forget were part of a historic setting. 6/?

Museum case containing an array of odd Renaissance objects. The multiplex surgical knife is visible in the middle. Around it are some fancy scissors and silver tableware, a brass bird foot, two statuettes of naked men in the same position with one arm raised for no clear reason, a candleholder, and a few other unidentifiable knickknacks. Filling most of the case is a carved horn trumpet, shaped like a cow's horn or drinking horn, with brass fittings and oak leaf patterns on the outside.
Another case of knicknacks, with several candleholders, a bunch of decorative brass plates that clearly used to be attached to things but lost the things they were attached to, and a jug shaped like a bird.
Public
Ada Palmer

As a bonus, the museum includes THE WORST SHEEP (I love it so much!) which is also the worst artwork I’ve ever seen made and sold by a professional historic artist, which I keep a picture of near my desk as a reminder that sometimes mediocre is, in fact, good enough. 7/?

Small painted ceramic bowl (the technical term is majolica) painted with a sheep that looks like a small child did it. The body's wool is represented by a bunch of weird ovals with squiggles in them, its head is twisted backwards with a derpy expression, its legs are way too long and skinny like sticks, and its cloven feet look like claws. A circle around its head and a stick behind it with a cross indicate that it's supposed to be the common Renaissance image of Jesus as a sheep. As a bonus, it's supposed to be standing in front of a staff with a cross on top, but the top part of the cross above the sheep totally doesn't line up with the bottom half under the sheep. Weird green smears give hints of color.
Public
Ada Palmer

It may *sound* like a lovely idea when someone offers you a carved wooden tablet of Byzantine Empress Theodora, or a Viking carved walrus tusk, but where are you and your descendants going to put them, huh? Huh? 8/?

Flat wooden tablet carved with an image of a Byzantine Empress. She wears a lon grand robe, a distinctive byzantine crowned headdress with beads hanging down at the sides of her head, and holds a scepter and an orb with a cross on top. An elaborate dome crowned by eagles and columns crowned by palm leaves frame her. The tablet is about six inches tall.
A walrus tusk, carved all over with recognizably Norse knot work twisty coiling decorative lines, and many birds and beasts among them.
Public
Ada Palmer

There’s no home for objects like Renaissance Spork, Multiplex Knife, or last weekend's Little Saint Riding Demon; they’re invaluable for understanding the period, but they need careful preservation and handling but don’t bring in the tourist dollars to make it happen. 9/? buff.ly/3WqNgFL 9/?

Bluesky Social · Ada Palmer (@adapalmer.bsky.social)Whoops, I had a swamped Saturday and missed yesterday in the countdown to "Inventing the Renaissance" so here's a quickie for yesterday: check out this weird little guy riding in a hoppy little devil creature! #HistoryPix
Public
Ada Palmer

But many historic museums have a clutter room, or clutter wing, or clutter floor, and if you ever spot one you should definitely give it your time, because there you’ll find the odd little knickknacks, contraptions, whatsits & doohickeys that capture the creativity and materiality of past eras 10/?

Large, ornately carved completely useless toy chariot made of pink coral, with cupids flanking a figure who rides on top. It sits on a brass base, and a small brass horse and rider totally out of scale with it and its rider is poised pulling it.
Public
Ada Palmer

We all have clutter in our lives, & every bit of clutter is full of cultural information (art, economics, popularity, movements) and if you put on your imaginary-future-archaeologist hat for a moment and look at one of your own clutter piles you’ll see what a gold mine of information it is. 11/?

Public
Ada Palmer

So I hope the next time you look around a room and think, “Oh no, so much clutter!” you’ll remember our clutter is in good company historically, and that it’s often in the oddball artifacts that sit around a room that the most unexpected things about a culture can be learned. 12/?

Another case at the Bargello museum. In the middle a box full of silver-capped glass bottles is a portable apothecary kit. Around it sit many carved horn smoking pipes. Behind it sits a tiny wind-piped keyboard instrument, like a weird hurdy-gurdy.
SearchLive feeds
About