Photo by Karen Mensch DeMichiei
For the coronation dinner of Marcus III and Margerite of Æthelmearc, held at Harvest Raid, Shire of Heronter, I created an edible coronet. There are several coronet styles available to the monarchs of Æthelmearc, but the byzantine style looked to be the simplest to reproduce, so that is where I started. My intent is to do the others at some future date… Master Janos provided me a with few pictures of the coronet in his care.
sugar paste:
1/2 tsp gum tragacanth
1 tsp lemon juice
2 tsp orange blossom water
1 T egg white
12 – 16 oz sugar, ground fine
Wet the gum with the lemon juice then add the orange blossom water and egg white.
Rest for several minutes and slowly incorporate the sugar until the desired consistency is reached.
The paste was rolled out and with the mock up was used as a template, the front piece was cut out. I worked the piece flat (smoothed the center areas and textured the boarders,) but when it was lifted to place onto the form the surface crinkled and much of the detail was lost. The form was too flimsy to work on, so if I make this coronet again, I will create a more rigid form to work upon. The sugar was cured for a day in the dehydrator before being removed from the form. The sides were then cut. They slid off the form through the night, but luckily broke along the lines delineating the individual plaques. I now had an eight piece sculpture instead of four… They were placed back on the form and cured for another day before being removed, so that the back piece could be manufactured.
A template was made and the escarbuncles were quickly cut out of sugar paste using an x-acto knife.
Once all the pieces had cured for a few days it was time to gold & sliver leaf them. Each section was painted with egg white and allowed to dry. Twenty-four sheets of edible gold leaf and six sheets of edible silver leaf later, they were shiny.
I made a very quick plaster mold from wax cabochons. They shifted on me while pouring the plaster, but enough were workable to make the carnelians. After melting out the wax and allowing the form to cool, it was soaked over night in water. I dissolved 1 cup of granular sugar in 1/2 cup of water, tossed in a small red beet from the garden and a tablespoonful of red sandalwood powder. This was brought to around 200 F then the solids were strained out. The syrup was quickly placed back on the heat, brought to 300 F, removed from the heat and the bottom of the pan was placed briefly in cool water. The mold was patted dry and s spoon was the used to drip syrup into the mold. As they cooled the carnelians were popped out and more were cast.
Once cooled the sugar carnelians were glued in place with a thinned-out version of the sugar paste.
This was allowed to rest for a day, then the whole was assembled using the same sugar glue. The coronet was placed in the dehydrator overnight.
Then seams were then covered in gold leaf and the coronet was returned to the dehydrator for another night.
Photo by Karen Mensch DeMichiei
Photo by Rose Ashbaugh
Photo by Phil Martino
I presented the subtlety to Their Majesties about half way through feast. By the end of the feast Her Majesty had broken the coronet into pieces and distributed them to be eaten by the populace.
ianeatsmedieval 