Guilds

In earlier medieval times, Guilds (originally Gilds) were social and religious institutions, providing mutual support to their members. In later periods, they came to be exclusive associations for mercantile groups, such as merchants, or craftsmen.

Guilds would help their members in a number of ways:

• Supporting the families of dead members
• Setting price ranges for wares (thus preventing uncompetitive pricing)

Guilds in the SCA

An SCA guild is an association for promoting a particular art or science. There are a large number of Guilds in the SCA, covering most of the major arts and crafts.

Some of the Guilds are:

• The Cooks Guild
• Brewer's Guild
• The Bardic Circle
• Guild of the Silver Rondell (dance)
• Woodworker's Guild
• Fibre guild (spinning, weaving, dying, braiding)
• Worshipful Company of Embroiderer's
• Costumer's guild
• Falconer's guild
• Cheese maker's guild
• Metalwork/Jeweller's guild
• Herbalry/Gardening Guild
• Guild of Scribes (illumination and calligraphy)
• Rapier Guild (or Guild of Defence)

A full list of guilds in Lochac can be found on the Lochac guild guide here: http://www.sca.org.au/lochac/groups/guilds.html

Guilds in the SCA offer ways to improve and share your knowledge in the subject area, through in-person meetings and correspondence (snail mail and email list). They also encourage their artform to be practised more - more lessons, competitions in that topic, etc.

Some guilds use a structure of names (eg novice, journeyman, master, unranked) to indicate the assessed skill of a member. This rank generally indicates a few things:

• the assessed skill of the guild-member (ie how well they make/do guild-specific things - including how well-documented the things are)
• the productivity of the guild-member (i.e. how many things they've made or how many variants of skills they've learned)
• how skilled the guild member is at *teaching* the skill to others

For example, in the Guild of Defense:

• Journeyman is an apprentice teacher and has mastered 3 different styles of period fencing
• Provost is an accepted teacher and has mastered 5 different fencing styles
• Guild-master is an exceptional teacher and has mastered 7 different styles

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