Archive General | archaeometallurgy
Oct 25 2017

Short documentary – favourite tool of a tap maker

Bastian Asmus


A conical reamer for the tap maker

In Nuremberg the tap makers belonged to the redsmiths. This article is about a simple question of how the conical opening of a late medieval tap was dressed. Although you can do this completely manually, as I have shown in the short documentary, it is highly unlikely that it was actually done this way by the Nuremberg Red smiths or tap makers. Grinding the stop cocks into the tap takes several hours, even if the casts had a good fit to  begin with. Of course, it is not the spent labour time that has caused me to investigate the grinding of the stop cocks in more detail, it was rather the pictorial evidence that I found in Weigels book of trades and in the Nürnberger Hausbücher of the Zwölfbrüderstiftung.

Tap maker Hans Zeuller

Redsmith and tap maker Hans Zeuller

Redsmith Hans Zeuller with conus reamer. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The tool with which Hans Zeuller uses is clearly visible inside of the tap We can assume that it is a kind of conical reamer; i. e. a tool used in a scraping rather than a cutting fashion. Metals are very dense and can hardly be cut by hand. Continue reading


May 21 2015

Aquamanile in the form of a griffin

Bastian Asmus
Aquamanile in the form of a griffin cast in the workshop of Ragna and Bastian Asmus in 2015 inspired by a 15th century Nuremberg aquamanile.

Aquamanile in the form of a griffin. The original is from a 15th century Nuremberg Rotschmied workshop. The pictured aquamanile was modelled by Ragna Asmus and cast by Bastian Asmus.

A griffin aquamanile made some 600 years later

I realise that I have been somewhat negligent over the past three to four months when it comes to writing. I was immersed in the most fascinating and satisfying work in the past four months, however and simply did not have time to write. Within the next few weeks I will post about the 12th to 15th century bronze and brass objects I was commissioned to reconstruct. Let us begin with my favorite piece today: The griffin aquamanile that is now housed in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

This bronze aquamanile in the form of a griffin was cast in early 2015 and can be viewed from 30 May 2015, the newly established European Hanseatic League Museum. The Griffin was modelled by Ragna Asmus after a griffin aquamanile that was made in Nurmeberg between 1425 and 1450. It is significantly younger than the lion aquamanile I have made two years previously. In the 15th century Nuremberg was a leading centre of the brass and brass-ware production and had surpassed the importance Dinant  held in the 12th and 13th centuries. From the 14th century the production of “Dinanderie” shifted from Dinant and the Meuse region to Nuremberg. After Dinant’s destruction in 1466 the metal trades in Nuremberg  became an even more important one than Dinant ever was . The numerous professions in  the Rotschmiedehandwerk  may be seen as an evidence of this upsurge in productivity.

This aquamanile was completely remodelled  in bee’s wax and cast in the lost wax process.

Aquamanile in the form of a griffin cast in the workshop of Ragna and Bastian Asmus in 2015 inspired by a 15th century Nuremberg aquamanile.

Aquamanile in the form of a griffin.

 

Literature

Lockner (1981) Die Merkzeichen der Nürnberger Rotschmiede. München; Berlin [West]: Dt. Kunstverl. (Forschungshefte).
Theuerkauff-Liederwald, A.-E. (1988) Mittelalterliche Bronze- und Messinggefäße : Eimer - Kannen - Lavabokessel. Berlin: Dt. Verl. für Kunstwiss. (Bronzegeräte des Mittelalters).

Oct 29 2014

Meta data and Archaeology: of Photos, finds and QR Codes

Bastian Asmus


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Wouldn’t it be great if you could add  meta data to your image  files while doing the actual photographing instead of having to do this afterwards in post processing? In this two part article I present how using QR codes and tethered shooting, can achieve this goal when documenting objects. It saves a lot of time, for example, during archaeological find processing and documentation. The first part deals with the manual creation of QR codes, the second part with a script-based solution, that automates the process of adding meta data to image files. Continue reading