Medieval Badges
Community Engagement
This Insight Grant is built around the idea that studying medieval badges provides rich and nuanced historical depth to contemporary debates around affiliative visual signs and symbols, supporting reflection on the historical use of visual markers of identity to unite, divide, and define communities.
To share knowledge about medieval badges and what they can teach us in the contemporary world, we both seek out and create new opportunities for community engagement. Due to pandemic restrictions, many of these engagements have taken place online. When possible, our aim is to design temporary art installations, community events, and public talks to engage our community in reflection and historical understanding.
The Medieval Podcast Interview
Ann Marie Rasmussen had the pleasure of speaking with Danièle Cybulskie, the creator and host of The Medieval Podcast in an episode titled, “Medieval Badges with Ann Marie Rasmussen.”
Read the original blog post!
Bawdy Medieval Badges: Ann Marie Rasmussen + Melanie Jackson
This special talk was a part of a Collaborative Works-in-Progress series, hosted by the Waterloo Centre for German Studies. Ann Marie Rasmussen was joined by artist Melanie Jackson to discuss her ongoing work with bawdy medieval badges.
Read the original blog post!
Experimental Making: Reimagining Medieval Badges in Modern Materials
Ellen Siebel-Achenbach, polystyrene and oil-based ink, 2021.
Conceptually, “Reimagining Medieval Badges in Modern Materials” interrogates the difference between replicating and reimagining a medieval object, in this case medieval badges. The focus is not on content and meaning (symbols; iconography) or on replicating badges in pewter, but rather on experimenting with different materials and their affordances and constraints. In the Middle Ages, badge-like objects sharing similar iconographies were crafted in a wide variety of materials from precious to perishable. The undergraduate researcher-maker of this project will similarly engage with a wide variety of materials in order to learn about them and so reflect on the ways in which they might be used to reimagine badges, to explore badge-like qualities, and to engage modern audiences in discovery about the Middle Ages.
The researcher-maker of the project, Ellen Siebel-Achenbach, will craft and make medieval badge-like objects, experimenting with different materials, some closely related to their medieval counterparts, others modern. Possible materials include: engraving; different kinds of paper; wax; and dough. The researcher-maker will also experiment with different ways of ornamenting the badges she makes; we know that medieval badges were often painted, or had coloured backings; and so on.
To read an interview about Ellen’s early experimental making, visit: “Reimagining Medieval Badges in Modern Materials.” To see Ellen’s Christmas print-making series (2021), visit: “Merry (Medieval) Christmas.” Ellen’s Christmas woodwork (2022), visit: “Merry Christmas!”
Ellen’s medieval Christmas print-making series: the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the Epiphany scenes.
Ellen’s medieval woodworking nativity scene inspired by a Cologne badge.