Guy Windsor
I’m here today with Aurelia Sedlmair, who is a historical fencer, a translator, a transcriber, and is now studying the conservation of paper and books. So we have swords, and we have books, which is just how we like it on the show. So without further ado, Aurelia, welcome to the show.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Thank you Guy. Good to be here.
Guy Windsor
And whereabouts in the world are you right now?
Aurelia Sedlmair
I’m on the Isle of Man
Guy Windsor
On the Isle of Man. So not Canada at all?
Aurelia Sedlmair
No, not Canada at all. Well I was in Canada, just last month, but now we live here since last year, April.
Guy Windsor
Okay. Why the Isle of Man?
Aurelia Sedlmair
Because it’s a beautiful place, because it was in some ways very convenient to move here for me to go and study the conservation of books and paper. Which I love doing on the Isle of Man.
Guy Windsor
And the Isle of Man is an island.
Aurelia Sedlmair
It is an island in the Irish Sea. Yes.
Guy Windsor
And convenient is not a word that I would associate with it.
Aurelia Sedlmair
No, it is inconvenient to get to but it is beautiful. And it ticked all the boxes for us to remain in the British Isles for a longer, long-ish period, I should say.
Guy Windsor
I’m curious, what are those boxes that it ticks?
Aurelia Sedlmair
It is reasonably close to Europe, which is where my mother and other family are. Which was an issue during COVID. That Canada was just very, very far away.
Guy Windsor
You were on the wrong you were on the wrong side of Canada.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yeah, the left side.
Guy Windsor
You fly from Europe to the eastern edge of Canada and you’re less than halfway to Vancouver.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Essentially, yes. Sometimes there were no flights at all during COVID. So it seemed a good thing to come closer, but to be not too close, if you know what I mean. And we didn’t want to be in England itself. Because of professional and personal reasons really. My partner took me to the Isle of Man because he’d been here a long time ago. And I always thought it would be really neat to be there for longer periods. And seeing as he’s being marvellous in supporting my endeavour to educate myself. I thought that would be the least I could do to take a look at it and I really enjoyed it.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so you’re not actually Canadian.
Aurelia Sedlmair
I am Canadian.
Guy Windsor
Okay, but you have family in Europe. So I’m just curious about the legalities of things because I don’t have an EU passport anymore thanks to bloody Brexit. But my children do because their mother is technically Irish. So you’re a Canadian citizen but you have right to reside in UK?
Aurelia Sedlmair
We applied for that. Okay. Both Bernd and I applied for that. And I’m actually a dependent if you will, for his visa that he has for the Isle of Man.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so does he have European citizenship?
Aurelia Sedlmair
Nope.
Guy Windsor
Okay, in fact, it gets very complicated doesn’t it?
Aurelia Sedlmair
It does get complicated but I mean, the Isle of Man is independent. They have their own passport, as you probably know.
Guy Windsor
I did not know that.
Aurelia Sedlmair
They do. It’s a nifty thing that I’m permitted to study and work in the UK as I am. But if somebody has a UK visa the reverse may not necessarily be true, theoretically, they couldn’t just come and work on the Isle of Man.
Guy Windsor
Wow. Okay. So you say you’re not doing your book conservation stuff on the Isle of Man. So where are you studying?
Aurelia Sedlmair
I’m studying in the West Dean College of Art and Conservation close to Chichester, which is West Sussex. It’s a stunning place in the South Downs.
Guy Windsor
It must take you an entire day to get there from the Isle of Man.
Aurelia Sedlmair
It’s not so bad actually. Because there are direct flights to Gatwick and the train from Gatwick is about an hour to Chichester. And then depending on luck and timing, I might actually catch the bus to West Dean. Okay, it’s the first time in my life that I haven’t had a car. And it feels very strange.
Guy Windsor
It is very strange. When we moved to the UK for the first time I was like, we should be able to be survive here without a car because we’re a half hour walk from the train station and there are buses and all that sort of stuff. And it turned out after about six or nine months we were like, nope, nope. The only reason we’re surviving with a car is because we have friends here who are very nice and drive us places. That is not fair. We will get a car.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yes, we’ve been surviving so far for the last 16 months without a car and I think it’ll remain that way for a while longer.
Guy Windsor
Okay, Well, I mean, where can you drive to on the Isle of Man?
Aurelia Sedlmair
It’s 100 miles around. So there are places to go. But yes.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, but getting the car onto a ferry across the mainland is not going to be quicker getting to school.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Oh, definitely not. It’s two hours, 45 minutes to Liverpool or Heysham. And from there the train or car.
Guy Windsor
So we’ve sort of skipped over my first couple of questions. Let’s just get straight into this book conservation thing. Is this a residential school?
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yes. Although not in the Canadian context of a residential school. It is, yes, they have student residences and I am staying on campus. Okay. I’m not sure if you know anything about West Dean.
Guy Windsor
I don’t know anything. Well, okay. What I know about West Dean is that about 25 years ago, I looked at it for cabinet making courses. I never actually visited it. But it appeared on my radar then, when I was looking for cabinet making training. But I haven’t actually looked at it since. So tell us all about West Dean. And why you chose it and what it’s like to be there.
Aurelia Sedlmair
West Dean was essentially established with an inheritance or a foundation from Edward James, who, when he was 17, inherited the estate of West Dean, which I think is about 6,500 acres of land and villages and things. And he was a really important figure in with the surrealists, like with Dali, and various other luminaries of that time. He supported them, he worked with them, he inspired them, he was a poet in his own right, although, of course, self-published, poetry is always interesting. But he had his own publishing company with which he did that, and also published other poets. He was very fortunate in the sense that he had the money to support all these things. He was married to Tilly Losch, a ballet dancer, had a very acrimonious divorce from her, and, in his later years, spent most of his time in Mexico. But he essentially wanted West Dean to be a school where the arts and conservation were kept, and kept alive, because he felt, or he was afraid rather, that the skills would die out. And in many ways, that is very true. Because, as you may have noticed, when you were researching the cabinet making, it’s not so easy to find the courses and to get the training, because the interest in it is waning with modern technology and other jobs being thought more valuable, arguably. So he established the school, I think, in the mid-80s, although it was used as a school before, as a girl school and something else. And I think it became the West Dean College of Art and conservation in the mid-80s, I want to say, and they have various groups there. So there are the Bookies, the book conservation people. They teach the repair and restoration of clocks, they have a beautiful department there. They do furniture, they make musical instruments. It’s quite a spectacular setting and a good school that way.
Guy Windsor
I’ve been thinking about going there for a watchmaking course, at some point, because I’m obsessed with watches, and I take them apart and try and put them back together again and I have some success and many failures. So it would be nice to actually get some formal training in it. So yeah, it’s a very interesting establishment. So what made you want to go and do book and paper conservation?
Aurelia Sedlmair
I’ve been a voracious reader all my life, and I approached bookmaking never really as the craft and the art that it is, because I didn’t realize I could, for some odd reason, even when I graduated high school, I could have theoretically gone to Germany and done an apprenticeship as a bookbinder and been much, much further than I am now. But in my family, the arts weren’t really a thing. Neither was craft. They were all business people. So they kind of looked at me and said, what do you want to do with that? Sadly, I let myself be influenced and went to school, studied international relations and a whole bunch of other things, and later went back to school to become a publisher. I did my masters publishing at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, and had a little publishing venture and realized that the publishing of books, it involves the making of books. But the most important part of it is the selling of those books. And I don’t excel at selling, which ended up me becoming an official translator. German and English, English and German both ways.
Guy Windsor
That’s hard. Doing it one way is hard, doing it two ways is very impressive.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Well, it’s interesting and challenging. I enjoy medical translation, and sometimes legal, because there’s always more to learn. It’s very exciting. But there’s also of course, the bread and butter, which is certificates and things like that. And after 15 years of more or less doing that, it was time for a change. And I just didn’t know what kind of a change and I looked at a whole bunch of things. And through fluke, I came across West Dean, and I realized that this was a craft that I could actually learn.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, I love bookbinding. I make my own notebooks and things. I mean, I don’t do any really high end fancy stuff. I’m sort of at the nailing bits of wood together stage of being a bookbinder, if you know what I mean. So, I haven’t done any headbands yet. But I’ve made dozens of notebooks and put different covers on them. Some with cut outs some without. And hand stitching everything so you can open it out properly and throw it across the room, and it’s not going to fall apart. But I have seen what bookbinding can be.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Isn’t it spectacular?
Guy Windsor
It is, I mean, it’s an art form of its own. And when I was in Boston, a while ago, I stumbled upon the North Bennet Street School. I know of it from cabinetmaking. So I happened to be on North Bennett Street. And I happened to pass this North Bennett school. That’s where all those cabinet makers come from. So I went in. And it’s not just cabinet makers, and they actually had the annual exhibition of the bookbinders’ graduation. They had their exhibition on. And holy shit, the things they’re doing with book covers. The cover itself becomes like an expression of the sense of the book. It’s almost like somebody did a painting of the book. And they made that into the cover, but they did it in like leather and inlay and stuff. It is just stunning.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yes, yes, it is. There were some graduates of the North Bennett school at West Dean this last year, and watching their approach to work and working was just really wonderful. It was really educational, also, because it was very collegial. Nobody had a problem with passing on knowledge, or sharing knowledge and skill, and helping you to further your own skill, and taking pride in somebody else learning something really cool.
Guy Windsor
Which is how it should be. But I have come across craftsmen who did not want to share because this is their secret technique, and this is how they make their living. So they don’t want to tell anybody.
Aurelia Sedlmair
I’m sure that exists. I’ve been fortunate in the sense that I haven’t run into that specifically at the school and with the people there.
Guy Windsor
But you kind of think of someone who doesn’t want to share their stuff wouldn’t go and take a teaching job at the school.
Aurelia Sedlmair
You’d hope so.
Guy Windsor
A little bit of selection bias there, I think.
Aurelia Sedlmair
There is. But I know from the Vancouver Film School, that that isn’t always the case. There are some instructors who feel a little bit proprietary about the tricks of the trade maybe.
Guy Windsor
So are you learning to do bookbinding? Like binding new books, or is it all conservation?
Aurelia Sedlmair
We started out by learning how to bind new books, and we’re still doing various book structures, because it works on that the way that if you know how to make it, you will also have a better understanding of how to repair, restore and conserve it.
Guy Windsor
Absolutely. As an antiques restorer in the furniture world. It works both ways. Knowing how to make it helps you fix it and know how to fix it helps you make it. It’s a virtuous circle.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Because you know where it’s weak and what needs to be worked on and what is possible to do, because of course with books, especially very valuable old books. It’s also a business. The rare book trade is something very special specialised. And there’s also some tomfoolery probably going on, or was, in many cases. And it’s a fine line between restoring a book and making it look like new.
Guy Windsor
I have a copy of Alfred Hutton’s Sword and the Centuries that belonged to my grandfather. It is a first edition from I think 1902. And it was falling apart, as you would expect. And it had like the hinge on the front cover was taught almost all the way through, and it was falling apart. And I took it to this bookbinder in Colchester, to have it restored. And he had a good look at it. And he quoted me what seemed to me a fair price, but it’s significantly more than you can buy the book for this on the second-hand market. It’s still a fair price, it belonged to my grandfather, it has got pencil written notes from him. And it’s worth a lot more to me than just what I could sell it for. And when it came back, it looked like he hadn’t done anything except it hadn’t ever been torn. But opening it up the binding felt solid. But it felt like basically, somebody has bought the book in 1902. Read it once, put it on a shelf, and it had just been left there ever since.
Aurelia Sedlmair
And from the outside you couldn’t tell that it had been done?
Guy Windsor
You really couldn’t tell that anyone had fiddled with it. I mean, of course, an expert bookbinder would probably see it straight away. But even I’m an antiques restorer in the furniture world and a bit of a book nerd and a little bit of a bookbinder. Looking at it, I can’t really see what he’s done. It was a beautiful job. And it trod the very fine line between conservation, where you just sort of stopped the decay and restoration where you bring it back to function. And there wasn’t any modernisation of it. A sensible thing to have done would have been just to replace the cover. But that would have ruined it.
Aurelia Sedlmair
That would have definitely ruined it. Ruined the feel and the look and everything.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, he’s done an amazing job on it. I’m blanking on his name, but I will put a link to his thing in the show notes so that people who are in the UK and want their books restored can send them to him.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Definitely.
Guy Windsor
Because you’re not qualified yet. When you’re qualified, we’ll swap it over to you.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Thank you for that.
Guy Windsor
So do you plan on actually running a business as a paper and books restorer?
Aurelia Sedlmair
I would like to, yes. However, I think to graduate and hang up a shingle is, how do I put that, arrogant? Or not quite how I want to approach that. Because I think by the time I finish, I’ll be on a path to being an expert. I’ll be ready for a job. That’s it. And curiously enough, even the entry level jobs for conservator is an MA, you don’t start with a BA, you need an MA apparently. So that is of course, the reason why I chose the school that I did, because they did offer this program.
Guy Windsor
All right, so you actually can get an MA from West Dean? Cool. Okay. So I know a little bit about restructuring a book and stitching it together and whatnot. I don’t know anything about how you conserve paper, which is this disgracefully fragile thing.
Aurelia Sedlmair
But it’s so strong on the other hand. Paper is really cool.
Guy Windsor
It is really cool. Tell us all about paper.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Where to start? No, it really depends on the damage that you have in it. Put simply, a lot of the time, you can repair it with Japanese paper. So you repair paper with other paper, or a paper that is very similar to the paper that was used at the time in the book that you have, or in the document that you have.
Guy Windsor
Let’s say you have a tear. So you will cut out a piece of paper of the right sort and you would paste it on.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yes, depends on the tear. Is it a deep tear, do you have loss? And do the fibres still mesh in that tear? Because sometimes you can just take little tiny fibres of the Japanese like Kozo paper or something like that, and you tear it very finely and you apply it and then you won’t even be able to tell that there was a tear.
Guy Windsor
Oh my God.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Because sometimes they align properly.
Guy Windsor
So basically, you can take the torn paper and you can sort of rematch the torn fibres back together and stick them.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Well, the fibres when you moisten them become much, much more flexible, right? And when you have wheat starch paste or rice starch paste that is very, very thin and you apply it to the Japanese fibres to just mesh a little bit better. It’s a little bit like those band aids. When you have a cut, and you put those little band aid bridges across it to pull it together. It’s similar to that, except not as big.
Guy Windsor
And you’re using wheat starch or rice starch paste.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Usually, we would. That’s what we’ve been using so far. And it makes really good sense. I mean, you wouldn’t use glue or other adhesive.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, I mean, polymer acetate would be wrong. Very, very wrong.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yes, could use methyl cellulose and things like that also. Some people prefer working with that. I’ve done a little bit with it. And it works really well. I think after a while it becomes personal preference and what you use more often. It’s probably good to experiment with any and all to just see on something else, how it how it works and whether it melds well enough and cures well enough.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so just for people who are not glue nerds, why would you not use PVA?
Aurelia Sedlmair
because it’s more artificial, because could you remove it if you had to, you probably could. But it goes glossy, goes odd. And it’s really, really sticky right away. And the wheat starch paste, because it has such a fairly high water content allows you to manipulate the fibres for longer to make it mesh better and to be smoother. The PVA or EVA, even though EVA is archival, which lasts well over time, it feels wrong. It’s not scientific reasoning but it feels wrong.
Guy Windsor
Also, it’s not reversible. I mean, the reason that leaps to mind, one of the worst things about fixing a piece of furniture that someone else has fixed before you is they very often use glues are not reversible like PVA, whereas like proper hide glue is reversible with heat and water. So you can repair the joint. And then if it needs to be repaired again, 100 years later, because it’s a design problem with that particular kind of furniture that it is always going to break in that place. So no matter how well you fix it, it will eventually break again. You make it so that they can just get rid of all the old glue and put in new glue and, and sometimes even you can fix a joint just by reactivating the old glue and it just sticks back together.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Right, but the archival EVA you can probably remove but you’re going to end up removing more of the paper with it.
Guy Windsor
You can’t reverse it. It creates a sort of stable plasticky compound.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Paste you can take off, so if you wash pages, for example, and you feel the surface of it, it feels a little bit more slick where the paste is and then you can gently take it off with your fingers.
Guy Windsor
So how do you clean a piece of paper?
Aurelia Sedlmair
Initially, you’d probably try to dry clean it with a brush to just get all the dirt out and if that doesn’t do it, you would up the ante by using something like a smoke sponge.
Guy Windsor
A smoke sponge?
Aurelia Sedlmair
It’s a special sponge and I’m not exactly sure what it’s made out of, but it looks like a very dense brownish sponge. And I think it sort of feels a little bit plasticky and it gives a little bit more resistance and it probably abrades the paper a tiny little bit but it gets dirt out. You’re using it dry. Some people also use Mars eraser for stubborn stains but there you have that slight residue from the synthetic material. And that’s the white plastic eraser, it’s called Mars.
Guy Windsor
So the regular eraser you have in school.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yep. And if none of that works, and depending if you have just the piece of paper, and if the ink is not water soluble, you could try washing it.
Guy Windsor
With water?
Aurelia Sedlmair
That was really scary. It’s the most amazing thing. It’s really terrifying when you first wash a piece of paper because you think it’s going to disintegrate. But we put it between two sheets of Hollytex. Then you immerse it very gently and you make sure that there are no air bubbles. And then you can actually remove the top sheet of the Hollytex and rub it gently to just clean it. Then you reaffix the Hollytex and then you take it out, let it drain, and you put it on blotter paper, and it feels very stomach wrenching the first time I did it.
Guy Windsor
That’s terrifying. The one thing you don’t want to go anywhere near your books is water. It’s like, if they are kept dry dry. I mean, I’ve got books in that bookshelf over there that have been around since, the oldest one there is from 1568. And it’s fine. If I dropped it in the bath.
Aurelia Sedlmair
It’d be terrible.
Guy Windsor
It would be fucked. I don’t read those books in the bath. Not ever. Modern paperback, no problem. Just buy another one. It’s funny, it sounds to me absolutely terrifying to put a piece of paper in water like that and expect it to actually survive.
Aurelia Sedlmair
It was. The first few times I inherited several prints and some other things from my grandmother. And I wanted to clean those up. So that is what I initially used. Well, first I dry cleaned them. And after that didn’t do it, I decided that I should really experiment with the washing. And I was really almost terrified to immerse it in the water after testing that the ink was fine and everything. And it survived. And it did well. And it looks pretty now.
Guy Windsor
Do you have before and after pictures?
Aurelia Sedlmair
I do. We are tasked with taking before and after pictures. And we’re supposed to do social media.
Guy Windsor
You don’t need to do social media. I don’t care about social media at all. But I think it’d be useful for the listeners who obviously can’t see what we’re doing if you can send me the before and after pictures. I’ll put them in the show notes so people can go to the website. That’d be really interesting. But you know, it reminds me a little bit of the first time I used a blowtorch on a piece of furniture that was worth more than my house.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yes. Oh, my God. That would be terrifying.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. I mean, the first time I used a blowtorch on a piece of furniture, was, it wasn’t a very expensive piece of furniture. And I kind of learned the technique and stuff. And it was fine. But you just think well, wood, that’s what you make fires out of. It’s a scary, scary thing. Okay, so one obvious question that comes to mind, is you’re learning to restore old paper, old books, that kind of stuff. Which means there must be a supply of old paper and old books for students to practice on? Where do they get this supply from?
Aurelia Sedlmair
Old libraries, libraries that have books that are not in circulation anymore, either because they’re not really of interest anymore, or because they haven’t been taken out in decades, or because they’re mouldering in some basement because they haven’t been taken out in decades.
Guy Windsor
So West Dean will ask the libraries to send us all your old shitty books you don’t want anymore so our students can make mistakes on them.
Aurelia Sedlmair
I don’t think they actually have to ask, I think it’s sometimes the library say, well, we have these things, we don’t want to throw them away. Because throwing books away, it’s just wrong. So they make a donation of these books to further the learning and skill of students like me. We also have private collectors of books that want to have them repaired, that want to have them restored and conserved and made boxes for them and all those things.
Guy Windsor
I would be very, very, very, very, very cautious about sending, for example, my Capoferro to a school for students to have a go at. I would want to take it to someone with at least two decades of experience in the industry.
Aurelia Sedlmair
And that is how you should do it. However, these students are being taught by people who have that experience. And they wouldn’t we wouldn’t be permitted to touch anything just for the sake of going into the safe and grabbing a book and saying, oh, let’s do this. It’s not how you go about that.
Guy Windsor
No, again, when I was working on a piece of furniture that cost more than my house, I wasn’t unsupervised. But, yeah the students have to be taught, they have to learn. So there has to be opportunities for them to actually work on these things.
Aurelia Sedlmair
But you’re definitely right, we learn on much, much, much less valuable books.
Guy Windsor
If I had to had heart surgery, I wouldn’t want my heart surgeon to be doing it for the first time.
Aurelia Sedlmair
You don’t want it to be the intern? I don’t know why not, Guy. I hear you. And I agree, and that isn’t really what would happen. The instructors, the tutors, choose very carefully who gets to do what, because of course, they have a really good idea of the median skill of any one of us. Many of them also work on the books that come in. And in the 80s, I think it was in the 80s. We had a conservator Christopher Clarkson, who was in charge of the conservation of books and paper, and he had vast experience rescuing books after the flood in Florence in 1966. And many of the protocols for conservation, I think came out of that catastrophe.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, that was an absolute catastrophe. That was one of the worst things ever happened to museums and libraries.
Aurelia Sedlmair
I think so yes. And just the learnings that they took away from that, because I think international conservators from everywhere in the world, really congregated in Florence, formed teams and worked to conserve and rescue these books and these materials that were essentially priceless. And I think until then, it wasn’t as organised and as structured as it is now. And he brought that skill and that knowledge to West Dean and imparted that to students. And it was a very, very different time in terms of the people that took the course back then were all usually bookbinders with experience. Who went there to learn conservation. But nowadays, you don’t find that many bookbinders, because if you go into commercial bookbinding, it’s essentially the machine that perfect binds the book for you, slaps it together, and you’re done.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, I mean, my books that I publish, they are printed on demand. And it is a giant machine that glues the text blocks together, slaps a cover on, cuts it all to size and off it goes. And it’s a very cost-effective way of producing books.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yes, yes, it is. Yeah, it does make a lot of sense. But then, for learning this craft, there are a lot of books that were written about the making of books, the conservation of books, the restoration of books, the binding books, you name it, there’s a book for it. And over the course of last year, I had occasion to purchase several of them. And some of them, you open once or twice. And before you know it, this book about the conservation of books falls apart in your hands, and you need to conserve it. So, you know, there’s learning everywhere.
Guy Windsor
Fantastic. Yeah, it’s like the there’s a spectrum of book production with printed on demand, perfect bound stuff at one end. And there’s things like what Michael Chidester is doing with the HEMA Bookshelf project at the other end where his facsimiles, he’s reproducing the collation of the manuscript as it’s bound. Like, how many people would know or even care. But to me, that is just why I buy all of his books, whether I can afford them or not, just because that level of detail that needs to be supported.
Aurelia Sedlmair
It’s funny that you say that because I do the same thing. I’ve sadly never met Michael, I wish I could and of course, I probably will. I really enjoy his projects. I like the books that he puts out. And more than that, I really appreciate the level of detail that he endeavours with the facsimiles.
Guy Windsor
These are all being hand bound and whatnot. And there’ll be like test pieces with different leathers for the covers and things like that. I mean, every detail is just. Amazing work.
Aurelia Sedlmair
It’s interesting too, because there are of course, very many small bindaries and presses where they do very small runs of things, not necessarily with martial arts. But some do poetry, others do literature, for example, Ampersand and No Reply Press. They do lovely, lovely printings of books. And the attention to detail and the love for the craft is spectacular.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, it’s something I would like to do with one of my books, but I think I need to write a book that deserves it first.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Don’t you think your books deserve that?
Guy Windsor
Ah, I don’t know, no. I mean, when you’re, when you’re producing a book at that level, it costs a fortune. Because you’ve got highly qualified people, highly skilled people, spending a lot of time working on it, so they should cost a fortune. But I’m like, it’s not exactly Shakespeare is it? I’m just telling people how to hit people with swords.
Aurelia Sedlmair
But that’s beautiful in and of itself isn’t it, hitting people with swords?
Guy Windsor
Yes, that’s very true. I mean, the reason we’ve actually met is because I’ve met you in Vancouver at sword events. So we should actually, given this as The Sword Guy Podcast, we should maybe get on to swords, at least for a little bit and then come back to books in a minute. So how did you get into historical martial arts?
Aurelia Sedlmair
Really cheesy, I always wanted to be able to fence like a musketeer you know. That’s just my thing.
Guy Windsor
You are not alone on this. The listenership to this podcast is pretty much evenly divided between Three Musketeers and Princess Bride on one side, and Lord of the Rings, Excalibur on the other side, and some people are both. With a bunch of Star Wars on the Excalibur end of things as well, because longswords and light sabers are clearly related. But I would say probably a quarter of the people listening got into swords through the Three Musketeers. So you are not alone.
Aurelia Sedlmair
I am relieved and pleased to hear it. But my endeavours were not really… I wasn’t really, how shall I say it? I didn’t pursue it for various reasons until I returned to Vancouver, actually, after a relationship break up, which was actually a really good thing, because it made me realise that I could do whatever I bloody well, please, because I have agency. So I did what every sane person does, they Google it. And I realised that Vancouver actually had a historical martial arts school. And I got my courage, and I walked in. And I met Devon at the front desk and asked if I could be taking courses. And he looked at me said, of course you can. And I signed up. And because I don’t enjoy the feeling of not knowing anything of what I’m doing I initially signed up for private lessons, before I went into the actual class, because I wanted to be sure that I knew how to hold the sword. And nobody watched me being embarrassingly the newbie.
Guy Windsor
That’s a very interesting thing. It’s not something I’ve ever really thought about properly, when I should have done because I teach a lot of beginners. In a beginners’ class, everyone is supposed to be a beginner. So everyone is going to be not knowing how to hold a sword, not knowing how to stand properly, all that kind of stuff. And having a beginners’ class that is explicitly and overtly, deliberately, for beginners, makes it a lot easier for people who are shy about that sort of thing to join. But it hadn’t occurred to me that some people might be so shy about it that they’d rather take private lessons first, before even starting the beginners’ course. Hmm. Well, that’s fascinating. And, and it occurs to me that there are things I could do to help people get past that particular gap. Interesting, interesting. Thank you for that, I have stuff to think about. I shall make a little note. And I shall get back to the actual interview. And I shall stop my brain wandering off into that particular problem-solving area.
Aurelia Sedlmair
But that’s a good problem-solving area to go into because it did help. I did feel better going into that first class, having an idea of how to hold the sword and how to move my feet, how to align my body and to go forth and poke somebody with a sword. Reasonably safely. And from there really, I did what was at the time the green chord class, the entry level fundamentals of repair course. And I passed that and went on from there, doing my rapier business, so to speak.
Guy Windsor
Do you have rapiers in your house right now?
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yes!
Guy Windsor
Well, okay. Okay. I understand the outrage in your tone there. But let me just let me just say why I said that because you’re on the Isle of Man, middle of nowhere or whatever. You’ve already made one major change, you’ve left your translation stuff and you’ve moved away from Canada to the Isle of Man to start up this basically new phase of your life. It is quite common for hobbies and interests to get left behind when you do that kind of thing. So I was just wondering, given that the Isle of Man is not famous as a hotbed of historical martial arts.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Vikings, you know?
Guy Windsor
They don’t use rapiers.
Aurelia Sedlmair
But still, sword play.
Guy Windsor
Sure. Okay. So, so I’m just curious, do you get any rapier action on the Isle of Man?
Aurelia Sedlmair
I don’t, I don’t. You’re right. Rapier is still my love. But for assorted reasons we’ve been looking at other weapons. My partner and I have started with smallsword. Isn’t it lovely? It’s so fast. Oh my god. It’s so fast.
Guy Windsor
It’s so utterly vicious and violent. It’s like a knife fight. You’re getting stuck in there and you’re just murdering people.
Aurelia Sedlmair
And because it’s so short, you’re in measure right away. You know with the Rapier you have a certain distance and you sort of slowly work your way in and with a smallsword, kablam! There you are.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, fantastic.
Aurelia Sedlmair
It’s an adjustment. But yes.
Guy Windsor
So you’re doing smallsword just with your partner on the Isle of Man or do you train with anyone?
Aurelia Sedlmair
I have not trained with anyone. I was lucky enough to find at auction, a McArthur. I have a first edition, which also contributed to me being inspired for the restoration of books because somebody else actually conserved it for me and she did a marvellous, marvellous job and showed me that I too could possibly learn this. We keep going back to discovering that you’re able to learn, which is what it’s all about. Once you stop learning, you kind of die.
Guy Windsor
I couldn’t agree more. So you bought yourself a copy of McArthur? What’s the date on that? It’s about 1830? A little late for my smallsword.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yeah, no, I’m just looking at it. You know, when you’re looking for something, you can’t find it. Oh, it’s old anyway.
Guy Windsor
So it doesn’t have a date on it?
Aurelia Sedlmair
No… 1780 first edition. There we go. 1780.
Guy Windsor
Wow, that’s a lot older than I was thinking of, because I think I’m probably conflating McArthur with one of the later ones, or maybe there were later editions, and I didn’t realise about the earlier ones. Interesting. 1780 is peak smallsword. You’ve got, like School of Fencing in English coming out in 1787. So you’re basically just working directly from McArthur. Now, you will have to send us pictures of the McArthur to put in the show notes as well, because you can’t flash a book from 1780 about swords on this podcast without supplying a photograph for the show notes.
Aurelia Sedlmair
It has beautiful, colourised prints and everything.
Guy Windsor
Oh, wow. Yes, definitely. All right. Okay, so you’re doing this with your partner, so you have somebody to stab?
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yes. He went to the smallsword symposium in Edinburgh last year. And I’m going this year with him. I am looking forward to it. And I think that will be a bit more of an official introduction, a more structured introduction, than doing it all by yourself, I find much as I enjoy reading and that the book was written for people to learn.
Guy Windsor
And written in English.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yes, indeed. It is also nice to get somebody’s direct interpretation of these things. And I think that’s going to happen when we go in October.
Guy Windsor
Well, you can make yourself very popular by bringing your McArthur with you. I’m just saying. Because, people at events like that, most people very rarely get to see originals. They’re always working from scans and facsimiles.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Which is why Michael’s work is so awesome.
Guy Windsor
Exactly. Yes. So, take along your McArthur to show people and obviously, you’re a conservator and a bookbinder, I know you can make a nice little box for it. So it’s going to be nice and safe in your hand luggage. Not in the hold, obviously. One doesn’t take foolish risks with books like this. I remember, like a long time ago, 2001. I was at an event in the States and one of the instructors had a 1536 Marozzo with him. And he just brought it to the event so that people could see one of the originals. And it was just a lovely thing to do. For the sake of your fellow smallswordists at the at the symposium, take McArthur along and give him some playtime.
Aurelia Sedlmair
And tell him it’s regards from Guy.
Guy Windsor
You can if you want. But also, it is a massive flex. When, let’s say I’m teaching a Capoferro lesson, and I go, “Oh, well, let’s just check what it says in the book.” And I take out my 1610 Capoferro. Ah, it’s a very enjoyable flex to be honest. These books are just gorgeous. Okay, so what made you think smallsword now, rather than rapier?
Aurelia Sedlmair
It was just different from what we’ve done at Duello before. I’ve played a little bit with a longsword before. It’s nice, but it didn’t take. Bolognese is not mine. I just really liked the Rapier. And that was the closest to the rapier and being a little bit smaller, makes it a little bit more portable. So that’s what we tried. And that’s where we’re at right now. I did have a little stint with Olympic fencing. And yeah, no.
Guy Windsor
No. A lot of the people listening will be mad about longswords and a lot of people listening will be mad about rapiers. And some people like me, are mad about pretty much every blade produced in the history of time. But it is a good idea to know what your real interests are, not be pressured into.
Aurelia Sedlmair
It’s not that I find them offensive or anything. I appreciate the beauty of the weapon. It’s just not my weapon to use, although I had occasion to go to Solingen in Germany, because that is where they make paper also. And of course, knives and they have that beautiful blade museum there. And the exhibit of swords that they have there is really, really nice. And they do a special event there every year for knives and swords and things.
Guy Windsor
It’s something I’ve been meaning to get to. I’ve never been, I’ve been meaning to go for years.
Aurelia Sedlmair
It’s really worthwhile to have also a lovely collection of early cutlery. Because of course Solingen makes knives of all shapes and sizes.
Guy Windsor
Solingen is to Germany as Sheffield is to England as Toledo is to Spain.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Pretty much. And if you’re looking for cooking knives, do go to some of the factory stores there.
Guy Windsor
Particularly good, or particularly good prices or both?
Aurelia Sedlmair
If you value excellent knives, yes.
Guy Windsor
Yes, a little bit. I have a lot of excellent knives. And one of the things I like about cooking is it gives you an excuse to buy great big blades.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yes, it does. You know, good cleaver and a good chef’s knife and then a little paring knife and it just goes from there. Yes.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so you’ve done quite a bit of translation work, but I’m thinking that’s mostly not swords. Is that right?
Aurelia Sedlmair
It is mostly not swords. I did a little bit on the side. What’s his name? The Wrestler. Starts with an F. Yeah, sorry.
Guy Windsor
A medieval wrestler?
Aurelia Sedlmair
Auerswald.
Guy Windsor
So not with an F then.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yes, his first name is Fabian von Auerswald. Anyway, just a little bit on the side, but you know, nothing major. I’m always surprised by how little I do but then I look at the work of Dierk Hagerdorn. And who can keep up with that? There’s so many books.
Guy Windsor
Well, I had Dierk on the show, and I asked him how the hell he got so many books done. It’s not even his proper job. I mean, he produces more books than I do, I think, certainly more words that I do. And this is my job, and it’s not his. So I asked him, and he said, he doesn’t watch TV.
Aurelia Sedlmair
That makes perfect sense. I don’t have TV either. But I haven’t yet managed to produce books like that.
Guy Windsor
So is there a particular reason that you didn’t get into translating German fencing sources? Is it because most of them aren’t about rapiers?
Aurelia Sedlmair
Probably. Yes. And all the Rapier ones are usually in Italian. And, sadly, I don’t speak Italian well enough. I probably wouldn’t starve in Italy. But that’s about the extent of my language skills at the moment.
Guy Windsor
Fair enough. Okay, so obviously you’re quite good at acting on ideas. Because you decided you wanted to do to book conservation and so you just moved to the Isle of Man, so that you will be close enough to the West Dean school and got involved. So what is the best idea you haven’t acted on?
Aurelia Sedlmair
I knew the question was coming and I thought it was prepared. But really, in the end, sooner or later, I act on the ideas that really stick. So I don’t think that I’ve had a really, really good idea that I haven’t acted on yet because, how do you say, full contact sport? Life is like that you either dive in or you don’t dive in. And at the moment, the book conservation, the paper conservation is my full-time objective. There is a little bit of fencing thrown in if I can, I do a little bit of horseback riding, some cooking, and studying. And that’s as far as that goes, and working as much as I can to get the experience that I think I need, which is lots.
Guy Windsor
Yes. Okay. I thought when I first came up with these two final questions that I put in all the interviews, I thought that it was actually quite a good question. But I’m starting to think that maybe I should think about dropping it because at least I would say, a quarter or a third of the people who come on the show, don’t have an idea they haven’t acted on, because they’re the sort of people who act on their ideas, which is how they ended up coming to my attention and ending up on the show. So again, selection bias. So it’s, it’s a very good answer to say, well, actually, I just act on them. So none. I’m busy acting on the best one yet.
Aurelia Sedlmair
However, you could adjust it and ask, what do you feel will be your next thing to act on?
Guy Windsor
Okay. Tell me.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Finding somebody who will put up with my beginner’s knowledge, once I graduate from this for two years or so and wants me to learn. That is what’s next.
Guy Windsor
Will that not entail leaving the Isle of Man, because unless they actually are on the Isle of Man, you’re going to need to actually like show up to work, five days a week. I can totally recommend this chap in Colchester. And if you’re in Colchester, you can come around my house and try and stab me with a smallsword as often as you like. So that’s not such a bad idea.
Aurelia Sedlmair
That actually sounds like a really good plan, isn’t it?
Guy Windsor
Would you like me to just drop him an email and ask him if he’s at all interested in having an apprenticeship type person?
Aurelia Sedlmair
Let me finish. I’ll come back to you on that. Okay, I think it would be fair for him to get somebody who’s finished the training.
Guy Windsor
But you want to plan it, you want to plan ahead. So when do you plan to finish your training?
Aurelia Sedlmair
If all goes well, it ends next September, and I’ll know whether I passed by next year in November.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so you so you need to be starting to look for places in like June, July, next year. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Fair enough. So circle back then. And if you want me to introduce you to the chap we can do it. He likes me because when I went to take my Sword and the Centuries to him, I also brought my Fabris and I didn’t have my Capoferro yet, but my Girard and my Marozzo because he’s the sort of person who will appreciate them. So we have quite a long chat about, you know, these old books and where they came from and whatnot. And it was funny. He was looking at them with a completely different set of criteria in his head to mine. He was looking at things like the crispness of the printing and the quality of the paper that it’s printed on. And the binding and how contemporary the binding is likely to be all that sort of thing. Whereas I was mostly going, oh, pictures of swords. That’s cool.
Aurelia Sedlmair
I’m familiar with both of those ways of looking at the book.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so my last question, I think, actually, we should modify it, because someone gives you a million dollars to spend improving historical martial arts worldwide. That’s kind of not your central area at the moment. So what if somebody gave you a million dollars to improve conservation generally, in which we can include historical martial arts but we can also include bookbinding, and everything else. So basically, you have a big chunk of money to make the world a better place, how would you spend it?
Aurelia Sedlmair
I think I would find a way to encourage and support, really support, because I don’t think he makes a lot of money off the books, projects, like Michael’s facsimiles I like the idea of being able to catalogue and know where these treatises are. So that they can be helped if they need help, and made more accessible. Because I’m sure there are many, many private collections, where fencing books, other books are nicely hiding out. And nobody really knows or cares, because there are some huge houses, all of which would have participated in various wars, would have wanted to know how to fight with a sword and be interested in that. And it’s just sitting in some library, hopefully not mouldy. And it would be really nice to be able to put some effort into finding and cataloguing and realizing how much there really is out there. Filling some gaps, I’m sure. That’s, I think, what I would like that money to go to,
Guy Windsor
That’s quite a popular choice. Like, you know, give Michael the money. Now. I’ve had long conversations with Michael about how he doesn’t charge enough for his books. I’m like, Dude, you need to be making more money per book. I mean, even if he raises like, $80,000, or something on his Kickstarter, he’s probably taking home about three or four. It’s pathetic the amount of money makes on his books, but he basically is getting them produced and distributed, more or less, just about cost. Man, if someone’s paying $300 for a book, they’ll pay $380. And you get to keep the $80. And that’s okay for everyone. Because it means you can keep doing this.
Aurelia Sedlmair
He could also just add another tier. Yes, go all the way and have that book produced the way exactly that the original was. But, of course, at the time, these books were bound by the people that owned them, according to their taste and the flavour of their library. So there is leeway to have these books fit somebody else’s library.
Guy Windsor
Now, that’s a good idea. So you have your regular tier, and then you have your custom tier at like twice the price or something where you can choose the binding material on whatever. That is a very good idea. I will inform Michael of this idea immediately. Nnot wait on the chance that he might listen to this episode.
Aurelia Sedlmair
And then be so kind and send him my way. I’d be willing to do that.
Guy Windsor
I will say yes. Aurelia needs some bookbinding exposure. And it will be a good project for her. And yes, that’s actually not a bad idea. Huh. I should make a note to tell Michael. Yeah, I think having the extra tier is a good idea.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Because it doesn’t hurt. Yeah, there’s always someone.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, there are people who have the money who are willing to spend it on this thing.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yeah. And so not just the money, but also the inclination and the desire. I mean, having money is one thing.
Guy Windsor
Yes, like my sword fighting game. When we did an Indiegogo campaign for that. I figured it would cost about 25 grand. I think it was 25 grand to make the first pair of decks. That’s all the costs and everything and you know, paying the designers and paying the graphic artists and the printing and the shipping all that stuff, right. And so we had a patron tier, right, where you could just be the patron of the game for 25 grand. For which you’d get your own customized deck and various other things and literally a week into the campaign, this chap came up to me at an event and said, so what would I get for the patron tier? And I said, well, what do you want? And we had a chat about it. And I said, well, one thing we can’t do is fuck with the historical accuracy of the game, because that’s the core thing that they care about. He said, I wouldn’t want you to. I’m totally on board with that. And yeah, so he ended up being the patron. Nikodemus Kariensis, as his deck is named, and if that tier hadn’t been available, he wouldn’t have come up to me and said, actually, do you think I could just, like, be the patron and give you this big chunk of money?
Aurelia Sedlmair
It wouldn’t occur to most people.
Guy Windsor
Exactly. So yeah having that having that super high level of a tier can be a really, really useful thing. Okay. Yeah. So we’re sorting out Michael’s business for him.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Well, I don’t know. He’s sorted it this far. He’ll be fine.
Guy Windsor
Yes, he doesn’t really need our help. But he does need our support.
Aurelia Sedlmair
But none of us want him to stop. Because there’s so many, many more books out there.
Guy Windsor
So your long term plan is to be a professional bookbinder and conservator?
Aurelia Sedlmair
I would like to be a professional conservator. Yes.
Guy Windsor
More conservation than bookbinding?
Aurelia Sedlmair
I really enjoy making new books and figuring out how that works. And it is an unexpected pleasure to be that crafty. And to learn to be that crafty. With leather bindings.
Guy Windsor
I’ve had a brilliant idea. My first book, The Swordsman’s Companion is 20 years old next year. And it is hopelessly out of date from a historical fencing perspective. But a lot of people have a lot of affection for that book. I think that I should pull it from general circulation, because it’s totally out of date. But make a kind of 20 year anniversary thing where I combine it with The Medieval Longsword, which is still, even though I wrote that 12 years ago, that’s still actually pretty current. So that when people are buying The Swordsman’s Companion, they are getting the updated thing at the same time. But it’d be super cool, to have you do me for the top end support of the crowdfunding campaign a copy of the book that is done, shall we say artistically?
Aurelia Sedlmair
Really? Well, Guy, yes. Done.
Guy Windsor
Okay. So maybe off microphone, we’ll discuss how much it will cost and all that sort of thing. And I’m thinking we would probably want three. One for me. One for to sort of do on the campaign. And the way the way I hire artists for jobs is I tell them what I need. And then I give them an entirely free hand. So it’d be this is the book. Make it pretty. That’s the level of oversight you get. So this is the budget, this is the book, do me what you want for that price. Basically.
Aurelia Sedlmair
The artists you work with like you don’t they?
Guy Windsor
Yeah. Because they actually get to do what they want to. And here’s the funny thing, right? They do work for me, that is massively underpriced. The first time I do this, I commissioned a knife for a friend of mine, who’s a fantastic knife maker. I had enough money for basically his lower end of money. And my brief was, I have this much money, make me a knife. And the knife I actually got was something like, If I had a commission, it would have cost at least three times as much because he just because he could do what he wanted. He just played with it.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yeah. And he took joy in it. And it was worth a lot.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, exactly. So, that’s top tip for briefing artists, find someone whose work you actually like and then give them as much freedom as you possibly can just to do the job their way.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Let them have fun.
Guy Windsor
Okay. That’d be kind of fun, wouldn’t it?
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yes, it would. All right. Sounds good to me.
Guy Windsor
Okay. What will you need?
Aurelia Sedlmair
The parameters.
Guy Windsor
So print files, and…
Aurelia Sedlmair
We’ll talk about paper and the covers and leather and stuff. Headbands.
Guy Windsor
Sure. Very eighties breakdance. Can’t have a book without a headband.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Oh, it won’t be as scary as that.
Guy Windsor
Excellent. Okay. Now, I just did want to circle back on one thing. The beginners course thing. It will be useful for me to know what made you think of asking for private lessons before the beginners course.
Aurelia Sedlmair
I think the fact that I feel less watched and I would have considered private lessons right off instead of going into a group lesson. Okay, so it’s not that I like attention focused on me. But I do like the idea of being able to ask a question when it is appropriate for me. And in a larger class, that isn’t always polite or possible, because you work within a group, it’s a different dynamic. But when you have an instructor that is working with you, as opposed to with a group, they see different things, they notice different things.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, private lessons are usually a better environment for every student anyway. So I totally get why the private lesson is a better solution for you. But my question is, what made you think to ask for them? Because no one ever does.
Aurelia Sedlmair
It seemed natural to me. I’m so sorry.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so do you have a background in being taught stuff through private lessons?
Aurelia Sedlmair
Horseback riding.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. Ah, okay. So having had the experience of private lessons on horseback, and group lessons on horseback, going to fencing, you thought, okay, if I’m going to learn fencing, I’ll be better off with private lessons. And so I’ll ask for that. Interesting. Because a lot of people coming to swords have never actually been taught anything like that. So outside of regular school classes and stuff, they’ve not actually taken up a hobby at the level of seriousness where you’d even consider getting private lessons.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Right. But I would venture that most of the people that start with swords, and I’m generalizing wildly, are also in a different age group. They’re probably more in their 20s and not in their early 40s.
Guy Windsor
So were you in your early 40s when you started swords.
Aurelia Sedlmair
That makes a difference.
Guy Windsor
Because I’m just thinking of, like, it’s not practical for every student to have private lessons before they begin the beginners’ course. Not least because a lot of people just simply can’t afford it. And it’s not an efficient use of the instructor’s time, given the dropout rate in, you know, people to take up a hobby and they try it out or whatever. And some of them will quite reasonably decide that it’s not their thing and move on to something else.
Aurelia Sedlmair
But I knew it was my thing. I walked in there, and I knew.
Guy Windsor
You’re a slightly unusual case, in that you’re walking into a bricks and mortar school in downtown Vancouver. You happen to see the chief instructor there sitting behind the desk, who is also a born salesman. So, it’s not a representative case. That’s not how most people come across historical martial arts. But what I’m thinking of is what can we do to make an onboarding ramp for students who are shy about showing up to regular classes, which doesn’t necessarily require a lot of money from them, or a lot of time from the teacher on both?
Aurelia Sedlmair
The sales skills all aside, I didn’t need to be sold to.
Guy Windsor
I know. I’m not suggesting that Devon convinced you to take private lessons. Not at all.
Aurelia Sedlmair
But one of the things that got many people in the door and I think Marli might have mentioned that is the Groupon thing. As silly as Groupon is, and as wasteful as it is, I think it removed a barrier in terms of oh let’s just try it. And then you don’t have that huge personal investment where you say this must work because it’s expensive. And then you go in and you try it and you realize, hey, this is amazing. I can stab people and enjoy and get fit and train my brain and my body. And ideally, you stick with it or you investigate more.
Guy Windsor
Okay, so basically, the groupon thing, or something like it, solves the I just want to try this out issue. Right?
Aurelia Sedlmair
I think so. Yes. To some, to some degree. In some ways. It’s horrible, though.
Guy Windsor
But there are other ways to accomplish that same end. For example, one thing we have done is have, like, on a Saturday afternoon, a trial, anyone can come and have a go and try various weapons or various things. That is the same basic idea. But to me, the trickier problem is you have a student who is potentially really keen, really interested, but who has social anxiety or some reluctance to just showing up to a class, even a beginners class. I think that is a worthy problem to solve. And I don’t think your particular experience is actually going to be terribly helpful to fix it, because you’re not actually a representative sample of that population.
Aurelia Sedlmair
No, I’m not. But I would think that many people start off by immersing themselves into what’s out there online. They try and do a lot of reading. And if they’re motivated, they might try implementing what it is that they’re reading about. But the internet is the internet, not all of the stuff that you find on the internet is actually worthwhile.
Guy Windsor
Yeah. I have seen that some students will take one of my free beginners classes, online course type thing. And from there, those classes are quite carefully designed so you can do it on your own, you don’t need a training partner. It’s nice if you have a weapon, but you can use a stick if you need to. And it just gives people the idea of what it feels like to move and what it feels like to be doing this kind of training and what you know, what sorts of things they can expect. And that seems to have helped at least some people some of the time. But maybe being a bit more explicit and systematic about it like saying, okay, are you mad about swords? But are you bit nervous about showing up to a sword class? Well, here is this free introductory thing you could do on your own at home, no one ever needs to know, have a go. And if you’re interested, then maybe try this. Or maybe we have this next thing that you can have a go at. And then just actually explicitly and deliberately build people up to their first class.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Right. And that is a good thing. However, I tried some of the historical fencing groups that are in Sussex, and they basically have a waiting list for somebody to just start a course, which, you know, is not helpful.
Guy Windsor
That is not helpful at all. They have a waiting list?
Aurelia Sedlmair
It’s like, we’re at capacity right now. We’re not taking on new students.
Guy Windsor
What a nice problem to have, isn’t it?
Aurelia Sedlmair
But it might also be that it’s only one or two people teaching and they’re doing it in their spare time. Yeah. I don’t know the particulars. But I would gather, it’s something like that. And then I can see them saying, okay, we don’t want a huge class size, we want to be able to pay attention to the individual suits.
Guy Windsor
Can I just maybe suggest that, that class size restriction may not apply to people who already know what they’re doing.
Aurelia Sedlmair
But how will they know without seeing me?
Guy Windsor
Well, what you do is you say, hello, I’m Aurelia, I’ve taught classes at whatever, give them an idea of your experience. And say you’re training at West Dean or whatever. Would it be alright to come along to see you guys. And then they know you or they can check up on you, they know who you are. And I mean, it can feel like a bit of a dick move to kind of jump the queue but I’m pretty certain the queue would not be intended for people who already know what they’re doing. It will be intended for beginners. They don’t have the space for more beginners right now. But, I have never come across a martial arts school where, if you contact them directly and say, I don’t live near you, but I happened to be in your area, can I pop by?
Aurelia Sedlmair
And to be fair, they do longsword mostly.
Guy Windsor
Those peasants!
Aurelia Sedlmair
No, I didn’t say that.
Guy Windsor
I am more of a longsword person than a rapier person, so I can say it and everyone knows I’m joking. So it’s fine. No one has been insulted. Yes, I’m pretty sure that they’ll be happy to see you.
Aurelia Sedlmair
When it starts in September, I’ll go.
Guy Windsor
I may well know some of these people. So if you let me know, if you want an introduction, just because just like send me an email, say who it is. And if I know them, I can reasonably provide an email introduction before you start. It just makes the entry thing a bit easier.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yes, it does. And what I do after that, it’s up to me, isn’t it?
Guy Windsor
Absolutely, indeed. And I’m pretty confident that you’re not going to like, show up pissed and smash up the place and blind somebody and then, you know, piss on the floor and walk out. I’m fairly confident.
Aurelia Sedlmair
It is unlikely that I’ll embarrass you that way.
Guy Windsor
Exactly. So yeah, email introduction, no problem. But it’s funny, it wouldn’t have occurred to you to ask for that, would it?
Aurelia Sedlmair
That would be presuming. Why is that surprising?
Guy Windsor
It’s not surprising, particularly in the context of the other things we talked about. It’s not surprising at all. But it is the same issue as the not wanting to show up to a beginners class without already knowing what you’re doing at least a little bit. And you are absolutely not alone in that feeling. And you’re also absolutely not alone in not taking advantage of networks that you have. Because it just doesn’t occur to you to go, oh, actually, well, I know this person, and they know that person. And I want to talk to that person. So I’ll ask this person for an introduction.
Aurelia Sedlmair
It’s the six degrees, isn’t it?
Guy Windsor
Yeah. And it’s how networking works. I absolutely am extremely shy in all sorts of public gatherings. But by email, I’m quite happy to email anyone. So, yeah, and it occurs to me, that again, there’s not a problem to be solved exactly. But an issue to be taken into consideration, with beginners also not wanting to presume. I have had people contacting me before beginners’ class saying, they don’t know anything about swordsmanship. They’ve never trained anything at all. Is it alright, if they come? And I’m like, well, yes, it’s a beginners’ class, we expect people to know nothing, and you’re very welcome. And there are people who will feel that way and not feel entitled to actually send the email asking if they can. And then they won’t come and then we miss out on perhaps the next the next Capoferro.
Aurelia Sedlmair
In the end, people have to be a little bit courageous. And try.
Guy Windsor
That’s true. And it occurs to me, also, that not wanting to presume, there’s a flip side to this, right. I’ve run dozens and dozens of beginners courses. It’s been my experience, that students who flag up sort of issues with, they’ve got a sore knee, or they’ve got a health condition or whatever, before the class. Almost invariably don’t make it through the beginners’ course. And people who have much more serious conditions and say nothing, and they just show up and say, well, actually, I have this bone condition or whatever do you think I can train? They tend to stick with it. So it’s not like we want to encourage people to, because basically, contacting the school before you show up to the class is not correlated with longevity in the class. So the issue isn’t, do email us before you come. The issue is, feel free to ask for the things that you need.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yes. But also do you feel comfortable asking those things?
Guy Windsor
Yeah. Okay, more stuff to think about Aurelia.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Oh, there’s always more.
Guy Windsor
Excellent. So I have quite a to do list here, actually. I’ve got to talk to Michael. And I’ve got to give some more thought to the Swordsman’s Companion special edition. And you’re going to send me a bunch of pictures. Excellent. But yeah, now I really need to go and think about this problem seriously, because it’s one of the fundamental issues we have in historical martial arts generally that swords are scary. And people are attracted to them, but also scared.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Which is funny, because so it’s in and of themselves are like, guns. It’s how you use them, no?
Guy Windsor
Yes, but a sword fighting class is inherently more frightening than shall we say, a bookbinding class, because someone is going to be swinging a sword at your face.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Possibly. But also, if you’re going into the book binding you, sooner or later, learn the making of your tools, which involves knives because you need to pair the leather.
Guy Windsor
But we’re talking about beginners, who are probably not aware of the fact that they’re going to end up doing some knifemaking on their bookbinding course.
Aurelia Sedlmair
It’s not the thing that first springs to mind.
Guy Windsor
But with the swordfighting class, you know there’s going to be an opportunity for you to physically fail in front of a bunch of people, which is also true for book binding. But there’s also going to be the simulation of interpersonal violence, which is fundamentally frightening.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yes, simulation, but then you go to tournaments, and it goes way beyond the simulation.
Guy Windsor
But again, again, for the beginner thinking about their first historical martial arts class, one of the hurdles they have to get their head around is, will I be able to actually swing my sword at a person? And what will I do when somebody swings a sword at me?
Aurelia Sedlmair
I didn’t think about that at all.
Guy Windsor
No, you don’t. You didn’t maybe. But I’ve had plenty of students who did, because I know that they told me about it. Like, actually, the thing I was most worried about was someone’s actually going to try and hit me and I thought I might freak out. And people have had issues. They’re fine getting hit. But absolutely, they really had to find kind of critical reframings for swinging the sword at the other person. You basically have to frame it for them as you’re not trying to hit them. You’re trying to give them an opportunity to practice. So you’re helping them by swinging your sword at them.
Aurelia Sedlmair
And not pulling your punches. And having your correct measure and all those things.
Guy Windsor
Exactly.
Aurelia Sedlmair
I can see that. My measure is always short.
Guy Windsor
Well, because you’re shy about really thumping people.
Aurelia Sedlmair
As one should be.
Guy Windsor
Honestly, It’s not something I worry about, particularly.
Aurelia Sedlmair
There’s a difference, though, from school to school, you know. Having now experienced different different schools, literally, not everybody believes in not slamming your opponent, when you have the opportunity. You know there are people who actually do that. And why would you? I have no idea, but they do hit way too hard. And no, the sword doesn’t have to bend when it hits me.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, that is an issue. There’s a spectrum. On one end, you have no contact and you have full contact and historical martial arts or somewhere in between. Truly full contact historical martial arts, people would die. And truly no contact is useless. Pointless. Somewhere in the middle, there’s a there’s a useful spectrum. With like the visible spectrum of light, you’ve got stuff at either end, but the stuff we care about, I tend towards the hit a little bit harder than some other people might, but very much short of causing any kind of injury. And also, if we’re talking about hitting people in the head, they have to be wearing proper equipment. Fencing masks: don’t do it. So I think I will probably be somewhere towards the heavy end of the spectrum, from your perspective and you are somewhere towards the lighter and from my perspective, but it’s a thing that has to be communicated to students why we do it a certain way and what the advantages are. And, you know, if you do enough, unarmed martial arts with punching and kicking and stuff, you get used to getting hit pretty fucking hard. And that’s a useful thing for martial artists to be able to tolerate.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yes. Or at least know how to deal with that, emotionally, otherwise.
Guy Windsor
I mean, we’re not talking about beginners’ course stuff.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Yeah, yeah. But I like the idea of the wrestling being a part of the progression of teaching and learning, because sooner or later the sword fight does become a brawl, doesn’t it?
Guy Windsor
It can do. Particularly with blunt swords. I think it’s less of a problem with a sharp sword because the person is more likely to actually die when you stab them in the face rather than keep closing into wrestle. Fiore was right, put wrestling first. But it’s funny because an awful lot of people do rapier because they really don’t like the idea of wrestling. Which is ironic.
Aurelia Sedlmair
I’m not sure whether you actually have to like wrestling, but you should know your way around it.
Guy Windsor
Excatly. Yes, I agree. I mean, I am not particularly a wrestler. It’s not my favourite modality. I’m much more of a hitter than a grabber. But, yeah, you need to know your way around it.
Aurelia Sedlmair
And you need to know what’s coming at you, and how to properly respond to that.
Guy Windsor
Yeah, it’s like the old BJJ saying that the best way to defend against groundwork is to learn groundwork. They are definitely right in that. Okay. I have so much to think about Aurelia, I’m going to go away and think thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been lovely to see you.
Aurelia Sedlmair
Thank you for having me. I wish you could have seen me, that would have been nice if I could have organised that, but there we are.
