A Google search for "reliquary bags" brought me to this page, http://www.larsdatter.com/pouches-drawstring.htm which led me to the Belgian Art Tools and Links site, http://balat.kikirpa.be/search_all.php. The recommended search for "bourse" resulted in pages of items, some of which were actually what I wanted. The photos of bags in the rest of this post are from this site.
I noticed a series of bags which had some sort of woven object on the drawstrings that looked like it would slide up to keep the bag tightly closed.
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| Object number: 43493 http://balat.kikirpa.be/photo.php?path=M194705&objnr=43493&nr=77 |
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Object number: 43477
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Object number: 43186
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The word "knot" did not occur to me until I zoomed in on one and realized it's resemblance to the knot at the end of the paracord bracelet I'd made for my husband.
I reviewed the video I used to make this knot, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ9VL2IVlFM&index=13&list=FLeqTsg8HLrOl-9iTM3zSZ3Q and it quickly became apparent that this was not the correct knot, it could never be made to slide.
I continued the hunt for the right knot back on Google, this time searching for "medieval knot", and found gold in the form of a blog post titled "Tassels&Co: Turk's head knot basics" from Medieval Silkwork: http://www.medievalsilkwork.com/2015/07/tassels-turks-head-knot-basics.html.
Now armed with a name for the knot I searched and found lots of info about it, including many descriptions and videos on making one. The most helpful to me was this series of pages: http://www.hought.com/art.6bth.1.html. You need to make sure you click on parts 2 and 3 to get the full instructions.
Even so, it took me many tries to find the right thing to start wrapping it around (my finger), properly decipher right-handed directions for my left-handed brain, and then shrinking it down to a more reasonable size. Here is my first Turk's head knot:
I'll make a second and put them on the drawstrings of the brown bag, just to see how they work.
This was all a delightful side trip in the world of medieval bags, but it does nothing to help me with the conundrum of how the disks on the German bag were made.
It's looking very much like material is wrapped around a disk of some type (metal), based on the above button. The material seems to have worn off part one edge of the disk. The material also seems to have the same texture at the embroidered skirt on the lady. Could the material be covered with embroidery? I must write the museum!
~ Marjorie
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