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scotianostra · 1 year

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The Fettercairn Jewel

From my visit to The National Museum yesterday,, this fascinating wee pendant is shrouded in mystery, this is what the museum says about it.

The Fettercairn Jewel is an exceptionally rare Renaissance gold pendant locket. Set with a large almandine garnet, it features an elaborate scene in enamel on the back. The jewel is oval, with a fastening at the top to hold a gold ring, and, at the bottom, a smaller ring, that was originally a catch to hold the case shut. The case opens and would probably have contained a miniature portrait on vellum or ivory or some other personal memento. It would have been worn as a pendant on a chain or pinned to clothing, and it probably had a pearl or precious stone hanging beneath it.

The front of the Fettercairn Jewel, set with a large garnet, but I prefer the back, whichl is decorated with detailed enameled imagery.

The Fettercairn Jewel is one of a very small number of Renaissance jewels to have survived in the British Isles. Jewellery from such an early date has a very low survival rate, due to the historic recycling of precious stones and materials. This makes the survival of the Fettercairn Jewel remarkable.

Its Scottish provenance, and its potential relationship with other known jewels made for Scottish patrons, raise the possibility that the Fettercairn Jewel was made in Scotland or for a 16th-century Scottish patron. Our initial historical research is concentrating on these lines of enquiry.

The Fettercairn Jewel holds the potential to expand significantly our knowledge of the Scottish Renaissance, about the way in which a visually literate society communicated complex messages through objects, and to learn more about the quality and ambitions of 16th-century craftsmanship.

The garnet, on the front was reputed to have medicinal and healing properties.

On the reverse of the pendant the scene centres on a figure of Mercury, with his caduceus, or staff, resting on his outstretched right arm. He is wearing a winged helmet and classical armour, and holding something in his raised left hand.

To the right of Mercury sits a white dog looking upwards, possibly a symbol of fidelity. A vase of flowers stands to his left and more flowers appear elsewhere on the ground. The carefully delineated flowers, including cornflowers, wild roses, violets and marguerites, are all identifiable and many had specific symbolic meanings.

On the horizon are two groups of buildings and a large tree. On the buildings to the left sits a green bird resembling a parrot with its distinctive hooked beak, and on the right a smaller white bird. Above Mercury’s head flies another bird and two butterflies.

The dog, birds and flowers are not part of the usual iconography associated with Mercury, which suggests that the imagery has been designed with a particular meaning and patron in mind. Jewels of this sort often contained complex messages; could the animals and flowers have a heraldic association with the original owner of the Jewel? Is some more complex story hidden in its imagery? So far the Fettercairn Jewel retains its mystery.

Mercury was one of the most popular gods in Renaissance imagery. He was specifically associated at this time as the god of messengers and became closely associated with the officers of arms (the royal heralds) in 16th-century Scotland. An image from the Seton Armorial of c.1591 casts Lyon King of Arms, the king’s personal representative, as Mercury. This could suggest that the Fettercairn Jewel was crafted around the same time, and may indicate a connection to the Scottish court.

We are also trying to establish why the Fettercairn Jewel was made. One possibility links it to the extensive practice of royal court and noble household gift-giving: during the Scottish Renaissance, the royal family gave generous gifts of jewellery to courtiers and ambassadors, a practice common in other European courts of the period.

Alternatively, the Jewel may have been conceived as a token for a beloved family member or spouse. Jewels containing miniature portraits were often exchanged as keepsakes between loved ones, and would often be worn close to the heart.

The pendant came into the National Museums Scotland collection through an auction of over 400 works of art and artefacts from the private collection of the Forbes family, whose home was Fettercairn House in Aberdeenshire. The Forbes of Pitsligo descend from Sir William Forbes, brother of Alexander Forbes, first Lord Forbes. Both branches were prominent elite families in the sixteenth century. The first Lord Forbes married the granddaughter of King Robert II of Scotland and daughter of Douglas, Earl of Angus.

National Museums Scotland is investigating potential links between the Jewel and the Scottish royal court, and the possibility of its links to the Darnley Jewel, now in the Royal Collection. The Darnley Jewel was probably commissioned during the 1570s by Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, as a memorial for her husband Matthew Stewart, earl of Lennox and Regent of Scotland, and was later owned by both Horace Walpole and Queen Victoria. The Fettercairn Jewel shows similarities of design and technique with the Darnley Jewel, and their shared Scottish provenance merits further investigation.

The Fettercairn Jewel is currently on display in the Kingdom of the Scots gallery, near to the Penicuik Jewels, which are associated with Mary, Queen of Scots.

#scotland #scottish #jewellery #pendant #mystery #my pics #history #National Museum of Scotland #Chamber Street #edinburgh

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bloomeng · 21 days

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This is my official Batfam Magical Girl AU Masterpost (everyone clapped)

(image updated: 9/6/24)

I’m going to do a brief overview and then go into more details for those interested.

Bruce being from old money (and apparently being connected to Camelot) inherited a mysterious mineral with unknown properties. In its raw form it’s very unassuming, but when cut like gemstones and added to accessories can be harnessed into a tool. By altering the mineral into a wearable item it allows the magic within to be channeled. The magic of the mineral connects with its wielder to create an outfit and (typically) a weapon. These outfits do not grant the wearer special abilities outside of the transformation and the weapon, but when worn the wearer is granted (what is basically) hammerspace and a nearly impenetrable outfit. The uniform granted is not something they can alter the appearance of but will change gradually overtime to reflect how the wielder has grown.

This mineral will henceforth be known as Arcanium. It operates on Kryptonite logic in that it’s— allegedly— super rare but also shows up whenever the plot needs it. (I’m aware it shares a name with a card game, but I wanted my Kryptonite spoof)

Martha Wayne unknowingly started the cycle by turning— what she thought was a rare gemstone— into a brooch. She died shortly after having it made and Alfred held onto it in her memory. Like canon Bruce goes on his journey of self-exploration to train. When he comes back he enacts his plan the way he does in Batman: Year One, where he goes out in basically just make-up, and it goes poorly. He wanders his manor trying to formulate a strategy and is drawn to his parent’s room and finds his mother’s brooch. Cue the first magical girl transformation. From there he alters the brooch to fit his bat aesthetic and the Batman Brooch is born.

Dick comes into his life the same way as canon. Bruce takes him in as a ward, Dick tries to track down Zucco on his own, etc. Bruce decides to use the other raw sample of Arcanium to turn into a second magical artifact. He lets Dick pick the theme, and thus the Robin Pendant is born. The rest is history.

(Before I continue I want to warn that I’m making shit up as I go, so some of this is subject to change as I move forward.)

The Robin Pendant is passed down from Robin to Robin. Each Robin got their own unique look while using it. Following canon, Dick and Bruce have their falling out and Dick gives up the Robin Pendant in a moment of anger. In this au I think Dick, not having the pendant to fall back on, tries to lead a vigilante-free life, but of course falls back into it. During a fight he somehow manages to stumble across Arcanium in its raw form. Recognizing it he takes it with him. Like Nightwing: Year One he has his conversation with Superman and decides to become his own hero. Using his knowledge of Arcanium from his years with Bruce he creates his own magical artifact and becomes Nightwing.

This a good place to interject that I’m not changing any of their hero names. I was asked about it a couple times due to the caption, “Red Bow & Sailor Nightwing” on my Dick and Jason designs. It was was just a silly caption, because I didn’t want to simply state “Jason and Dick Magical Girl au.” But being serious, I don’t really see a reason to change their names, with the exception of maybe Red Hood, seeing as I didn’t give him a red hood. My au operates on Sailor Moon logic where despite the lack of masks no one recognizes them, and it’s just vaguely explained by magic. I think it would be funny if Bruce chose to wear a mask anyway because he’s that paranoid, but we’ll see when I actually design him. Anyway point is Red Hood is lacking a red hood, maybe he secretly has a red hood on his jacket or maybe he really does go by Red Bow, I’ll leave that up to interpretation.

Arcanium does not just accidentally appear. At the end of the day it’s still a mineral and it’s not sentient, but the magic has an element of “the wand chooses the user.” It’s not so much a “chosen one thing,” so much as the magic can sense intention. It doesn’t care about the morality of the user, the magic is more seeking a symbiotic connection. (Meaning yes rougues can in fact wield artifacts.) Simply put, it wants a host that will be able to wield it. In its raw form the magic is dormant but it seeks to be… not dormant, so when it finds those who actually have the potential to create an artifact and use it, it reveals itself. It was not a coincidence that Martha had the inclination to have the brooch made, it was not a coincidence that Bruce was drawn to his parent’s room, and it was not a coincidence that Dick found Arcanium in the alleyway.

Each of the Bats have their origin moments with their own magical artifacts. I don’t have the whole timeline down, but I will say there was a lot of drama between Tim and Damian, because Tim was forced to hand over the pendant. Even though he technically relinquished it, emotionally the connection wasn’t severed. No one was sure if the transition would work, but Arcanium responds to whoever needs it more and therefore who will use it more. Like canon, Tim is having an awful time during that era. On top of all of it he’s had his title striped from him and he can’t even argue because if it wasn’t the right move the pendant wouldn’t have responded to Damian. Dick tries to comfort him by telling him that Arcanium will appear for him when he’s ready, but Tim is furious and impatient. So like a well-adjusted person he decides he’s going to engineer his own magical artifact artificially. It goes as well as his attempt to clone Kon does. It’s not until Tim starts to get back on his feet that Arcanium presents itself to him. My thinking is that while Arcanium finds its users when they need it most, Tim’s case is abnormal. His acquisition of the pendant was unconventional from the start since he showed up and demanded to take on the Robin role. Arcanium is drawn to individuals who will actually use its properties. Tim tends to rely more on his own detective work, which renders the pendant’s properties pretty moot. Especially when he’s going off the deep end, he becomes a hermit meaning a) he wouldn’t really need/use Arcanium’s properties and b) he inadvertently limited his own chances of stumbling across it “in the wild.”

In a similar vein I believe Barbara’s journey is abnormal in that she forged her own Batgirl artifact that operates a little differently than the others, seeing as she made it without Bruce’s influence. After the accident she shelved it, maybe she passed it down to Cass, but eventually she gets it back. She created the Oracle identity without it, and for a long time the Batgirl artifact is something she avoids using, until she gets the idea to combine it with her computer to create a magic computer… sort of. She gets a uniform that is basically connected to the computer.

Going back to Damian needing the Robin Pendant more, its reaction to his acquisition was unique. As I mentioned previously the suits typically provide a weapon, well Damian is the exception. Unlike all the other Robin’s Damian didn’t need more weapons in his life, what he needed was guidance. For the first time the pendant granted Damian a magical animal guardian, which is how he gets Alfred the Cat in this au. Despite being an animal lover Damian is extremely pissed at this development. He wanted dual swords or a scarier animal at least. He can’t formally communicate with Alfred the Cat but he understands him intrinsically, though Alfred the Cat seems to be able to understand human speech somewhat. Only Damian seems to be able to truly understand Alfred the Cat. (Cue the antics of his siblings trying to figure out what the cat means or trying to control him in any capacity.) Besides being an animal, Alfred the Cat is also unique in that he doesn’t dissipate when Damian isn’t in uniform the way that the weapons do. Like the weapons he can be summoned by the pendant, but he seems to have existed prior to the pendant’s creation. (I’m toying with the idea that while in uniform, the cat would also get some sort of uniform.)

Before I get into Duke and his abnormalities, I want to address the Speedsters in this au. It’ll make sense after.

So the Flash. I want to say I don’t know if I will get around to creating full designs for them. I do have plans for Bart and maybe Wally, but I have determined how I want their mechanics to operate in the context of the au. Not all the heroes in this au are “magical girls,” in fact I’ve made the executive decision that you have to be human to wield an artifact. Arcanium may have magic in it, but it doesn’t grant its user magical abilities beyond the uniform itself. The speedsters retain their canon origins, hit by lighting blah blah blah, only with one key difference: they had Arcanium on them when they were hit. Instead of engineering an artifact Arcanium fused with their bodies granting them powers. I want to keep the magic transformation aspect (because it’s not a magical girl au without it), so instead of using a physical artifact as a channel for their powers, it’s instead the act of transforming that serves as a gateway to their speed abilities.

To me it was always important to maintain Batman’s identity of not having super powers and having to rely on engineering, which is why the Batfam have to physically build their artifacts. In a similar way I wanted to retain the integrity of the Flash’s identity of being meta but also still human. Which brings me back to Duke. I know in canon that Duke inherited his abilities, but for the sake of the au I’ve decide that he either had an accident when he was young in which traces of Arcanium fused with him or his parents had it in them and he inherited it from them, but regardless it’s less potent, but operates similar to the Speedsters. For years he couldn’t fully transform or use his powers and it wasn’t until— with Bruce’s guidance— he was able to create an artifact that allowed him to channel his abilities and transform. Even though he is a meta I wanted him to still have some of those Batfam qualities in there.

But what about the Superfam? They’re not human so how do their transformations work? The answer is simple: They’re not “magical girls.” At least not real ones, they’re faking. They’re not human (Kon and Jon are technically half human but they still get their abilities from their Kryptonian DNA), and thus cannot forge a connection with Arcanium. Truthfully I’m about to get silly— even sillier than this au already is— but I have decided that Clark is a fake artifact wielder. I like the idea that Batman has been operating longer than Superman has, so when Clark decided to become a hero in his own right his only example of how to style himself was from the bat themed vigilante, who might as well be a cryptid, operating out of Gotham. Only blurry pictures of him existed, so Clark designed his outfit based on his Kryptonian origins and Batman’s aesthetics. He had no idea about the existence of Arcanium or how it worked. This is also why Kon’s design looks so much like his canon outfit with a few magical girl elements (and definitely not because I think the lines in his canon suit already lend themselves well to a magical girl aesthetic and didn’t want to change much). Later when he gets to know Batman more he learns about the transformations, to which he panics and invents his own transformation using Kryptonian tech (ex: MAWS’s transformation). For years Bruce goes crazy trying to figure out Arcanium’s effects on aliens and if it grants them abilities on top of the ones they’re born with, and if Clark has plans to use it as a weapon, and how he managed to forge the connection in the first place— Clark comes clean as a fake once they reveal their identities to each other.

Side tangent but I find it hilarious that Green Lanterns are— by technicality— already “magical girls,” considering they’re granted magical accessories that give them powers and transform their clothing. Hal is very clear with the JL that he is nothing like Batman and constantly feels the need to assert that he is not a magical artifact wielder. The non-human members of the team still lump them together anyway.

Things I haven’t figured out:

- what each of the batfam’s weapons are

- what each of the magical artifacts are

- what to refer to magical artifact wielders as

Stepping outside the canon(?) lore of the au for a minute, obviously I’m redesigning DC characters using inspiration from a genre, because that’s what “magical girl” is. It’s a genre. This is why I refer to it in quotes and don’t call them magical boys, because I am always referring to it as a genre, which isn’t a gendered thing. However, in universe they wouldn’t call themselves magical anything, the same way the characters of Sailor Moon don’t refer to themselves as magical girls, but rather Sailor Scouts. As of right now I’m sort of just referring to them as artifact wielders, but I feel like Bruce would come up with a better name. On a similar note, throughout this whole thing I’ve been referring to Arcanium in it’s wearable state as an artifact. I don’t know if that’s the best term, but I can’t think of anything better for the generalized form of Arcanium outside of it’s raw state. For now I guess it will be “artifacts” and “artifacts wielders.”

- how the wonderfam fits into this

I really can’t think of a reason why Wonder Woman would be a “magical girl” in this au. She was born with abilities, she’s not human, and I can’t see her altering her uniform to match the aesthetic. A transformation would just be a waste of time for her. I could see maybe Cassie or Donna wanting to match with their respective teams, and perhaps maybe that’s why they would alter their uniforms? All I know is I want see Tim, Kon, Bart and Cassie as a matching “magical girl set.”

Fin… for now.

[I’m just going to put this here preemptively, because I’ve gotten messages about turning my au into fics or tiktok skits. You’re free to use this lore HOWEVER you MUST credit me not just for the designs but for the creation of the lore. I’ve put a lot of time and thought into this and I love that people love it, so I just ask for recognition. If you want to make something that’s inspired by my designs or loosely based on my au, just a simple credit for the inspiration is fine. You’re free to change things this is just how my own au operates. Regardless I would prefer to be tagged so that people can find me but also because I’d love to see other’s work.]

Current designs:

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