INDEX
Welcome to The Raven's Quill!
Branwen ferch Emrys
Welcome to The Raven's Quill, a scribal newsletter that I've wanted to publish for quite some time. The purpose of this newsletter is to share tips on doing calligraphy and illumination in the SCA (though this is in no way an official publication of the Society for Creative Anachronism). I hope that this newsletter will help bring together scribes in the Kingdom of the West, though input from other kingdoms is appreciated. If you know anyone who would like a copy of this newsletter, let me know and I'll send it. If you have any original art, helpful scribal hints, book reviews, or longer articles on anything to do with calligraphy and illumination in the SCA or in the Middle Ages, please feel free to contribute them to the address below. Enjoy!
Scribal Hint #1
Eric Foxworthy
Whenever you make a mistake while doing calligraphy, you can often easily fix a letter by writing the correct letter over it, then gently scraping away the ink that you want to get rid of. But what happens if you scrape too hard? Your paper is thin and light shines through it easily. So, turn the paper over and paint white paint on the back of the paper where the page is thin. This gets rid of the thin look of the scraped paper.
Scribe Workshops in the West
An ongoing list
These are scribe workshops occurring regularly throughout the kingdom. Everyone is welcome to attend these, though I suggest calling the contact person first to verify the information listed below. If you run an ongoing scribal workshop, please let me know and I'll list it.
Scribal Hint #2
Trust us; we know
When you are beginning a scroll, and have pencilled in your borders an inch from the edge of the page, remember: Do the calligraphy first! It takes no more than an hour to write an entire scroll text, compared to the hours required to pencil and then paint even the simplest illumination, and it is easy to misspell a word, leave out a word, or spill ink all over the scroll, ruining the hours you put in doing the illumination.
Book Review
Medieval Craftsmen: Scribes and Illuminations, by Christopher de Hamel (ISBN: 0-8020-7707-2)
Scribes and Illuminators, part of the University of Toronto Press's Medieval Craftsmen series of books, is more concerned with the process of making Medieval manuscripts than with the results. Thus, de Hamel has given us an excellent description of the period way of creating a manuscript. His chapter on paper- and parchment-makers includes a detailed description of how parchment was made, and the accompanying illustrations are of manuscript pages showing people making parchment, and photographs showing pages folded and bound into signatures. The chapter on ink-makers and scribes shows and tells how scribes made ink, made pens, and drew straight lines on a page, with photographs of a Medieval inkwell, styli and rules for drawing lines, quill pens, and pen knives. The chapter on illuminators, binders, and booksellers discusses the techniques of illumination, and shows illustrations of unfinished manuscript pages. Also shown are pattern-sheets for both calligraphy and illumination, and examples of bookbinding techniques. For those interested in learning the way the Medieval scribes actually went about creating their work, I recommend this book.
WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS OF HEAT AND HUMIDITY ON SCROLLS?
Megryth Bowbreaker
What an excellent question! Art of any kind is very susceptible to the ravages of heat and humidity, but even more so to the fluctuations of heat and humidity. Let's start out with a little story of a nice little Grant of Arms that was done on Bristol board.
Little GoA was lovingly crafted in gouache on a warm spring day in April. GoA's scribe lives in an air-conditioned flat and is ever so careful with all his papers and scrolls. Crown tourney rolls around, and the scribe loads the GoA along with other happy little scrolls into a box to go to the tourney. Scribe loads the box into the car in the early morning where it stays until afternoon, when it appears for the royalty and heralds to seal and sign the scrolls. Back goes the box with scrolls into the car, where it remains through the evening and night. Scribe unloads the car next morning because he got in real late and just wanted to crash.
Guess what happened to the little GoA? Well, it and its compatriots went through more atmospheric changes than Buffalo, NY goes through in a week! They went from cool/dry, to cool/moist to warm/drying out to baked/dry to hot, windy/dry to cooling/moist. Then the dew point hit and they spent the night in cold/soaked to be returned to cool/dry.
Can you say, Scroll Stress? Most scribes are working on acid-free, high rag content papers. This means that the paper is a blend of cotton and/or linen cloth. Since the nature of natural fiber cloth is to absorb everything in sight, super absorbency thus becomes a property of rag content paper (Scrolls: the quicker-picker-uppers). Rag content paper also dries out like cloth. It doesn't retain any natural moisture. Paper is at its weakest when wet. So if a damp scroll is moved improperly, stress fractures and points can set in that will become deterioration spots later on.
What else can happen in that ill-fated scroll box? Remember that the GoA and all it's fellow scrolls were done in gouache. What is gouache but a watercolor with an opaqueing agent? Dried gouache can be very simply rehydrated. When the dew hit, water condensed on everything including the scrolls and scroll box. If the gouaches rehydrated they would either leech into their scroll or leave a print on the back of the scroll on top of them. They may smear. If they are stressed, moved in this damp state, cracks will develop in the gouache and when the gouache redries, it may flake off.
Radical changes in temperature weaken fibers, may change pigments, mediums, and bonds. Basic science: when most things heat up, they expand; when most things cool, they contract. Paints, paper, bonds, metals, inks all expand and contract at different rates. These rates are most difficult to orchestrate. So here is a scroll box full of scrolls swelling and shrinking with the adherences of ink and paint going to... let's say, no where nice. All this carnage going on while a whole kingdom ran a tournament within earshot and no one even knew.
Should our friend, obedient Scribe, be held accountable for this blood-letting (paint-letting)? He had no idea. Most scribes never thought of it this way. I certainly didn't. Then I started doing restoration work and had to become acquainted with museum standard practices for storage and display. All the artwork that had passed through my hands before I became aware, it was just overwhelming! I was so depressed! I ate a pint of Haagen-Dazs on the spot! And I didn't even like the flavor!
Then I got over it. I became more aware of what happens to these scrolls in my care and how I could better care for them. The medical profession has a nice saying, "First, do no harm." I like it. Doing my best to not add to the burden placed on artwork is a big step.
I would like to thank Branwen for the opportunity to pass on some basic information to my fellow scribes, stuff to consider when working with and around scrolls. I am not a Paper Police Force. I will never approach someone and rail at them about proper art handling techniques. But with some basic information, any scribe may have the opportunity to rethink their own approach to their disciplines and artwork. Remember, these scrolls are not ours. They belong to someone else.
These observations are but broad generalizations. The care of an individual piece of art must be considered individually. If any of you, my fellow artists, have a specific question, please don't hesitate to ask me. No question is too silly to ask.
Mists Documentation Forms
(see current Mists Arts and Sciences Minister for more info)
Gwenllhian Rhiannon, Arts Minister for the Mists, has created a trial documentation form for arts competition entries. This will serve two purposes: letting the contestants know what exactly is meant by documentation and having standardization of the form documentation is in so the judges can easily read and understand it. The initial form contains an explanation for how the form should be filled out, and spaces for Description of Piece, Sources (2), Materials used to make piece, and Comments (changes, special features, etc.). To obtain a form, or comment on the form, see the current Mists Arts and Sciences Minister.
Scribal Hint #3
Heard in a scribe workshop once
Tired of trying to mix gesso? It never quite works the way it's supposed to, does it? A much easier way is to use Elmer's glue. Interestingly enough, Elmer's glue makes excellent gesso. It dries in a smooth, hard surface suitable for burnishing, and it sticks to the page. You can build it up to the required height and you can paint it on so it fills the required space.
A Quick and Easy (and Period!) Scroll Style
Branwen ferch Emrys
I've discovered that if I have a scroll assignment that I need to finish more quickly than usual, I can make the scroll look fancy and beautiful very quickly by using a simple technique: pen filigree. (Pen filigree is the name for the fancy blue and red doodles you see surrounding capitals and filling margins in all of those later period manuscripts.) What you do is this:
Now, before you've painted anything or drawn anything except the capital(s), do the pen filigree. You should use a very fine pen point (I use a 1/8 mm Brause nib), and either watered down gouache or Calli brand "ink" (which is actually pigment, not ink, and is waterproof, unlike other colored inks). The traditional colors for pen filigree are red (scarlet) and blue. If you paint the interior capitals, alternate their colors red and blue, and do the pen filigree in the contrasting color (i.e., if you paint the capital blue, do the surrounding filigree in red). To do the filigree, just dip the pen in the ink and draw; you shouldn't pencil in the lines first.
But what exactly should I be drawing, you ask? Excellent question! Even though pen filigree is essentially doodling, it is doodling in a particular style. Look at your books that have examples of actual filigree in them (avoid Victorian reproductions). Analyze the patterns. I've noticed that many people, as part of the design, outlined the capital with a small space between the outline and the letter, then boxed the letter just outside of the outline. One common motif was a "feathered" line reaching above the letter. Look carefully at your examples and try to copy the feel of the design.
Scribal Hint #4
You can learn the hard way, or you can learn the easy way.
When you're working on a scroll, take a piece of clean typing paper and use it to cover the part of the scroll you're not working on. This will protect your scroll from smudges caused by your hand and arm, and from spilled paint and ink.
Make Your Own Exemplar
(suggested by Morgan Athenry)
Probably the best book for SCA calligraphers is Medieval Calligraphy, by Marc Drogin. Drogin has collected all of the major hands from the Middle Ages and gives detailed instructions on how to write with them. However, he could not possibly be complete, and isn't. In the course of your researches, when you come across the perfect Anglo-Saxon hand, or a nifty German hand that you haven't seen before but just have to use on Henreich's Laurel scroll, take the time to make up an exemplar of the hand.
Make a photocopy of the source of the hand, including which book it was in (with appropriate bibliographic info), which year the hand was written, and what country it was from. Then make a clear, clean alphabet of the hand, including capitals if there are any. If you're really fancy, pop down to the local copy shop and make up a half dozen copies of this information to share with your friends, and you have an exemplar. (If you send me a copy I'll put in it the newsletter.)