This guy
It was an unexpectedly nice day today. I would like to digress a moment and tell you that weather reporting is utter shit here. They can’t help it — it’s a little island stuck out in the wild Atlantic — but they make predictions with such confidence and they are always, always, ALWAYS wrong. I miss being in New England, where you get to watch your weather come at you for five days.
Anyhoo! It was supposed to be cloudy, but nay it was sunny, so we decided, more or less randomly, to go to Bodiam Castle. Little did we know they were hosting a sort of Medieval Fair (Fayre, Faire, Faër, or Phære).
Most of the activities were for kids, and then there was this guy. He was hammering coins more or less in the manner of old. He put a disk of metal between two dies and bang, there you go. A man who did this for a living would be expected to make 2,000 in a day, he said.
He explained in some detail how he screwed with the mint marks on the back so no-one would think they were real old coins. As you might imagine, forging collectible coins is a thing, and collectors are mighty grumpy about it. But as all of this guy’s blanks were pewter, I doubt that would ever be an issue.
He also made jewelry and other bits. I bought a rather wicked-looking pewter torque bracelet, hammered and twisted (like moi). It didn’t fit, so he used brute force to pull it open and close it around my wrist. So…I guess I wear this permanently now.
Gotta show you this one large and in color, so you can see how cool his stuff is. My bracelet is just visible in the red case at the far left of the picture. Pictures courtesy Uncle B.
August 5, 2015 — 9:09 pm
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