Kingdom Arts and Sciences has always been one of my favorite events to attend. Unfortunately for me however, I had to be at Fort Pickett, Virginia all weekend for training. While the training did end up being informative and I got to spend some quality time with my Soldiers, I was concerned with how I would get my work to the event.

Luckily, I had a dream team of three amazing women come to my rescue!

Ollamh Esa, Baroness Jane Fox, and my beautiful wife Baroness Margaret Lad drove over 13 hours and nearly 800 miles round trip to deliver my work to Kingdom Arts and Sciences Festival in Hampstead, Maryland.

For my display, I asked them to bring a Roman diadem with matching earrings, a Hellenic laurel wreath, a 13th century Hungarian coronet, and a 14th century Swabian coronet. I also sent along about 75 pages of project research and documentation. From what I’ve been told, the staff of KASF did a great job managing the event and even worked with Baroness Margaret to fix a printing error for signage; thank you too event staff!

On the table my group of heroines set out all of my projects and included a set of comment cards I printed to lay out. I got some pretty great advice and commentary from my friends about the display! I was also shocked and humbled by the sheer number of star tokens people left on my display; it was a great idea by the event organizers and made me feel even more appreciated for my work.

Because I wasn’t able to go to the event myself, I got to relive some of the fun on social media and that included seeing pictures of my work taken by people with a much better eye for photography than myself. For someone who is often extremely critical of my own work, it was so cool to see it through another person’s eyes. I think I’m starting to get the hang of this metalwork stuff!

One of the other neat things about doing KASF by proxy was getting to hear second-hand what questions were asked and what of my documentation people seemed to focus on. While some people did the happy “smile and nod” we all do at events with 250+ people and dozens of entries, several people apparently took the time to ask questions and read almost all of my documentation. It makes me very excited that I had the chance to not only display some of my work, but also to give people the chance to read up on how I made it, my inspiration, and even got to listen to Baroness Margaret explain my research into phaleristics on my behalf.

While I wasn’t able to make it myself, I’m so glad I got to be a small part of the event and I can’t possibly express my thanks enough to the three ladies who helped me share my artwork. If I’m lucky, next year I’ll make sure I give my input on the training calendar so I can make it in person!