To Emulate a Book...

   

Recently the Calligrapher's Guild of Carolingia (and friends) went on a field trip to the Houghton Library at Harvard University. We saw, handled, and examined in detail a selection of manuscripts from their extensive collection. The Curator pulled pieces for us that aren't digitized yet, so we were seeing pieces that we couldn't view online.

Among the selection were a letter from Elizabeth 1 from before she was Queen, and a letter from Charles V, penned by his own hand.

The viewing also included a tiny leather bound book of 203 pages. It is beautiful - and tiny. 6cm across, 8cm high, 4cm deep. It fits in the palm of your hand. It just capivated me in a way that other books have not, and so I've decided that one of my side research projects will be to learn more about the book and eventually create a book in that style and size on a subject I'm not settled on yet. I don't want to exactly replicate the book, I'd rather take the elements, learn from them, and create a book that could be it's second half.

Photos of the book can be found here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/KXzNptk4vSSGFSkd8 

A Golden Mantle in a Norse style

The second assignment! This one I went and asked for, but I dearly wanted to be the scribe. Thankfully my boss said yes ;)

I've worked from the Urnes Stave Church doorway in Oslo before, and I knew I wanted to for this one as well. See, the recipient is changing his persona as we speak. His lady and I spoke often about his choices, and he was settling on Norse/Rus. I decided a doorway was a perfect metaphor for his new persona, and rolled with it.


This is the doorway, in its entirety. A man can fit through that entrance. It depicts serpents and horses, and the pattern is echoed on the actual door itself as well. I've used the design in part, but I wanted the grand nature of the doorway, and I wanted it to frame the text, hence using the whole piece.


This was another exercise in color choices though, as the doorway may have once been painted it is now just the grey of weathered wood. You can see spots of ochre around the doorway, but that wasn't enough for me to base the whole piece on, so I instead went with colors I knew he'd like. 

Kazimierz has not yet chosen a new name, and so to reflect this, I used the words "in common tongue" before his name, to denote that he may be known as something else in the future. 

The piece is on natural pergamentata and painted with Winsor & Newton gouache, and Higgins Eternal ink.

The shading of the background is done in purple and grey, the interior is done in only red. All the text is black. The hand is a faux runic, and is completely in English. The only metallic on the whole scroll is the Golden Mantle itself and I seriously debated about doing that in a metallic paint, but ultimately decided that yes, as it's not actually part of the original design, it should be metallic. I altered the knotwork just enough to get a hanging point for the Mantle. That is the only alteration to the original piece.

This is not 1:1 to the original. I do admit that I left far less margin space on this piece than I do on many, but I am not worried. There is sufficient space for the mat to sit.

There are no solid blocks of color on this scroll - everything is shaded in tiny lines.

A Golden Mantle in an English Style

When I found out that two very good friends of mine were being honored, I was even happier to realize that I could get both assignments. It's not the first time that I had two active assignments for one event, but it's the first time I knew them both so well.

The first was for Symon of Barnesdale - an English persona. Having just done words for his Silver Crescent, I had a wealth of options for reference text. I settled on this:
Add MS 24686 f 26v  The Alphonso Psalter c 1284-1316

It was missing elements that I knew were necessary - two cats (as he has two cats) and thrown weapons because that's what the award is being given for. In some cases, I know scribes are intrested to overload the marginalia with all the things the recipient loves but I went to the side of following the exemplar in this case.

I made one modification, I shortened the text to keep a space open on the right for the award medallion, a Golden Mantle hanging off the end of a spear.

 The finished piece. It measures almost 1:1 for the original. Natural pergamenata, Higgins Eternal black ink, Winsor & Newton and Holbein gouache, gold leaf with minatum.

I am very happy with how this piece turned out. My white work is closer to the original, but humidity was kicking me and it got a little thick in places. I am much happier with my calligraphy on this piece than with other pieces and I credit doing this hand a lot lately with that.

This is the first time I've done gold leaf on an active assignment. I didn't leaf before calligraphy, mostly because I had such a hard time deciding if I was gilding this or not. I'm glad I decided to.

I feel better about my lining on this piece. It was all done with a crow quill and Higgins ink. Likewise, my knotwork in the center of the D is better on this piece than on others and I dare say I'm getting better at that. The dragon in there makes me smile.

An Italian Award of Arms

In truth, I hadn't painted an Italian scroll before this, and now I'm sort of enamoured! I chose one manuscript, but pages, because I needed the text room. My idea was to do this as I did the Deed scroll, but opted not to fold it as I did the Deed scroll because I didn't have room to do the cuts the way I wanted too. I'll admit, my spacing was off on this one, and it's not centered on the sheet properly, but there is matting room all around it, so I'm happy there.

First, for text, was this: Add MS 15281 f.71v 

Then was this: Add MS 15281 f.72r

These are late period texts, roughly 1524 and is the Prayer Book of Sigismund I of Poland. The illumination was beautiful to me, and for an Italian persona it seemed an excellent source for an Award of Arms. 

The hand here is weird, a sort of crossover hand that I couldn't find reference for anywhere in my calligraphy books, so I just followed the source for all my words. That was new to me, and honestly a LOT of fun. 

The general form of the painting follows the time period and reminds me a great deal of Flemish manuscripts often called "squashed bug", just without the realism in color and deep shading for a 3D effect. Here, the colors are deep and shaded, but the background isn't treated to shading to make the flora stand away from the page. It's deep, but not overly dimensional. 

The finished piece: 

an 8.5"x11" piece of pergamenta in white, which most closely resembles the ground of the manuscript, done with Higgins Eternal ink and Winsor Newton & Holbein gouache. There is no gold on this scroll, as there is no gold on the original. 

My outlining isn't as precise as I wanted it to be, and this is because I didn't use my line tool as I did for the text lining. Even with the text lining I didn't have the gouache at the right consistency, and this I attribute to the fact that my house has a negative humidity right now and I didn't account for that when painting. Now I know! :D 

The words are not my own - I can thank Lord Nicol for them and for his amazing brevity as I had very little room to work with, even with the extra page added. I dearly wanted to avoid having to move down in text size, as I really wanted to reproduce the manuscript 1:1, which I did manage to achieve. I realize that his blazon may be longer than the available space, and for that I am sorry. 

All the flora was sketched freehand, and the flora inside the painted capital wasn't sketched, but painted freehand directly. 

My color matching has been a problem for me, and I do realize that my background is significantly more yellow than the original. I don't feel that's a problem in this case though, as it still sets off the flora nicely. 

I do feel my whitework is better on this piece than on previous pieces and I am renewed in my desire to finish the Flemish piece I started for Laurel's Prize Tournament last year. 

English sheet music Silver Brooch

So when I found out that a local harpist was the recipient of the Silver Brooch scroll I was assigned, it was clear I needed sheet music to be the inspiration piece. I love painting sheet music, mostly because despite the fact that the only instrument I play is the iPod, I love period music.

And the search began. Her persona is defined, so I insisted on keeping it period to her persona. Enter the Walters. This is one of theirs - a scant 4 folios of sheet music from one source, but lucky for me one of them was already a capital S. 1400's English.

This is the chosen page: W 745, f. Br - Two leaves of Antiphonary

I chose not to use the imagery in the capital, and instead replaced it with bench holding a harp. I played on the period practice of breaking the box and had the Brooch "pinned" around the outside edge. I really love how that looked once finished, and kept the outside decoration to the edge of the letter, instead of following the Brooch.

The original is on vellum, my scroll is done on pergamenata with gouache. The lines were done in red ink, as was the decoration around the capital letters. I used Higgins ink for the black, and Winsor Newton for the red.

Writing the text was both fun and difficult. I wanted it to follow the flow of the original text, but figured out really quickly that I had more to say than the original text did. After consulting a few musicians, I came to the decision that even if the text didn't really fit with the music anymore the music was still playable and that was, to me, the important part. I was as faithful as I could in replicating the music, considering I reduced the scroll size from the original.

I usually try very hard to create a 1:1 scroll ratio. The original piece is 14" x 19". My finished scroll is 9" x 11". I chose to go smaller because a) this is not a Peerage scroll and b) I do think about what sort of wall space the recipient has. Yes, I would have loved to create a huge scroll but I think that we as scribes need to understand that framing is costly on odd size scrolls and that while for something like a Peerage scroll that's fine, for something so early in the promising career of an artist in the SCA, being able to find a nice mat and frame at the store without having to special order a custom cut mat and frame is important. Thus, smaller scroll.

This is also the first scroll where I used a table to map out where my calligraphy went. Because I decided to use the notes in red as part of the text I did actually need to follow a map when I went to write the pieces. Having two calligraphy nib handles actually worked really well here and I have decided that I really do prefer having a round handle, and so will be replacing one of my pens soon.

The Story of a Silver Wheel in the Persian Style

I was sent an assignment for an event I've never been to, in a region I've not visited before and it necessitated that I ship my artwork to the Crown. All harrowing thoughts, seriously.

So I reached out to the contact listed on the assignment and got more information about one Lady Brit. An more information than I expected! So I started my research on a Safavid Persian scroll. This was useful as it greatly narrowed down the source material. In the British Library I found my mark - a Persian manuscript of the Tales of Sindbad, done in an Indian style.

My Exemplars: IO Islamic 3214 f.1r and f.46v

f.46v

f.1r

The hand is Nasta'liq - it is defined by short ascenders, long descenders, and a good deal of room between the beginning and end of a letter. I'm not sure that I was faithful to the hand in my exemplar, but it's a better faux Arabic than I've done before.

The text was very fun for me - I created text using one of the stories of Sindbad as a guide. The text tells the tale of the Court at Adventus, and Empress Caoilfhionn and Emperor Brennan assembling scholars and poets and having a discussion of what makes a person helpful. Many speak up and mention in turn the deeds that, it turns out, have all been performed by Brit. The Order speaks that they want her included and the Crown agrees, and so bestows the Silver Wheel.

The layout I chose is a combination of these two pages. Neither struck me as the right layout on their own, and I wanted something simple for this scroll, but striking. And so I landed at the layout of the finished piece:

A combination of two sources from the same book, adding diagonal text to balance the top and punctuating the piece with two diagonals giving more weight to the signature boxes for The Crown.

The materials are gouache and pergamenta, I did not use shell gold or gold leaf on this piece. In the original, the center of the medallion appears to be gold leaf, while the line work in both the medallion and the text page appear to be something closer to a mustard yellow. I decided that gold would stand better against the color of the perg, and would balance the metallic silver of the award itself, and so I used Holbein Rich Gold. I increased the proportion of the blue surround to give the medallion weight that wasn't just the gold in the center, and also to follow the wider center medallions sometimes seen in other Persian works.

The mockup for this layout was done in Photoshop. 

I'll confess - this is the first assignment I used the magic line tool on... and I love it. 


I've used a line tool to mark lines for my calligraphy before, but after Panteria I learned of the line tool for just making paint lines. I am extremely happy with how precise the lines are, and I see where my hand wavered and I released more paint than I wanted to - imperfections that I'm sure some can see but that I am ok with. 


The recipient: I was told that Brit prefers Persian, sometimes 
Landsknecht, sometimes Viking, and sometimes 13th century English. I took a chance that she prefered Persian and went that route. I'm glad I did. :) 

A Brooch...

I was awarded the Silver Brooch at East Kingdom 50 Year. I am grateful to their Majesties for including me in the Order of the Silver Brooch. I know I swore when I went up there. I know I was completely surprised - my dear Lord Guinemer did a wonderful job of keeping me in the dark the whole time.

I've been working on my arts lately, pushing myself to do better research and produce more correct documents. I know what I'm striving for now - deep authenticity in my work. A little winter bird asked me what I wanted out of my path. I almost choked when she asked me, partly because I knew at that time what milestone was coming soon on her path and partly because no one had actually asked me that before. I've thought long and hard about the question Mistress Christiana asked me that day and I have an answer now.

I want to produce works that are complete. What I mean is that I want to create something that when anyone views it gets a complete and total sense of the time period the work is from. I want to include the specific little details that make a piece period - glossing, marginalia, short hand, etc. I want a piece that I create to look as full and alive as the exemplars. I also want to create pieces that are original, that look as though they're another page of the book, not exactly *that* page of the book. Eventually, I want to help other people do that too. I want to be able to do a thing so completely that I can teach it. After all, what good is knowledge if you don't pass it on?

That's the goal of my path. There are many people I want to learn from to achieve this. I don't know if I'll ever wear the belt of one specific person, or a belt at all for that matter, and that's ok too. This doesn't worry me, or bother me. I want the knowledge and skill more than anything else.

So now comes the fun part of achieving my goal. It's all art, and that's the best part. Research is art. Painting and calligraphy is art. I feel like I took a good step with the Deed scroll. I also feel like the Deed scroll fell short in some really important areas. You'll have to read my documentation to get that info though, it's too long for a blog post.

(I feel like there's a Muppet's song playing in the background now... 😄)

So this is me, on my way. 😊