Clothing & Textiles
Wool and linen garments cut from finds and depictions, hand-finished, dyed with period-appropriate methods.
Historical reenactment
Understanding history through the objects people made
Reenactment is not costume play. It is the study of material culture through research and practical recreation — and it is unforgiving of guesswork.
An object made properly teaches things a photograph cannot: how long a seam takes, how mail sits on the shoulders after four hours, why a particular buckle shape survives in the ground in such numbers. This is experimental archaeology in the ordinary sense — knowledge produced by doing.
We work from archaeological reports, museum collections, manuscript illumination, inventories and comparable finds across Rus', Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Bohemia and the Baltic. Where the evidence is thin, the reenactment is labelled as an interpretation rather than presented as fact.
Fields of work
What we rebuild
Armour
Mail, lamellar, brigandine and plate elements, built to the weights and proportions of surviving pieces.
Weapons & Shields
Blades, hafted weapons and painted shields reconstructed from archaeological and iconographic evidence.
Metal & Leather
Forging, casting, buckles and fittings; shoes, belts, scabbards and cases made by hand.
Camp & Everyday Life
Tents, cookware, furniture, lighting and the ordinary objects that make a camp historically legible.
Method & Documentation
Every reenactment is documented: the evidence used, the choices made, and the gaps we could not close.
How we research
The dress and everyday objects of 14th–15th-century Ruthenia are little studied. For much of the past two centuries, under the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the subject was largely neglected, and most research on it is recent. Much of what we wear is the result of our own research, and that work is still going on.
We rebuild each item from three kinds of evidence: archaeological finds, period images, and the study of medieval textiles, including the dress of old Rus and of the neighbouring Golden Horde. Where a source comes from a neighbouring land rather than from Ruthenia itself, we say so.
The club's historical commission gathers and checks this evidence, so that the research does not rest on one person. It is now preparing:
- documented "passports" for eight display kits, recording the source behind every garment and object;
- a handbook for new members;
- articles on the club's clothing for academic journals.
We will publish each kit passport here as it is completed. Read our research →
Living history
The camp is the laboratory
At festivals and heritage sites we build a working medieval camp: cooking over fire, textile and woodworking benches, weapons maintenance, music and dance in the evening. Visitors are welcome to ask anything — the people in the camp are the same people who made the objects in it.
See Where to Find Us