For the last couple of weeks I have been working non-stop on a number of projects for our new Knights Hospitaller group. We had quite a tight deadline. Last Sunday was our premiere with a medieval parade and historic market in Boxtel, The Netherlands. Everything *had* to be finished by then. Maybe not up to full Living History standards but we had to look acceptable and convincing, though we cut a few corners in order to finish everything on time. I'm sure you can spot the errors :p

We started out just a few months ago with nothing. Some already had a gambeson or a sword, but that's about it. So, time to make up to myArmoury and show off what we have been up to! I already had topic going about the banner (pole), our shields and my surcoat so I'm not going to repeat those here.

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This shows our day shade and our priests preparing before the event. We could not afford to buy a pavilion tent so we decided to start out with a day shade. We made it ourselves to further cut the costs. The sheet is made of off-the-shelf fire-resistant cotton tent sheet to meet future safety regulations. We contemplated using linen but it is too expensive to make it both weather and fire resistant. In total it's 5x4 meters. With the back part hanging down this gives us a space of 4x4 meters. The wooden poles have steel pins in the top that slit through leather reinforced holes in the sheet. All the rope is real hemp with a eye woven into the rope on one end and an adjustable rolling hitch on the other end.

The habits that the monks are wearing were made by ourselves out of wool. The cloaks are from GDFB (also wool).

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This is our military unit. Not if full gear yet because we were doing some last minute rehearsals. I'm the guy with the padded coif on the right. All the surcoats are hand made and most of the shields came off my shield press. Most of our spears are a custom job from one of the blacksmiths working in the local historic open air museum. Almost all the gambesons are from Matuls.

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Two of our members during free sparring. They are using some old beat-up shields instead of the new Hospitaller shields we made (later on we used out new shields anyway). With a few exceptions, much of the swords and helmets came from Kovex Ars.

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This is us during the parade. A lot more people are wearing hauberks and closed helmets now.

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Another shot of the parade, showing off some of our non-military members. The priest is bearing an iron cross on a pole. The girl on the left is my girlfriend. All her clothing was made by me. I wasn't able to finish her outer dress in time so technically she's walking around in her underwear (underdress) :lol: The underdress is unbleached linen. My girlfriend is highly allergic to wool (except Alpaca wool which runs at $100 a meter or so) so I made her a half-circle mantle out of fleece, with attached hood. It's fully lined with black linen to add weight because the fleece alone is too light for a mantle. One gust of wind makes you look like Superman flying around. With the full lining added the mantle drapes much nicer.

Everyone likes action shots, so here are a few more:

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Oh, and last but not least: I also built a website for our group. Check out http://www.hospitaalridders.nl for more pictures! The logo still needs work (it was a rush job) and many features still need to be added (like an agenda), but it will do for now!

Al in all it was a huge amount of work in a short time, but it was well worth it. We had a great time and the audience loved us.

Man oh man, you guys in Europe do things right.

Thanks for sharing. I love seeing this stuff.

This is outstanding Sander! I wish I was there...

Thanks for sharing this.

Yours,

Christian

I concur with Nathan! So many groups half-arse it, but as one can see by your group, one can do it on the cheap and still keep it acurate and awesome! :lol:
If I ever manage to travel around Europe, I'll be sure to drop by one of your demos!

awesome. you know if you guys ever do anything in the US




look me up for help please :) heehehe

This is truly outstanding Sander.

I can’t believe that your entire group was able kit-up, prepare a camp, train, and create a nice looking web site in just a few short months.

You and your friends have the right to stand proud. Well done.

Congratulations, Sander.

All the hard work pays off now. I remember many of your DIY-threads, which were also a source of information for other forumites. Your group looks very well equiped, and with matuls' gambesons, you are playing in the top league of reenactors, I guess. Have fun!

Thomas

wow man! That's really good, given the amount of time you put into it!

Really like how it all came together :)

Thanks for all the compliments! But we still have a long way to go though.

The day shade is only half finished. The wooden poles need to be stained, butt caps need to be added and we need to make decorative tops for them. The leather reinforced eyelets still need to be properly finished. We also need to make some tent pegs (we were using modern ones here). We also need a lot more equipment for it. At the moment we only have a few wooden bowls, jugs and drinking cups. We have built a table but it needs proper legs and benches or chairs.

Many of our members also need proper undercloathing and shoes. Some of us (like me) were wearing 14th-15th century high boots instead of proper turnshoes or ankle boots. A few others were wearing iron age shoes or roman caligea. None of us are wearing proper hosen and braies yet (we cheated with sweatpants or viking pants). Those still have to be made as well. And of course, many of us still need hauberks, helmets and better swords. Many of us have 14th-15th century blunt longswords (for WMA) but eventually we need to replace them with proper 13th century single handed swords.

Our goal is to have a complete field hospital. We don't want to focus just on the military aspect of the Knights Hospitaller. We want to show the complete picture that includes medical and clerical life as well. After our positive experiences with making the day shade we have already decided to build a pavilion tent ourselves sometime next year. Something with detachable walls so we can partially open it to the public which we can set up as a field hospital. A couple of our members are studying 13th century medical practices and gathering equipment for it.

We have come a long way in a short time, but there is much more to do still!

Very nice work, Sander! I've been watching your progress on your other threads, and the finished product is outstanding!

That looks really good Sander! Impressive work in such a short time!

Wow, Sander, this is amazing stuff. I for one wish I had an unlimited flight voucher to Europe so I could attend and participate in these things. :cool:

Very nice work, Sander! I bet you were ready for a few weeks of rest after pushing through to get this done!

Yes, we all are. It's been hard work for everyone and at times it lead to a lot of stress, but we managed to get it done in the end. But, no rest for the wicked! I have more projects coming up. But I am going to tackle them more slowly so I'll have ample of time to make threads for them in the forums :)

Wow, I wish all new groups looked half that good! Keep up the good work.

Don't stain the tent poles! PAINT them. Stain was invented to make cheap pine furniture look like decent wood. Back then, they just wanted to protect the wood and add some color.

Good luck and have fun!

Matthew

PS: I used to do a *Templar*--nyah nyah!

Sander,

Since you have done all this fantastic research on the Hospitallers hopefully you can answer some of the questions I have.

When I see modern color rendering of Hospitallers two images keep popping up. One where the they are wearing red surcoats and red shields and one where they are wearing black surcoats and black shields.

My question is when did the tranisition take place? Did they make the change all at once? What kind of helms did they wear during the transition? Were the kite shields out of use?

Sorry to ask some many questions, but I figured you would be a good source to fill me in on that period.

Allen