Re: On gurds, pumpkins and calabashes

[Christian Folini]

At 10:27 03.08.99 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi Christian,
>
>In that we are still in our infancy with mid-late 15th c. living history on
>this side of the Atlantic - this is a persistent problem for us. What do
>you do for a canteen ? A gourd appears to be the natural solution, but it
>presents a couple of problems (besides being fragile) - pictorial evidence
>for them ? 
>...

All I can tell you for pictoral evidence is that I am sure I have seen
Joseph carry one to Egypt. I know this is not enough, but anyways,
it is a start. But as you mention the use for gunpowder it is
very likely to use them as canteen as well, as it really is very
simple not half as fragile as one might suppose.

First go and find one at the supermarket or any other market.
This prooved very difficult for me, but after an autumn of searching
I found one. It has the form of a raindrop with a narrow shaft,
was green to yellow and very, very hard. (as opposed to a pumpkin,
which is quite soft)

I cut away the top of the shaft, pushed a small spoon down the shaft
and it popped to the middle in no time. It seems, there is little
flesh, a lot of air and tons of kernels (is this the English word?) in 
there. It was tricky to get them out, but with the help a loop
of wire it did it in 3/4 h.

Then I dried it at 60 degree cel. in the stove for 2 days. It lost
more than 80% of its weight but its contents rose from 3 to
7dl. Quite cool if it is only 80g.

To stop it taking up water again, I just filled in hot beeswax,
shaked it for a few seconds and poured it out.

>The second problem would be the stopper for the gourd. I assume cork to be
>wrong - in every Flemish painting I have looked at, bottles seem to be
>stopped by rags

Nevertheless I went for cork. There are reasons for this: A wooden
stopper is hard to make tight. Furthermore it might demolish
the shaft. Cork on the other hand was imported in late 15th century
and in an excavation in Kempten (.de) they found leather pattens
with a cork core. (not published so far, but I have seen them
and they look breathtaking). So I guess cork was known, it was used.
And I hope one day I can proof that a 1.5cm wide piece could even
make its way on a gurd.

all the best

christian

'Two plus two equals five for sufficiently large values of two.'
mailto:christian.folini-at-unifr.ch      http://www.tikon.ch/folini
Institute  for  Medieval Studies  at the University of  Fribourg

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