The Trindle:
aka - the Medieval Itty Bitty Booklight

Discovery

Introduction:

What follows is a description of our attempts to recreate a type of small, hand-held candle documented between 1393-99 - 1482. The account rolls of the Abbey of Durham (1401-1402) mention a 'writhen candle' (literally, a twisted candle) and this may well be the period name for our artifact. However, since we cannot verify this with absolute certainty and because our subject seeme to be the medieval equivalent of the modern itty-bitty booklight, it is herein referred to as a "booklight".

The actual item is a small coil of plied string which is waxed and then burned to provide light while it is used in reading. Most of the visual resources which show them come from Flanders in the 1400's - 1550's. So far no extant examples have been found.

Period Sources

The recreation of the booklight is based upon three Annunciation scenes from Northern Europe:

1. The Annunciation from the left wing of the Dijon Altarpiece (1393-1399) by Melchior Broderlam Figure 1 in the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Dijon France;
2. The Annunciation of 1465-1475 produced by the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden (Fig. 2) - possibly by Hans Memling -
3. The Annunciation of 1582 by Hans Memling (Fig. 3) in Brugge Belgium,

Both of the latter paintings are in the collections of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Figure 1	Figure 2	Figure 3

on to the materials