Ivan Matfeevich Rezansky (John Beebe)I spent the last several days writing up A&S documentation for two items I plan to exhibit at an Athena’s Thimble panel later this month at Birka, an event in southern NH.
The first was the write-up for the pouch and goldwork I created last month. (See my blog entries in December for the Or Nue Heraldic Bee project.)
The East has a very nicely codified rubric for judging A&S projects that gives entrants a clear expectation of how their project will be judged, and also helps ensure consistent judging from one project or event to another. I found a useful write-up with suggestions about how to write documentation for the East Kingdom A&S rubric.
It had been some time since I last wrote up a paper like this, so it took me a while to get into the swing of things. But, based on the rubric and the article I mentioned above, I eventually came up with a documentation format that includes:
- An introduction, describing the item
- A picture of the item, in case the item and documentation get separated
- The historical context, describing the historic precedent for the item or methods used in the art project
- A list of materials used in my project, including description of they are similar to or replace period materials, and why any substitutions were made
- The methods of construction, basically a description of how I created the item
- The bibliography of works I consulted or quoted in this project write-up
It will be interesting to see how this documentation is received by the judges at Birka. I’m sure I’ll get feedback that will allow me to improve both my future projects and future papers.