When you have to repair your own scroll...

A while ago I was in a relationship with someone who fancied themselves a great artist. Without asking me, they took my AoA scroll and painted on what they thought were my arms. Yes. They painted arms that weren't mine on my Mistress Sarah the Limner Award of Arms scroll. And if that wasn't bad enough, they painted on the scroll with testors and citadel enamel model paints. If I ever see this person again I might actually hit them.

The repair of this has been an interesting two days. First, scraping off the paint resulted in the paint dust beginning to stain the bristol ground... which meant that I stopped immediately, and changed tactic - I did keep scraping, but this time I tilted it so the dust fell straight away. A staedtler eraser took care of what was stuck to the bristol. I couldn't get all the paint because it's soaked into the paper, so I did what I could to rough up the surface. 

Then I painted an even layer of titanium white over the whole area, crossing over onto the paper. It is much, much larger than I think the shield area was every supposed to be... but, I wanted my paint layer to have at least some hold on the bristol, so here we are. 

I let that sit for 24 hours. 

Then, I painted on my arms with the lightest touch I've ever used, in an attempt to not pull up the white layer into my colors. I'm happy to say that it's worked as best it could. 

I let that sit for a few hours till dry, and when back to the the line work. 

I'm happy with the results. It's getting framed as soon as I know it's totally dry and then, hopefully, I never need to worry about repair or correction on this piece again. Yes, I should write my arms in eventually but I think I'll wait till my calligraphy is better to do that. 

AoA, with incorrect arms

AoA, with correct arms

A Silver Mantle in the style of a book of artifacts

It's been my goal for a while now to create scrolls that are both historically accurate in both look and size, as well as decidedly different than what we usually see for scrolls in the East Kingdom. 

I had an excellent chance with the Silver Mantle for Cathain Reiter. 

The source is a Heiligthumsbuch - that is, an itemized record of artifacts in Bamberg Cathedral circa 1508. It is a beautiful book that shows mantles with the arms of various donors and noble families and Saints, as well as semi-detailed watercolors of the actual pieces themselves. I chose two pages that were not connected to create a scroll that encompassed all the elements I wanted to display. 

f.2r: The banners and mantle 

                

f.13r: The reliquary containing a horse and rider

I stayed faithful to the lining and calligraphy style though I admit the calligraphy was the very hardest part. I used a #6 Mitchell nib and even still felt that was too large for the spacing I had - it turned out well, but it was very frustrating to finish. I practiced the calligraphy more for this scroll than any other I've ever done. For the sake of sanity I omitted the ink blotches and bleed through that is seen in the original. 

I used the arms of the East and of the recipient for the banners, and created a Silver Mantle mantle out of the mantle with arms. I'm coming to find I really absolutely love to include fabric on a scroll because I find great pleasure in painting fabric. Most important when you're painting a pattern on fabric that is folded is to follow the direction of the fabric - the mantles that are on the part folded over the bar at the top are upside down. Though the recipient's arms are fieldless, I drew inspiration from a heraldic dress she is wearing in a photograph to create her banner. 

The reliquary in the original shows a horse with rider, and a person kneeling next to the horse. I omitted the people from that imagery and focused instead on the horse. It's shown wearing a drape, as her horse has a drape in the photo from which I drew her banner inspiration. 

Many, many thanks to Mayken van der Alst and Alys Mackyntoich for their help in a, translating the original German for me and b, helping smooth phrasing. 

gouache and Pelican ink on pergamenata

Behold, the standard of the East Kingdom born by the Consules of the East, Magnus Tindal and Alberic von Rostock, come to bestow honors on Herrin Cathain Reiter. 

Behold, the arms of Cathain Reiter, a Champion of Horse, a Champion of Archery, to wit: a drawn Horsebow endwise knocked with a Needle threaded Or.

Behold, the badge of the Order of the Silver Mantle, given for prowess in equestrian arts, first given by our Royal Ancestors Brion III and Anna III in the 51st year of the Society.  

Behold, for her unquestionable skill on horseback and unfailing dedication to this martial pursuit, the Consules do by these present letters bestow and endow Cathain Reiter with the Silver Mantle, this gift to be proclaimed to the world in their Second Ethereal Court in the 55th year of the Society.

Hate has no Home here

 A commission piece for the Barony of Carolingia, and a sentiment I completely agree with. 

B(east)

 This piece was done for auction, but once I had the idea I had to talk to a few people - who ultimately won the auction! 

This was inspired by a manuscript I saw in person at an exhibit in Boston. I was so taken with the page that I wanted to paint it, but I never had the opportunity to use it for a scroll. It wasn't meant to be a scroll. 

Instead I used it for this piece, with the permission of Their Graces Brennan and Caoilfhionn as the creators of B(east). 

It's based on this piece: https://beyondwords2016.org/objects/glossed-psalter, modified to be only "East" instead of the whole text. This is 1:1 for the original image, painted on pergamenata with modern gouache and shell gold. 

In the Style of the Cuthbert Gospels...

 This piece wasn't a scroll, it was a chance to get seriously authentic. 

For the Silver Brooch Gift Exchange, I was given a woman who write poetry and loves the Cuthbert Gospels. So, I decided to have one of her poems translated into Latin, and to write it on vellum so she'd have a special copy of it for her own that looked like a page out of her favorite manuscript. My gratitude to Aelia Fortunata for the translation. 

The poem was written for Countess Fortune on the occasion of her Coronation by Isabel del Oakes, the recipient of this piece. 

Lining was done in pencil following the period exemplar. I used a modern Mitchell nib and handle, and modern ink. This piece is on goat skin vellum. 

Silver Tyger for a 13th Century Crusader

This project was a special one, as it gave me a chance to work with a central figure which is not something I usually do, as well as work with an excellent wordsmith, Baroness Anastasia Guta. 

This piece is based off
Royal MS 20 a ii 
f. 6r

gouache and Pelican ink on pergamenata

Pages of color and gold - King and Queen's Arts and Science competition

As part of my decision to delve further into the world of Scribal Arts, I decided to enter the Kingdom Arts and Science competition at this past Mudthaw. This was my first Kingdom competition, and my second competition ever.

my original scroll            Ms. Ludwig IX 18, fol. 269 - Getty Museum

I expanded on a work I started for the Laurel Prize challenge in Carolingia - the creation of a 16th century Flemish page, in the "squashed bug" style. My original is Belgian, c 1510. The color, the realism of the flora and fauna, the delicate nature of the page - all this intrigues me and I felt driven to know more about the style.

This is a style we see often in SCA scrolls, as it truly captures the "wow" factor for the "Court reveal"... the background for those scrolls are often done in gold. The question I set out to answer was - is the background actually gold? My theory was that it wasn't simply a gold background - the material cost was too dear. My theory was that it was, in fact, a yellow base with shell gold overtop.

It turns out I was right.

Physical Research:
To determine what the color was, I started with only a scan from the Getty and printed from my laser printer at home. Most likely the worst version of reproduction and very likely not color accurate to the original. I spent many, many hours matching the yellow and blue you see in the background, and managed to match them very closely. It was then possible to create this page using no gold whatsoever and produce a look very close to the original.

This was not correct though, as these pages are, 90% of the time, gold. When photographed flat, shell gold doesn't always glitter. In fact, from what I've found, it almost always presents as a flat area of color. Through talking to other scribes who have viewed these books in person, my own research at the Houghton Library at Harvard and at the Morgan Library in NYC it was obvious that the area is usually gold.

The goal then was to find an example of a color background under shell gold. I found this at Brandeis University archives - a small illuminated book from the late 1400's where a yellow color was laid down in a wide stripe around the inside of a capital letter, and a thinner line of shell gold is laid on top of that. The gold is rough and spare in places, showing the yellow paint behind it.

Text Research:
I looked to texts on practice to find details of the background colors for gold. Much is said about the ground of gold leaf - it is often a rose or red color to deepen the color of the gold. Not much is said about the ground of shell gold, other than it is useful to have one.

Testing:
My first tests were only color matching:


Then were layout 1 and 2


The differences here subtle but distinct. 

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This project wasn't a bust, the research was a good start but ultimately I lost interest in it completely. My documentation for this piece was weak, as rightfully pointed out by my judges, and I thank them for their excellent feedback and guidance.