LOWER LAKE >> Tuscan Village became a time machine last weekend, transporting visitors to 16th century Italy where the Renaissance began and guilds ruled.
Welcome to the seventh annual Lake Renaissance Festival, set amid the 2.5 acres of gently rolling tree-covered hills of the Village, part of Terrill Cellars Winery in Lower Lake.
Entering the festival, guests were taken to a re-creation of a Tuscan, Italy, seaport village of the 1500s, a time when Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo were creating magnificent works of art in Italy and Queen Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare were helping shape England.
The festival featured role-playing guilds that usually represent a trade or nationality, especially Italian, Scottish, Irish and English. For going rogue, there’s the ogre and pirate guilds.
There were even guilds within guilds, such as the Pirates Brew Guild whose motto is, “Will Pirate for Pleasure.” The guild is run by Jose Rodriguez of Willows and has had a booth at the festival for three years, selling home-made mead, a wine made from honey.
Appropriately, Rodrigues is a bee-keeper in real life. “We have a lot of fun here,” he said. “That’s why we do it.”
Why mead? “We’re pirates,” Rodriguez said. “Drinking is our thing.”
Unlike most renaissance fairs, the Lake County festival is quite small, attracting only several hundred visitors on Saturday. A larger crowd was expected on Sunday following the Lower Lake Daze Parade.
“That’s what people like about this festival: it’s intimate and it’s about people performing and getting into character, not just about selling wares,” said festival organizer Tom Wilsey of Lower Lake.
Characters from pirates and ogres to fools and royalty mingle with visitors, many who are in costume. About a dozen vendors sell a variety of mostly Renaissance-themed wares, including jewelry, clothing and food. Other booths offered hair braiding and fortune telling.
First-time festival visitors Maureen O’Hare and David Ahmuty of Vallejo came dressed in Scottish-period garb that included a kilt for Ahmuty.
“This is charming. It really looks like a village,” Ahmuty said. “It’s very quaint and organized.”
At a booth near the entrance, Emily Berby and Aurora Garcia, 6, of Sacramento, drew a crowd as Berby made dragon-shaped bread while Garcia shaped her dough into a butterfly.
Nearby, Chandler Brown of Carson City, Nevada, discussed the fine art of being a knight to several visitors. Brown, whose festival name is Connor, is a member of the Scottish Clan Frazier Guild.
A little further into the grounds, Kinene Barzin of Clearlake Oaks demonstrated how to spin wool using a drop spindle, which she said is one of the oldest form of spinning in the world.
At the far end of the grounds sat the tent of the Scottish Lark’s Cove Guild, a historical group that conducts a 16th century clothing demonstration and a story time for children.
“This festival definitely has more of an atmosphere of the age,” said Lark’s Cove member Pat Nelson. “It’s a nice little venue. It’s very friendly because it’s small.”
Music was provided by Lake County’s all-female vocal group My Divas and the Celtic music group, We’re Not A Band, from San Jose, with Tony Becker on guitar and his wife, Cecelia Becker, on drum and harp.
