The GUILLD · the shelf
Go back to the traditions — and bring the pattern home.
Ireland, France, England, Scandinavia, Italy, Iberia, Germany — the 1300s, 1400s and 1500s, when a household was a firm, a trade was a sworn body, and a name was an address. Every word here is stored in the site and read back to you by the same local search the Pearl uses. Nothing is generated, nothing is sent anywhere, and no tokens are spent.
The traditions
Each one holds the household, the trade, and the 1300s · 1400s · 1500s — plus free public-domain books and the real record offices for your line.
3 centuries · 2 books
Ireland
Kin-land held in common, law kept by memory, and a poet paid as much as a smith.
Ní neart go cur le chéile — there is no strength without togetherness.
3 centuries · 2 books
France
The métier: a trade written into a book of statutes, with a masterpiece to prove you had learned it.
À chacun son métier — to each their craft.
3 centuries · 2 books
England
The livery company: learn seven years, work as a journeyman, then open your own bench.
Learn it, prove it, then teach it.
3 centuries · 2 books
Scandinavia
The farm carried the name, and the household was measured by what it could keep through winter.
The house that stores, stands.
3 centuries · 2 books
Italy
The arti of Florence: a guild could govern a city, and a workshop could raise a genius.
Keep the book, and the book keeps the house.
3 centuries · 2 books
Spain & Portugal
The gremio and the cofradía: a trade and a brotherhood, the same men in two rooms.
The brotherhood carries what one hand cannot.
3 centuries · 2 books
Germany & the Low Countries
Zunft and Meisterstück: the trade owned the standard, and the standard owned the town.
Prove the work, then the work speaks for the house.
Put books on the shelf
Open any public-domain book from a tradition page — Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive are both free — copy the chapter you want, and paste it here. It is split into passages, kept in your own browser, and answered from then on by the same search above and by the Pearl on every page. No model call, no tokens, ever.
Give her a book. Paste a chapter or drop a text file — she splits it into passages and quotes it beside the laws, the gems and the castles. Nothing leaves your browser — and she strips markup, scripts and anything that looks like a password or card number before shelving it.
Her shelves are empty. Start with one chapter.