06/22/2026
Today's side quest: a captured stone circlet.
I don't really like wearing my awards, and I don't particularly like wearing things about my neck anyway, so I decided to try making a circlet for my Gutte de Sang GOA for service. In part to honor those people who took the time to put me in for the award, but also to help my wool hat look less like a stylish womens' hat from Nordstrom.
Roman awards were primarily of a military nature, with armbands, torqs, and phalerae (medallions attached to belts or a staff) typical awards. However, coronae, or wreaths/crowns, were the the top tier awards given out by the Roman Republic and Empire. Coronae were given for being the first to surmount an enemy's walls or enter an enemy's camp, for example, but the most exclusive were the Civic and Grass crowns, given for saving the lives of Roman citizens, and of course the Triumph. Roman crowns and the Greek ones that came before were often vegetal in nature, with laurel, oak, olive, and celery being common motifs, but laurel leaves are off limits in the SCA for me. Further, doing any sort of leaf crown would be problematic because people wouldn't be able to tell the differance at a distance, a GOA only permits a 1" band, and leaves are freaking time consuming. I decided that a simple, decidedly non-Roman band would be sufficient for my purposes.
I began with a strip of stainless from my lorica squamata project. I marked the center, then traced the outline of one of the glass teardrop gems I got for the project. I stuck the band on my pitch pot, and went to work creating a pocket roughly the same size as the gem. Unfortunately in attempting to anneal the first band I inadvertently melted it in half, but I carried on with my newly dubbed "test piece" before resetting and trying again.
After the pocket was repousse'd to about the same diameter of the stone, I went around the edge with a small dome to sort of mushroom the pocket out to be slightly wider than the aperture. It cracked a bit during this process, but it'll all be hidden once the stone is set. I flipped it over and chased the edges just a bit, then back over to planish the edge to be a bit more crisp. I sanded the whole thing to a dull gloss then it was time to mount the stone. The gem was placed in the pocket then the band set face-down on a tape-covered A*O. I used a dull straight edge to chase all around the outside of the pocket. This closed the aperture just enough to clasp the stone in place without a need for adhesives.
I acknowledge that I'm using the terms repousse and chasing backwards here vis a vie the face of the project, but the ways I used the tools just make more sense to me like this. Anyways, a couple of punched holes for lacing finish the project, and it's ready to go. I rather dig the look of the flat facing. This method creates quite an indent which would be a pain if I were to wear it just as is, but since it's going on a hat I'm not worried. I've seen this method used on Roman era rings where the setting was just raised high enough above the finger that the indent didn't matter, but I've not gone down the rabbit hole enough to be able to state definitively if it was used in other forms of decorative or wearable metalwork of the age.
I was legitimately surprised at how quickly this came together, I probably spent more time typing this all out (twice, thanks Zuck) than actually making the thing. I'm looking forward to rocking it at War, it really catches the light nicely!
In other news, I'm also jamming out a crapload of squamae in all my free time. Woohoo.
