Got back from the trip to St. Catherine's and Mt. Athos on the 15th.

Details are over on my other blog It was a great experience but a heckuva lesson in Egyptian bureaucracy. My recent obsession with the lorica has been noticed by my family. For Christmas I received mostly money for my reconstruction efforts. My Sister-in-law who came to Christmas gave me a twenty with a picture of my head photoshopped to my picture of the Ostia Trajan. I'll have to post it if I get the chance. Talked to my dad about the whole re-enacting thing and told him it was kinda like owning a boat. It costs a lot of money and you seldom get to drag it out, it's a huge amount of effort, but its the only that really makes you feel that way. My Dad understood implicitly. That led into a discussion about how that's exactly what freedom in America is all about, the freedom to be as arcane as crazy as you want to be.

Elsewhere, my sister-in-law, who visited for Christmas, brought her table top loom and I think that I can replicate it and attempt to make some late period tapestry woven clavi. As always, the pull between two periods is a huge problem. All of my work is in the byzantine period normally, but I have this great fascination with the musculata, which, unfortunately, has no counterpart in the 6-7th century. So I am torn between making a full 6-7th C. kit, or a single 1st-2nd C. musculata. I have a limited number of funds, and I always have to battle between working on the kit, or the musculata. I've decided to work on the musculata piecemeal, in the hopes that my efforts will spark enough interest to have someone chip in with funds and skills. The first project is to try and create a mold for a molded leather gorgoneion and then a mold for a molded leather tongue pterugion. There are two ways to attack this. One, make the originals in plastina and then make molds in plaster or fiberglass. The plaster will then have to be waterproofed somehow to hold up to the hot wet leather. The second option is to model it in the negative directly in terracotta. This is how I think it would have been done originally. Not sure how I'm going to make it work. Elsewhere I am trying to get my 5th-6th C. kit together.

In other important news, I was awarded the silver medal for a website from RAT! Woohoo! and thanks to everyone that recommended this site.

thanks!

Back from Egypt, going back in two weeks. I'm in the last stages of my dissertation writing (Hooyah!) Can't wait til it's over.

In the meantime, I redid all of the website. Most of the pages are updated and fixed with lots more images and bigger and better images too. If you don't mind beta-testing it, let me know which pages and links aren't working and I will try to get it working as best I can, but please be patient with me, as always, the diss comes first!

thanks!

Travis

I'm currently in Athens doing research for my doctoral dissertation which has nothing to do with the Lorica Musculata. Right now it's 9 O'Clock, the library is closed, and I've already walked through the Plaka one too many times, so it seemed a good opportunity to spruce up the ol' site. Added to the gallery are images of Hellenistic Cuirasses that show the ancestry of the musculata. Elsewhere the images are now available in two sizes and it should be much easier to navigate. As always, all the images in the galleries are mine, and the images that are not mine in the essays are clearly marked. Many of the images in the essay have been updated with my own images when possible. Feel free to use any of my images, crop 'em, cut 'em, photoshop your heads onto them, I DON"T CARE, just please, don't steal any of my bandwidth and please host them on your own sites. Give me credit, or not, but send any fellow travelers my way. Any questions or comments, please send me a line.

If this is your first time here, start with the "Art Historical Problems" essay first, then check out the essay on "Bronze or Leather".

Thanks.

Well folks, I've had it with the dissertation for a while, so it's time to return to my number 1 distraction, working on the lorica musculata

I have some new images at the bottom of my images page, and I am still working on my themes and motifs page.

Be sure to check out the images of the Primaporta Augustus, quite possibly the finest loricata on display. My images there lead me to believe that it too, at least in part, was leather. I will update other information as needed, but for now, these tid-bits will have to do.