I've occasionally seen posts by folks in Eastern Europe showing large groups of people in kit, who often look like they are having quite a good time beating on each other. Unfortunately I'm largely unaware of where these kits, some of which look awsome in photos, are coming from.

We always seem to talk about the same pool of vendors in the US, and pretty much the same pool in Western and Central Europe year after year after year. Which is not a bad thing, but I'm curious to see what the wide world holds.

So how about it, does anybody know of up and comers with an Internet presence in Eastern Europe?

Are you talking swords, or clothing and accesories? In terms of swords, there's of course Partick Barta for the top end swords and Vladimir Cervenka for good and affordable swords (http://www.sword.cz/eindex.htm). For clothing and accesories, there are for example these guys: http://www.celtic-smith.cz/indexE.php?menu=sperkyE and http://drakkaria.com/drakkaria/indexenglish.php?id_druhu=4
Some of their stuff is excellent, some is fantasy and some in between. Otherwise there are a lot of makers, but who don't have websites. They generally frequent Viking markets in living history centers throughout Europe.

Check here also:

www.lorifactor.pl armour and other stuff

www.tomala.lublin.pl armour(quite good-I half of my stuff made by Tomala)

www.lorenz.legnica.pl also armour(the second half of my armour made by Rysiek Sacherski

www.miecz-sword.com good quality weapons-no mass production.Only custom work.

By the way..Poland is not in Eastern Europe-it is in Central Europe :cool: :D

Here is Patrick Barta's site and his work is simply stunning. He does not make replicas, he makes the swords in exact same fashion as they were originally made so you could legitimately say that they are modern versions of the ancient swords:
http://www.templ.net/english/

Russ,

It is not one of the romance languages. I think it is of the slavic family, west if I remember right.

Just like english we acquired words and term from latin but originally the language was not a romance language. I think Polish likely is less mutated as english but have not studied it, just an assumption by how much english has changed now from old english which I did study.


Nice links. I have been tempted to buy some gear from some eastern european armourers as some looks great and is more affordable. A number of people here in britain in reenactment buy armour from them and some pieces are great! Thanks for the links.

Cheers

RPM

:) There is a Polish guy who nickname are Thorkil, he make's helms and stuff that looks good

His stuff can be ordered via Bear Claw Traders (UK)

His own "show my skills page" are here and they look fine his work.

Bruno is right.Polish is not romance lunguage.It is slavic.
There are many words that came from latin because it was widely used in administration till 18th century.

Thorkil-I know him.(we drinked together some ale :D ) He makes good stuff in reasonable price.

I understand that the Czechs are very touchy about being Central Europeans and not Eastern Europeans. I wonder if it has something to do with the old Soviet empire?

Political and linguistic discussions are better suited for other sites. Thanks!

:)

Then there's LUTEL, also in the Czech Republic.

Intersesting.

I'm having trouble with the celtic-smith and drakkaria links.

Are they working for everyone else?

By the way...thank you to those that have posted links!

Please keep them coming!

Any from the Baltic States?

Urkraine?

Belrus?

Romania?

Hungry?

Russia?

On the top of my head:

Cloth armour: www.matuls.pl
Swords: www.sword-gur.com
Swords: www.swords.cz
Swords: www.swordcutler.com

Greetings,

I would very much like to know of any retailers in Romania, thankyou very much, since I was born and adopted from their! Cheers!

Best regards,

Barrett Michael Hiebert

For armourers, I can highly recommend Stanislav Prosek of Czech Republic. A close friend of mine has two of his armours, and they are absolutely stunning. http://www.mac-armour.cz/index_en.htm

For swords, Patrick Barta and Cervenka mentioned above make first-rate products. I own one of each, and am very, very happy with them.

Cheers!

Gordon

Gordon, if you don't mind telling us, which Patrick Barta sword do you have? I have one of his Roman Riding Swords that I bought from him back in 2001-2002 and I have an Abingdon sword (#118) on order since last Fall. So, I am naturally curious to see and to hear about others with his swords.

Great Post guys!! ive just discovered many new makers that look awesome!!

Cheers

TS