For the weekend of Oct. 3, Civic Center Park was transformed into Hanfordshire, a town straight out of medieval times. Cloth tents, generously draped with patterned fabric, dotted the park, which was packed with attendees in period and fantasy costumes.
Organized by the Hanford Recreation and Community Services Department, the 47th annual Renaissance Faire hosted craftspeople, performers and food vendors.
Art vendors, who sold everything from reiki energy healing, tarot readings, broadswords, ceramics and corsets, had their own booths, each decked out in medieval and fantasy decorations.
Emma Sawoniewicz has been planning to go to Hanford’s Renaissance Faire for the last month.
“I really like fantasy and medieval,” Emma said. “I really wanted to find some decorations for my room and also to meet new people and see vendors.”
Emma and her mom, Marta, were dressed up in period costume that Emma picked out. Emma was wearing a purple ballgown dress with a lace-up bodice, while her mom wore a Celtic-inspired green dress.
On the first day of Hanford’s Renaissance Faire, Emma woke at at 6 a.m. to get ready, and Marta drove them all the way from their home in Los Angeles.
So far, Emma’s enjoyed her first Renaissance fair in the U.S., but now, she’s on the hunt to buy a dagger.
“I saw the people fighting each other,” Emma said. “It’s really interesting.”
For those wanna-be medieval knights, attendees could challenge their friends (or enemies, one assumes) to armored combat. In a wooden pen, people wore padded vests with a knight’s helmet, whacking each other with foam swords.
And roaming the grounds, bards treated attendees to musical compositions, singing and playing both the accordion and tambourine.
Lydia Fortner is a performer with Banat Tanjora, a collective which portrays 16th-century Egyptian dancers and musicians, as well as Tahtib, stick fighting martial art and performance art.
“You can see pictures of it on the walls of the pyramids. So a lot of this stuff dates back farther than has been recorded,” Fortner said.
Fortner has loved ancient Egypt since she was a kid, and that passion led her to learn, and eventually teach, belly dance.
She’s no stranger to Renaissance faires, which she’s been coming to since the mid-’90s. Fortner said that in the last 30 years, Renaissance faire culture has shifted from strict historical reproduction to casual imaginative play.
“They kind of have loosened up the parameters of, like, you used to have to have speak in an accent. They used to have classes you had to take,” Fortner said.
She thinks the rise of cosplay shifted attendees’ expectations for renaissance faires.
“It’s much more like ‘Oh, well we’re just dressing up and having fun’,” Fortner said. “We’re having fun and playing because grownups can play too.”
Banat Tanjora still does historical education, with traditional Turkish coffee tasting presentations and historic dance and music performances.
But Fortner is just one of the many performers at Hanford’s Renaissance Faire.
Attendees were strolling through Civic Park when voice rung out, “God save the Queen! God save the King!”
Then, a procession of court performers emerged, each dressed in resplendent historical costumes — think Anne Boleyn headdresses, full skirts with layers of petticoats and collar ruffs.
Some performers dressed as guards raised their medieval polearms and shouted, “Huzzah!,” as they all marched to the Courthouse steps.
That’s part of what makes Renaissance faires unique: how many different kinds of experiences they offer. Some people like the interactive theater element; other people like shopping the handcrafted wares made by local artists.
Gary Kyhn is a vendor, selling his handcrafted wire-wrapped stone necklaces and hammered copper bracelets. One pendant features a stone wrapped in copper wiring that he twisted into the shape of a tree.
He started his business, One of a Kyhn, after he got into stone cutting during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He loves the process of discovery that stone cutting offers: he puts stones that are millions of years old in his table saw and splits them in half, revealing the true treasure within.
“And I’m the first one to ever lay eyes on them,” Kyhn said.
Kyhn is 71 and has been selling his work fulltime since he retired from the air conditioning business last September.
He’s found that handcrafted art, like his own work, is a big hit at Renaissance festivals.
“It’s where people really seem to appreciate my stuff,” he said.
Renaissance faire attendees are also a special type of customer, he’s discovered.
“We hardly ever see anybody upset with each other. It’s just a community that really seems to get along,” Kyhn said.