Hugues de Bertoncourt

Photo

Hugues de Bertoncourt

Information

Resides:	Dragon's Laire
Pronouns:	Not specified
Date Started:	A.S. LIV (2019)
Awards:	Order of Precedence
Prefered Title:	Not specified
Offices:	N/A

Heraldry

Or, a musimon's head erased and on a chief gules three rake heads Or

Introduction

My name is Hugues de Bertoncourt, and I was born on a cold spring morning of 1337 in the far northeast of France, an hour's slow ride from the city of Rethel. Named in honor of a distant ancestor, my life began just as the clouds of the Hundred Years' War darkened our lands. The 1340s brought turmoil and division, as Flemish towns allied with the English while our Count remained loyal to the French crown. By 1349, the shadow of the Black Death reached our region, forever altering our lives and fortunes.

At the age of 15, I was married to a widow, a fourth cousin in Ghent, where I was sent to live with her family. Our union was short-lived, as a recurrent round of the Plague swept through the city. Both my wife and I fell ill; while I miraculously survived, she tragically did not. Her death left me with a profound sense of loss and a deeper understanding of the fragility of life.

As a result of my marriage, I was left with valuable trade connections in both Ghent and Bruges, along with family lands in Bertoncourt and a townhouse in the city of Rethel. These assets allowed me to immerse myself in the world of vulgar commerce, where I have spent my years engaged in trade. I deal primarily in English wool and Flemish fabric, exchanging them for French flax and woad dye.

In my later 40s, during a trade mission to Marseilles, I met the son of an Italian merchant who had come to the city trading Savonese glass, pottery, Italian silks, and whatever they could liberate from the Genoese. Through this connection, I was introduced to and later married a Savonese widow named Caterina da Savona, a woman from a modestly wealthy merchant family. Together, we have built a comfortable and prosperous life, blending our mercantile expertise and fostering strong ties between our respective homelands.

Interests

Accessories for Garb

The impetus for my journey began with not being able to find the exact right accoutrements for late 14th century French, Flemish, and Italian costume. Often a bit of fur, a simple silver or gold-toned brooch, a belt that's plausibly from the time being portrayed...all can be the simple addition that makes garb come together fully. I started with searching for ideas in medieval clothing from the late 14th century. There are few extant examples of non-royal clothing from the period, but fortunately a great many illustrations at a time when the art of illumination was exploding, in many cases near to photorealism. First it was belts with appropriate findings, then a ring, a brooch, then lapidary work in replica findings, etc.

In the autumn of AS LIII, I spent a few hours shaping and casting a simple bronze ring set with lapis, inspired by similar medieval and 1st-2nd cent CE Roman examples, then a brooch inspired by a tiny image of one worn by Charles VI. Subsequently, it was a bit of fur and a pheasant feather in a hatpin set with ruby, star emerald, and freshwater pearls. My work varies across a range of time periods, though usually finds inspiration from Ionian Greece of the Classical period (5th-3rd cent BCE), from the southern Slavs of the First Bulgarian Empire (681-1018 CE), and late 14th cent French/Flemish/Italian.