Mary Ostler

The big news… Recently I was contacted by an individual from Austin Texas, about purchasing my bedoiun tent. After a very short period of time a mutualy agreed upon price was determined, and the tent shouls be in Texas as I write this. This means I have very little time to make a new tent for camping season. I am holding of on building another bedouin tent. I have a book on its way through inter library loan that might help me make a better more accurate bedouin tent.  That  means I need to make a tent to make duefor this camping season. I am always looking at at strange weird tents that appear in manuscript paintings. I decided I would try to make a truncated cone tent much like the one in the painting in De Machinis from the 15oo’s

Looks much like a tipi with a roundish roof, and a center pole rather than perimeter poles. The doors are loose fabric that is not built directly into the design of the tent. Since I am 5’10″ the door way is going to be high enough for me not to duck into. I figure 11-12 feet tall will keep the proportion looking about right.  the roof ring should be about 1/3- 1/4 the width as the base of the tent.

In another illustration we can see how their are no ropes as the material is doubling as tensioning ropes, and the seems are being peg directly to the ground. Also at least two of the seams have a decorative trim on it.

I needed to build a template so that all the cut pieces would be the same. I had decided on a 2.5′ roof ring, and a 9foot base.  This is were my problems started. I made a card board template and gave myself a 1″ seam allowance on the bottom of the template, but not on the top. In the end my roof ring will be ~ 15″… doh. This screwed up the visual aspect of the original tent, but not enough painters tarp left to complete a full cone tent.

In the next few posts you will see me bodging together a workable, yet sadly not overwhelming medieval looking con tent.

Live and learn folks…. live and learn.