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We are spending this week moving my office to the spare bedroom and the spare bedroom to my office, for Reasons. Which partly involve being able to keep our respective offices quieter when we're both working (they currently share a very thin wall), and partly a better arrangement to house all my stuff.
Also D. Va has learned to open our bathroom door so now there are two cats to give us no privacy.
I was doing a bit of writing on The Thing Part 2 (see posts from last year moaning about The Thing I wrote), and ended up trying to search for stuff on men shaving in the Renaissance and early modern era--mostly, would anyone carry a personal shaving kit with them and if so what would it look like? I could find no results, just lots of stuff on the New Renaissance in Beards Today and pages informing me that 17th century men thought facial hair was awesome and had it. Arg. If any of you can dig up a page, perhaps from a history museum, that shows a personal shaving kit from, oh, anytime between 1450-1699, that'd be aces.
I have slowed my Warhammer read because every time I start a book I can't set it back down to do other things until I finish it, so I am leaving the last two books in the Gaunt's Ghost series as a reward for getting the Thing Part 2 draft done.
I'd attach photos of the cats, who have been adorable recently, but I'm on my laptop in the media room until we get my office shifted, and it's harder to deal with Photoshop this way than it is when I've got monitors plugged in, a proper keyboard, and a table on which to rest my hands.
Aaaargh I have, like, four emails I haven't yet replied to....
Also D. Va has learned to open our bathroom door so now there are two cats to give us no privacy.
I was doing a bit of writing on The Thing Part 2 (see posts from last year moaning about The Thing I wrote), and ended up trying to search for stuff on men shaving in the Renaissance and early modern era--mostly, would anyone carry a personal shaving kit with them and if so what would it look like? I could find no results, just lots of stuff on the New Renaissance in Beards Today and pages informing me that 17th century men thought facial hair was awesome and had it. Arg. If any of you can dig up a page, perhaps from a history museum, that shows a personal shaving kit from, oh, anytime between 1450-1699, that'd be aces.
I have slowed my Warhammer read because every time I start a book I can't set it back down to do other things until I finish it, so I am leaving the last two books in the Gaunt's Ghost series as a reward for getting the Thing Part 2 draft done.
I'd attach photos of the cats, who have been adorable recently, but I'm on my laptop in the media room until we get my office shifted, and it's harder to deal with Photoshop this way than it is when I've got monitors plugged in, a proper keyboard, and a table on which to rest my hands.
Aaaargh I have, like, four emails I haven't yet replied to....
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I'm seeing a lot of "People up to the mid 1700s didn't do it themselves, razors were expensive and fiddly to maintain" (but in this case, your protagonist is maintaining other fiddly blades, right? The issue might be more 'what do you use to look at yourself while you're shaving')
https://shavestraightandsafe.com/2016/11/07/the-guide-to-18th-century-shaving/ (has a few interesting links, as well as pictures)
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Yes there are Reasons he needs to be looking into a mirror, and it's not to describe himself. XD
Now I just need to figure out what the hell the Venetian/Florentian social whirl looked like in the Renaissance and thereabouts when it wasn't Carnival. (i.e., what sort of parties they held. GAH the things you end up having to research!)
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Absolutely gorgeous, but also does a really good job at 'kinds of social events going on during the period' and has lots of stunning and varied costuming.
(Also contains sex scenes, Rufus Sewell, plague, and accusations of witchcraft just to be clear about the contents of this package.)
I can probably rummage more ideas for you too (benefits of an ill-spent youth majoring in Medieval and Renaissance studies, among other things.)
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I also ended up downloading the sample of the book it was based on to me Kindle. XD
If you wouldn't mind doing some rummaging, I need some random social events for Other Protagonist to be subjected to, including one to which she wears a costume (doesn't have to be masked, but it can be), and I don't really want to import Carnival into this world, given how Christian-centric the general idea is, and this is a polytheistic society with multiple religions and I want to try to make that a bit more baked-in instead of pasted on, if that makes sense. (There's always various civic holidays I could make up too, I'm sure. An equivalent of marrying Venice to the sea or some such.)
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Sure! Let me do a little poking around in my head and other more documented sources.
(Probably Sunday/tomorrow, but might be Monday.)
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The Obscure Goddess Online Directory is what it sounds like: brief (usually a screen of text, give or take) on a bunch of obscure goddesses, with a particular focus on Roman and Etruscan. Very useful for ideas of both "what kinds of stuff did people have festivals about" and "when might those be."
(Venice was a bit north east of where you get Etruscan stuff centred, but may still give ideas, naturally)
For Venice itself:
I found this article, which I suspect you can wrangle access to on different festivals in Renaissance Venice, focus on festival as rite of protest.
I think basically any historical event you want to create could have a festival attached to it (winning a war, some addition to the city-state, surviving a plague, defeat of our enemies Upon The Seas, etc. etc. But depending on how far you want to get into, say, Guild politics or the equivalent, or different factions in the city, there are lots of those kinds of events you can mine that might involve dressing up, etc.
I also think you could find a suitable astrological conjunction and have a ball to celebrate it, complete with suitable theme and costuming to go with it. (I am a fan of 'planetary magic is a great way to de-center Christianity in a historical mode)
A project to document and create multimedia versions of Renaissance festivals: looks like they don't have a ton there, but the English auto translate of the first project article was more or less readable,
This, which I vaguely remember reading in college, has a good overview of different kinds of masques and celebrations: you could fairly easily slot in other myths/stories/focus for most of them.
I also wonder about repurposing something like Siena's Palio (I've been, so feel free to bug me for details). City pomp and circumstance, neighbourhood competition, completely life-threatening horse race. (You'd need to adapt the last one, naturally, but I'm wondering about some sort of swimming race equivalent) These days it involves a historically costumed procession, blessing the horses in the contrada parish churches, a huge amount of food, and usually some fighting in the streets.
Also, I feel like I should wave at Ada Palmer's posts on Ex Urbe, if you haven't come across them. (I have mixed takes on her fiction, but her blogging about Italian history is fantastic. Here's the Venice tag, but she's also got a ton on Florence that's worth mining.)
I'll continue pondering, too.
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