About

Hello, I am Albert Krenz and one of my hobbies is Living History. I am only an ordinary person without any historical, archaeological background. But with a high demand of myself and the things I do. For everthing I produce I try to use only materials and methods available in the 13th century. My clothes for example are all sewn by hand, dyed with vegetables and partly woven by hand. Also all other things like pottery, wooden objects and furniture are made fully by hand. But there is a problem with the materials used, they are not always available in a quality that matches medieval originals, so I have to make some tradeoffs. I can’t for example cut down a tree to get some planks out of it to make a bucket (I am simply not skilled enough for that).

Role

My role is that of the cordwainer Adalbert Shouster who may have lived during the late 13th century in southwest Germany. Apart from making shoes with traditional tools, materials and methods of that time I am also interested in the cultural background of cordwainers. Like their organization in Guilds, law and order and the financial situation of the cordwainers (How much was a pair of shoes and how expensive was it for the people?). I am not only focusing on theoretical work but also want to try it out in real world and experience all the problems and tasks a cordwainer may have encountered.

Take anything you can get! For real!

I want to share my experience and knowledge gained during my work with you and anyone else (otherwise I would not write about it at all). Therefore everything you can find here (unless otherwise noticed) is licensed under “Creative-Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International”. In that way I want to encourage everyone to use the results of my work (if it helps) and give it to anyone else. Commercial usage is also allowed!