Sunday, October 15, 2017

Largely About Largesse

Largesse examples from the Citadel of the Southern Pass,
in Ansteorra.  

The original meaning of largesse is, coins thrown to the populace on some great occasion, such as a wedding or a coronation.  E.g., during the wedding of Mary Stuart to the future François II (1558):

This is the best screencap I could find,
and it ain't great, but it's Col. Brandon
with a fistful of coins he's about to
throw to the crowd after his wedding.
(Sense and Sensibility, 1995)
"Then the heralds cried for a third time "Largesse!" and threw among the people a great number of gold and silver coins of all descriptions, as Henrys, ducats, crowns of the sun, pistolets, half-crowns, testons, and douzains.  Such a rush and outcry among the people followed, that nothing was ever heard like it, as they precipitated themselves one upon the other...During the offertory, pieces of gold and silver were again thrown among the people, in token of liberality and largesse."  (Lives of the Queens of Scotland, Agnes Strickland)

In the SCA context, though, it's taken on a meaning closer to the idea of tokens or gifts of favor (not favors, per se; I have a different rant about those)--a way for the Crown (or local barons, for that matter) to give an attaboy-in-passing, so to speak, outside of the formal awards & orders context, for any reason that moves them: you did them a service, you did something cool, they like your display or your performance or how you comport yourself on the field--any ol' thing.  This is a Great Idea and very medieval and I love it and I want to contribute to it.  But I have been perennially stuck on "how".

Disclaimer: I have some personal madness here; particularly I want to note that this madness is entirely personally-applied, and I do not have any mental wharrgarbl about anyone else's work or contributions but my own.

Very broadly speaking, it seems to me that there are two kinds of largesse; "high-end" (bigger or more expensive or more painstakingly crafted) one-off creations that might be given, for example, as gifts to other royalty; and the more, and understand that this is not said with any degree of denigration, "mass gift" items which are smaller and less expensive of money and effort to produce.   I haven't really been thinking about the high-end largesse, since I can barely keep up with my own big projects, but I should like to contribute to the other kind, the more so since there's more of a need for those.  But where I get stuck on is, what's appropriate for me to do?  For my craft, nearly everything I do is a hefty time investment, and I can't produce items quick enough to be useful in this context.

Well, let's cut to the nubbin of it: of course I could...if I wanted to machine sew / use non-period techniques / make other compromises.  For instance, one of the obvious items I thought of is to make small "relic"-size pouches.  None more medieval!  So appropriate, 
Relic purse from the Abbaye
de Saint-Maurice d'Agaune
and even useful!  Right the hell in my wheelhouse!  And you'd think, pretty quick to make...and you'd be right, generally speaking...but I have a bug up my butt about tablet-woven edges, and I'm still slow AF on that, so it'd take me an inefficient amount of time to finish even one, let alone several.  Is this stupid?  Will the recipient notice, or know, or care?  If my king gave me a nice little pouch to say "attagirl", would it bug me if the sides were sewn instead of having a tablet-woven edge? I'm pretty darn sure it wouldn't.[1]

I guess the core question is, what's the right balance between purity of work vs. actually producing things?  I am comfortable with that line for the various things I'm making for me, because I'm the only person it affects; but for largesse, it affects the honor of the Crown and the happiness of the recipient, neither of which I want to trifle with.  Possibly--yes, probably--I am overthinking the living shit out of this.  But I really don't want to create things that the Crown winces to give, or that the recipient winces to receive; and I don't where the generally accepted wince line is.


[1] Though if it was of neon green polyester with pink bunnies and a plastic draw cord, my eyebrow might rise more than somewhat.

1 comment:

  1. Have you considered making practice pieces and donate those as largess?

    ReplyDelete