Admin stuff

It's that time of year again when I sweep through this blog and remove dead or inactive links etc...

If you are a kingdom scribe and are active and wish to participate in this community then email me ( see side bar for link) with your info. If you have a scribe blog of your own or an image gallery to share please also send me the link.

If you are on the list of authors but you have not been active for over a year I will remove you as an author. You can still read and comment on posts but I don't see a reason to keep authors on the list if they do not contribute. The idea of this community was active participation so that everyone who wanted to can learn and grow etc, yadda yadda... If you do not want to lose your author status then let me know and please contribute.

If you have requested author status and it hasn't happened re email me sometimes I miss the mail.

If you are a scribe in the kingdom and you're seeing this for the first time and you want to help out with Kingdom scroll work please contact the Kingdom Signet Clerk, Trinite ( address on the side bar) who is amazing and doesn't bite for more information.

As always... this is not an official anything to do with Drachenwald blog but more a virtual scriptorium so that this Kingdom's scribes could learn, share and give thought without having to spend tons of cash to go places ( not that we don't like to go places but sometimes it's nice to stay home as well). Anything scribal goes including where to get supplies, books we love or hate, museum images and items you want to swap, share or sell and so on. This is our scriptorium so use it to it's full advantage.

On uploading images. I know some people have some issues so I reccomend picasa which is tied into blogger and google. It is insanely easy to upload stuff to the blog via picasa and it is a great photo store upload web space place. No they don't pay me to say these things but having used many other image hosting sites I can say this one is the easiest I have found so far.

I think that's it for now.

Bridget

now it has been awarded I can share...

This is the cap for a barony scroll done for this weekend. The Capital letter is taken from John Scottowe's alphabet book. The example is above.

It is done with oak gall ink, shell gold, gold paint and gouache. I will upload the full scroll images later.

I am really pleased with how it turned out, tho less happy with my calligraphy but that's what i get for using a larger nib and trying a bigger sized script on short notice.

illumination/calligraphy found in the museum 'Schottenstift' in Vienna

...and some interesting calligraphy & illumination found at the "Schottenstift" museum in Vienna - I tried to make good close up pictures too - I tagged all illumination and calligraphy photos, you can find all photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/racaire/tags/calligraphyillumination/ )

...and here some of the books and documents I found:















I hope you'll find the photos interesting, if not, than I very apologize for posting this information.

illumination/calligraphy found in the museum 'Schloss Gottorf' (near Hamburg)

At the museum "Schloss Gottorf" I found this three lovely books that I would like to share with you:






Gebetsbücher / prayer books about 1460-1485

Islamic Calligraphy

I very apologize because this calligraphy is outside the SCA period, but I found it at the MKG (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe) in Hamburg, Germany and thought you would appreciate if I share it with you (I also made some close-up pictures of this lovely work)

"Belehnungsurkunde mit Tughra"
Istanbul, Osmanen-Dynastie, datiert (dated) 1737

penwork success, finally!

Since May I have been concentrating my scribal efforts on mastering penwork. I had a lot of people to thank after my Ph.D. defense in September, and I used the opportunity to make lots and lots of penwork thank-you cards. None of them ever seemed quite right; there was always some point where I could tell that the design element I had just added was wrong, and I'd better stop or I'd make it even worse. This isn't to say that they didn't turn out pretty, but they just weren't right.

This weekend at the calligraphy workshop in Isengau, while the participants were practicing their newly found calligraphic skills, I sat down with an exemplar and gave penwork another stab. And it worked! I picked a design that had to be altered very little in order to fit the design I had in mind, and I think that was the trick: If I try to design something on my own, odds are it won't look nice, but if I can mostly copy something, then it turns out pretty nifty.

So here's the original:



This is British Library MS Burney 320, fol. 2.

And here's my interpretation:



The capital in the exemplar is actually a 'Q', but I moved the tail over a bit and decided I could call it a 'G'. I'm really happy with how it turned out!

And I also know exactly which letter I want to try next:



(This is BL MS Burney 252, fol. 4v). Isn't that awesome?!

Miss Mc Posty at it again....some rare out of print books and where to get them

After spending some time browsing through the interwebs world of used books ( I love it) I found these two gems.... anyone with some extra spending money and lust for really decent books should take a gander because these two are worth it.

1. RANDALL, LILIAN M.C.
Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts.
This Scandinavian site is offering the book at 400 kr, or 78 US or around 55 euro. I paid over 100. USD for my copy and this book is a must for anyone interested in Gothic marginalia. I think when I was in university I had it out on permanent loan.

Lilian Randall


2. ROXBURGHE CLUB. BACKHOUSE (JANET) EDITOR. John Scottowe's Alphabet Books. ( those really cool alphabets you saw in one of my earlier posts... this book has lots of images.)

This is a fairly rare book with limited printing. The price here is GBP 75.00 (Appr.: EURO 81.25 US$ 122.1 ) This is a great price considering I just saw it for over 200. USD elsewhere, plus the shipping site is in the UK so it will be easier for anyone ordering in Europe.

Scottowe's alphabet book

very cool

a video description about miniatures in medieval books ( it's in dutch but the images speak for themselves. Watch how she draws a filigree cap with modern markers. It's a lot of fun.

for anyone interested in cadels...

start page for the Beinecke library

do a search for "ms.439"

the site has 3 pages on this particular set of images all fantastic.



you can also find some nice examples here:
Elizabeth's england

Icelandic manuscripts online

In my research for a TI article on the manuscripts of Iceland I've come across a quite useful online archive of some of the manuscripts held at the Arni Magnusson Institute in Rejkjavik:

http://www.am.hi.is/WebView/VefHandritalisti.aspx

It's in Icelandic, and you need to know the catalogue number of the manuscript you want to see, but just click on "Skoða" to see the manuscript itself.

Jónsbók, the most highly decorated of the period manuscripts, is AM 350.

Guild Charter...

...for the Dragon's Needle Embroidery Guild

I think it would be nice if I tell the whole story concerning this big 'scroll' :)

Everything started with the reworked "Dragon's Needle Embroidery Guild Charter" - finally an approved Guild Charter now - and the idea to get it signed at University.
I wasn't sure about the scroll design,... before I visited the "Charles the Bold" exhibition the second time - this time with Master Giano - and while I was talking about my charter design problems with Master Giano, I fell in love with some of the documents there and discussed with Master Giano the possibilities of such a document... and I also fell in love with the idea of a signed and sealed document :)
First I thought that it is not possible to get a signed and sealed charter but Facebook was very helpful concerning this question - some people suggested, that there is a Drachenwald seal available and after writing a message to our gentle Royals, I got a message that there is a Drachenwald seal available and that they would love to use it :)

Back in Germany Master Giano sent me two sheets of A3 pergamenata because I only have A4 size at home - that's good for lovely AoA scrolls but not for 2 pages of printed charter text - the pergamenata sheets were folded two times for the snail mail transport from Germany to Vienna and unfolded with some books on top of them for some days I could get them rather flat again.
I was very afraid that I wouldn't get the whole text on one A3 page - therefore and to practise the Bastarda, I tried to write a part of the text down using different nibs (http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2655/4006486186_15ba066c03.jpg) and compared how much place I needed for the text in relation to the printed A4 text to get sure that I can get the whole text on the paper...

...I decided to take a "4" nib for the first line and a "6" for the rest of the text - I have to admit that I recognized that I already used the "6" nib for the first line when I finished writing it *ups* *lol*
It took me about 7hours to complete the scroll and some minutes to get rid of some small mistakes...

Now I just need the text for the folded bottom part where the Royals will sign the document and I want to make a small 'pre'-seal part for the document to make the sealing easier and faster and to prevent the seal from braking easily...

My main inspiration for this scroll:
-> Bestätigung des Ehevertrages - "Karl der Kühne stimmt der Heirat seiner Tochter Maria mit Maximilian von Österreich bedingungslos zu" - Lausanne, 6. Mai 1476
...and concerning the red lines:
-> Mündliches Testament der Maria von Burgund - "Maria verunglückt bei der Jagd. Auf dem Sterbebett diktiert sie ihren letzten Willen" - Brügge, 24. März 1482

C&I workshop in Isengau

I'm posting this on behalf of Ælfwynn Leoflæde dohtor, who isn't a member of this blog. She and her husband, Conrad zer Rüben, will be hosting a calligraphy & illumination workshop in two weeks, on Sunday October 25, starting at 10am and lasting all day. People of all skill and interest levels are invited to come. The excuse for this workshop is that I'll be visiting that weekend, and bringing books and supplies. We'll be looking through pictures, talking about design theory, and practicing both calligraphy and illumination. If you're interested in coming, please contact Ælfwynn at aelfcatte@yahoo.com, for directions to her place. If you can, please bring whatever supplies you have -- paintbrushes, paints, paper, calligraphy ink, nibs, nib bases. Ælfwynn will have some supplies that can be borrowed, and I'll be bringing more that can be borrowed, as well as watercolor paper for practicing. I also hope to be bringing some pergamenta for people to make (or at least start) a scroll blank.

Something Different

When flipping through Maurits Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures from the 8th to the Mid-16th Century, after acquiring it, I found a plate which made me go immediately "I want to adapt that for a Silver Guard":



Not too long after that, Trin signed me up for a Silver Guard on the backlog, and I set out making the adaptation.

It turned out to be both more difficult and easier than I expected. It was easier to come up with a workable wording than I would have thought, but it was harder to decide exactly what colors and what media to use. With the exception of the letters and the gold, all the rest is ink, instead of paint, and I generally used a pen with a very fine nib, rather than a paintbrush. I'm not entirely happy with how the color for the tunic turned out, my guy's face looks rather bizarre compared to the original (and Joel says his hairdo looks like a Pharaonic headdress), and I didn't get the spacing quite right (notice the unfortunately rather small bottom margin, and the lack of the outer border, which I think finishes off the original nicely but which I didn't have space for on mine) but overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out:



What I most love about this design is how totally different it is from any other illumination I've ever seen.

EDIT: My friends on LJ know some cool stuff. It appears that the plate reproduced in Smeyers is itself a copy of an earlier, 9th C, manuscript, and that the person depicted is Louis the Pious. Here's a picture of that plate, courtesy of Wikipedia.



Knowing that mine is a copy of a copy of an image makes it even cooler.

Amazing!

A new theory about how the monks achieved microscopic detail - without microscopes:
My goodness!

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Sept09/KellsAngels.html

Recent recommendations for your booklists from BL

(x-posted to my LJ)
Robert and I browsed the British Library display on Sunday, after dropping my mum off at King's Cross (we were running late so we'll have to get the Station 9 3/4 picture on her return). And no visit is complete without a browse through the bookstore.
Robert is very cautious on these trips and sees it has his job to act as my financial conscience (and having just dropped a wad on a special book for him, I was, in fact, skint in the book budget dept)...but I came away with three splendid titles to recommend, and to put on the wishlist.
BTW: BL Bookshop says 20% off all online shopping in September!
All these books are less than £20, so they're really very reasonable - and the medieval dress one is now in paperback.

This one's for aryanhwy (in her search for images of ships)
Ships and Shipping in Medieval Manuscripts
Author:Joe Flatman
ISBN:978 0 7123 4960 4
Hardback, 144 pages, 280 x 216mm, 150 colour illustrations
Vividly brought to life with 150 diverse images Ships and Shipping in Medieval Manuscripts paints a vibrant picture of maritime life during an era of unprecedented expansion.

Medieval Dress and Fashion
Author: Margaret Scott
ISBN:9780712306751
ISBN:978 0 7123 5067 9 (ppbk)
208 pages, 280 x 216 mm, 140 colour illustrations
This is the first book deliberately to focus on dress as it is depicted in the illuminated manuscript, and to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of illuminations as source material, as well as indicating how dress would have been understood by the manuscripts’ original owners.

Table of Contents
Introduction
Dressing the Great and the Good, c.840–c.1100
The Start of Fashion, c.1100–c.1300
Fashion and Formality, c.1300–c.1400
Dressing Everybody, c.1400–c.1500
Dressing the Present and the Past, c.1500–c.1570
Bibliography
Glossary
Index

...and here I was torn - between fashion and calligraphy:

Guide to Scripts Used in English Writings up to 1500
Author:Jane Roberts
ISBN:9780712309035
Price £19.95 £15.96
328 pages, 12 colour and 70 b/w illustrations, 276 x 219 mm, Paperback
Despite a resurgence of interest in the history of the English language there is currently no book available to introduce readers to the scripts used in Old and Middle English writing. The best way to gain a sense of the changes in scripts across time is via visual example, and this book seeks to show the reader just why Middle English is different from Old English and at the same time to explain how the change is gradual.

As you can imagine, it was hard to pry me out of the shop.

Another document scroll

I penned a copy of the indenture between Sir Vitus and Lord Edricus, his first squire, that was witnessed by HRM Judith at Raglan.
Strictly speaking, there should have been two copies ready at the same time, penned on the same page, torn to show that they are written at the same time - but this scribe was flat out pre-Raglan and could only manage one copy ready for the event - second one is in process.
However, I'm pleased with it, and Edricus seems so too (see his photo from his Flickr site, because I'm having trouble uploading images - be sure to look at the hugest version to see all the glory!).
Lord Robert drafted the text, based on a period example from 1347 - posted to his Forsooth blog. I got a bit tired of writing 'aforesaid' and several other of the turns of phrase, but they make the document real.

Help!

Oh help and bother! Is anyone out there going to Peace of Lissberg (sp)?... or... well.. okay... the problem is I've oops'd and need a scroll for that weekend... anyone got something that will work for a grant of arms and can get it to the event on time?... if you can help in any way, drop me an email please?

...just a little bit frazzled at the mo...
Trin

Scriptorium roundup, and planning for Raglan

Greetings good cousins,
Just a note to thank Lady Melisende for doing the hard work of the scriptorium at Fight of Brothers.
I'm afraid I suffered on Saturday from staying up too late with Master Etienne's household, and retired for much of the afternoon!
Thanks to Melisende, students were taught, and scrolls were delivered for court. I also saw one very attractive blank painted over the course of the day by Lady Catelin.

I'm waiting on details from Raglan fair organisers about A&S space - what we have, how it's allocated, scheduling - and where we can fit in a scriptorium. When I have more info, I'll post to lists and this blog.
As all the site is open to the public during the day, please be aware you may spend some time answering questions from visitors.
If you're interested in either 'staffing' scriptorium, or just taking part, please contact me!

Scriptoriums at coming events in ID

Greetings happy scriveners, from Genevieve,
In a fit of enthusiasm (and with Lady Trinite Signet's support), I've offered to drive scriptoriums at two coming events in ID: Battle of Brothers (17-19 July) and Raglan Fair (20-24 August).

HE Ursula (B of B steward) has assured me of space and time in schedule for the Battle of Brothers. Still waiting to hear from organisers at Raglan, but since there is some(?) space for A&S this year, I'm hoping we can share.

These scriptoriums aren't intended as classes, just as space and time during the event to sit and putter at current projects, flip through someone else's scribal books :-) and chat about the joys and challenges of C&I, with scribes new and not-so-new.

It's a great chance to do scroll blanks, if you haven't a current project going.

If someone wants to offer a class, please do! and we can use the space accordingly. Contact the respective A&S organisers, and just keep me in the loop.

I'll bring what books I can - more are welcome! (Put your name in them, to make sure they go home with the right person.) This would be particularly welcome at Battle of Brothers, as I'm probably taking public transport to the event...

If you want to do a 'shift' at a scriptorium (basically make sure someone is at the table, keeping an eye on the books and supplies), please let me know.

Looking forward to seeing you this summer, regards,

Genevieve la flechiere