Creeping doubt

We completed painting the estoile on the tent Saturday night; Sunday morning I went back to the research to make a final decision on the design for the valance. While researching, I came to a realization - the Northstar isn't a period tent. Sure, it looks period, and yes, it has a period shape, and period elements, but the differences between the Basel tent and the Northstar might be enough to keep this tent out of a living history camp. This was not my goal.

I realized in a flash that my goal was to re-build the Northstar, a tent which has been completely at home in "period" SCA camps. The structure is completely modern, and the estoile on the roof isn't justifiable through any of the resources I've seen in my recent research. I suppose I had some basis for painting an estoile on the Northstar, but what that was, fifteen years ago, I have no idea. Was it a tent I saw at an event? Always dangerous to assume that the chattel at an SCA event is justifiably period. Was it a painting? Was that painting a period illumination, or a Victorian-era one? I don't recall if I was that discriminating at that time. Nevertheless, just as it's finished, I begin to doubt the wisdom of painting that damned estiole on the roof.

The Basel tent, although a couple-hundred years past my focus, probabaly demosntrates technology in use in the mid-1400's. The "decoration" so prevalent in Gothic tents is strips of fabric sewn over seams, probably as much for strength as for decoration. Instead of grommets - or even hand-worked eyelets, the ropes are secured to the tent by means of an oval leather patch doubled over and stitched to the roofline's edge. A hole in the patch recieves steel hooks, to which the ropes are secured with an eyesplice.

Well, crap.

The long and short of it is that the Northstar will be perfectly servicable for SCA events, but I have to consider building another more authentic tent. Not just because I want to fit in with the living history folks, but because it seems right to me.