Product review: Crazy Crow bag

Last year, RAT member Ivor (Crispianus) alerted me to the book Leatherwork from Elephantine (Aswan, Egypt):  Analysis and Catalogue of the Ancient Egyptian & Persian Leather Finds.  Among other useful information, you can see on page 102 (104 of the PDF) an Achaemenid-period bag in the form of a cylinder with a circular bottom and drawstring top.  While it may or may not be Persian, it at least gives solid evidence for a kind of purse or pocket that was carried during our time and within the borders of the empire.

A reenactor needs a small bag that can be kept on one's person for holding phones, money and other possessions that are best not left unattended around camp.  This bag is just about appropriate for that purpose.  It should be easy enough to make a replica should you have the time to do so, but similar bags already exist for the reenactment market.

One that caught my eye earlier this year is marketed by Crazy Crow Trading Post:  the large ball bag.  (British readers may pause to finish laughing before reading on.)  Its basic structure and even its size are similar to the Elephantine find:  6-1/2 by 4 inches (165 by 102mm) versus the Egyptian bag's 140 by 95mm.  The Egyptian bag is sewn with linen.  Its leather wasn't tested for tanning technique, but it has the color of and somewhat looks like smoked wet-scrape braintan.  The Crazy Crow bag is most likely made of a chrome-tanned cowhide split, dyed to resemble smoked braintan.  I have no idea what the stitching is made of.

There are some minor construction differences:  The Egyptian bag has two side seams where the Crazy Crow bag has only one, with thin folded rands on one side seam and around the bottom seam which the Crazy Crow one lacks entirely.  The Egyptian one also has a pattern of punched holes near the top, which could of course be added to a commercial bag after purchase if you have a small awl.

In person, the Crazy Crow bag is made of medium-weight suede, rich golden (a color that can be achieved by smoking undyed leather), with a much shaggier surface than would be produced by wet scraping.  The long drawstring is made of the same leather, which is thankfully not very stretchy.  Note that the catalogue description implies that these bags are made of various leathers - I expect they use whatever they have on hand that works - so the exact weight, color and texture will probably vary somewhat from one batch to the next while still fitting the general description of moccasin-weight cow suede.

As for practical use, I selected and borrowed some items that you might want to keep close to you at an event:  a 5-3/4 by 2-7/8 inch (147 by 73mm) smart phone, wallet, coin purse holding a few emergency medicines, roll of 10 bills and key ring with various mechanical and electronic keys.

The answer:  just about.  The drawstring almost entirely hides the top of the phone.  You would probably also be able to cram a passport in there.

Conclusion:  This isn't a top-of-the-line item, but it will certainly do if you're pressed for time to construct one that's a little more authentic. 

Product review: Fluted brass beads from Crazy Crow

Fluted spherical beads, nowadays commonly called "melon" beads, were a common feature in Achaemenid jewelry and were even used on the thigh cords of akinakes scabbards.  They could be made of metal, stone, glass or ceramic, and often, but not always, featured a small rim at one or both openings.

I recently acquired a bag of fluted beads from Crazy Crow Trading Post.  They are advertised as hollow but heavy and 3/8 inch (about 9.5mm) in diameter; no indication as to whether that refers to the stringing length or the width.  I chose brass as a substitute for gold.

As you can see, they are not quite as advertised...

While the metal used may indeed be brass, it's "red" brass (that is, with a low zinc content and thus a more coppery orange hue) rather than the common yellow brass that it appears to be in the catalogue and online photos.  This isn't necessarily bad, but it does mean they're a less effective substitute for gold and look more like a medium- to low-alloy tin bronze, which was also used for some beads.  Reinforcing this effect is the fact that the beads are "raw" brass with no protective coating.  As you can see, some of them are rather badly tarnished.

In other respects, the beads do live up to the ad copy.  They measure a hair over 9mm in width and 9.5mm in stringing length.  They're surprisingly heavy, much more so than some of Crazy Crow's other hollow metal beads that I've bought, though lighter than solid beads would be.

The raw brass gives me pause.  While all unpainted metal would be "raw" in period, it would also be difficult to polish these without leaving any polishing agent in the grooves or getting it into the inside of the bead, where it could permanently etch the metal (I have seen Brasso do this when allowed to remain in crevices).  Therefore keeping them bright and shiny would be a challenge.

Otherwise, I think these would be excellent for period jewelry if you know what they are and how to use them.  As a substitute for bronze rather than gold, they would probably be appropriate for an impression of a well-off but not especially rich person.  Also, they might be useable on the thigh cord of a small akinakes, paired with a small chape - my examination of Persepolis reliefs indicates that the width ratio of the chape to the bead ranged from 3.57:1 to 5:1, so a 9mm-wide bead could be paired with a chape that is at most 45mm across.

German buckskin sale

Crazy Crow Trading Post (U.S.) currently has factory-second German buckskins on sale through the end of October.  According to the ad copy, "5-10% of some hides have uneven color or are thicker in the neck, and a few hides have 1-2 small holes."  It's still a pretty good deal:  A 14- to 16-square-foot hide is now 75.65USD, compared to $112 for the same size in first-quality.  This is the type of leather I recommend for clothing, shoe uppers, bags and gorytoi.

German tanning is a type of fat-curing, so these are among the most accurate materials for our purposes short of handmade braintan, as well as being the cheapest fat-cured hides of their size and weight commercially available today.  The difference between German tanning and other fat-curing methods is that the cod liver oil produces its own aldehydes, so the finished product doesn't need to be smoked to allow re-softening if it gets wet and dries stiff.  Some German buckskins are smoked to be a better substitute for braintan in Native American crafts, but the ones currently on sale are not.  This means they'll initially smell like just fish instead of like smoked fish, though I think the smell will fade with time.