Melanie Jackson, Speaking Rybawdy, 2020

An artist’s publication of drawings by Melanie Jackson inspired by a particular set of medieval ‘obscenities’ known as the ‘bawdy badges’. Thousands have survived from the high and late middle ages. They were mass produced and easily affordable, part of a vast and profitable pan European trade. They are often discovered in the banks and the beds of its rivers. They are exquisite, rough hewn and lively sculpted reliefs. A group of these – of which little was written or acknowledged but many made and found – are known as the bawdy badges, or the secular badges, sexual badges, or the erotic pins.

The badges have been reimagined and redrawn as a procession in ink and pigment with a short introductory essay by the artist Melanie Jackson.