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Kris
Member
posted 05-20-99 03:12 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Kris   Click Here to Email Kris     Edit/Delete Message
I am planning on decorating my bedroom like a
Medieval castle bedroom. Any suggestions on
what materials I should use to make this happen?

Your ideas are much appreciated, Kris

duncan
Senior Member
posted 05-20-99 07:06 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for duncan   Click Here to Email duncan     Edit/Delete Message
What style of castle bedroom did you have in mind? what era? What country? Large castle or one on the Marches of a hostile neighbor? Castle Leven has many factual examples. What is your idea of a castle? Are you looking for the stone look or fabric hangings or frescos?
There is many on this site that will be happy to help you when we know a little more of what your looking for.

Philip Davis
unregistered
posted 05-21-99 03:36 AM           Edit/Delete Message
Duncan is, of course, right in that styles varied with time and place. However as a general rule in the medieval period people with money (ie castle owners) used textiles for decoration. Furniture was bulky and rugged and quite often plain but it was not seen as it would have been covered by richly decorated cloth. Cloths were woolen, linen or, occasional, hemp or a mix of these (a hemp/linen mix was particularly strong material) and dyed with natural dyes such as madder which can give fairly rich colours. Cotton and, in particularly, silk take much more dye and gave more intense colour but both were very expensive.
Tapestries were expensive but were used to decorate walls, a cheaper alternative was a painted wall cloth. This was a strong material (ie hemp/linen mix) painted with either a biblical scene or a countryside vista with people hunting (hunting was the main sport and preoccupation of many castle owners - a modern equivalent would be the hanging on the walls of a soccer team), in the later medieval period scenes from the classical myths became popular.
Carpets were also known but were expensive and tended to be used as table cloths. They were not put on the floor.
Where wood was exposed it would have either have been scrubbed to be light in colour (a pleasant golden colour in the case of oak, the most common building wood) or painted with light colours. It would not be dark. (Lighting was by candle and windows were small so room interiors were as light as possible to maximise the small amount of light available.)
Floors were of stone, scrubbed oak or beaten earth, the beaten earth floors could be covered in a layer of ox blood - which dried to a deep red colour - or sour cream and chalk - which was white and didn't smell when dry. and were then covered with dried rushes (again a light yellow golden colour), in later periods these rushes were woven into rush mats.
If you want to go the full hog remove your door jambs (a late medieval invention) and suffer the drafts; move your clothes next to the loo so that the smell will keep the moths away (the medieval term was garderobe - guard your robes); install an open fire as your only form of heating (preferable with a not too efficient a chimney so that your room is smoked filled); reduce the size of your windows and take the glass out (and install shutters or thin sheets of flattened cow horn to give a translucent mucky brown window).
A medieval bedroom has been recreated at Leeds Castle, Kent and you can see a picture at http://www.leeds-castle.co.uk/castle.htm to get an idea of a queens bedroom.

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