This scroll is an example of “the simple ones take the longest”. We had some trouble getting it started, because we had a completely open-ended assignment of “something for the Youth Combat tourney”, and it was not interested in telling us itself what it wanted to be. Even the text went through four of five mutations before settling on the simple, but not completely same-old, same-old form with which we ended up.

In the end, we went with my fall-back position of 14th century stylings, with a later gothic hand with which Annys has been working since the Yule A&S scroll. Again, both artist and writer will happily point out at length the errors and sub-standard bits, but also again, I think most people will argue with us. 🙂

When I can find which manuscript it is which contains the illumination from which I worked, I’ll post it here. For now, I’ll say that the trees are very much in line with the exemplar, enough to make someone who looks at manuscripts all the time say they looked like 14th century trees, and that makes me unreasonably happy.

Hidden: some process-ish shots, in the style of “more”. Continue reading →

This marks our first official foray into kingdom-assigned scrolls, and I think we did OK. I can tell where all the glaring (to me) errors in the illumination are, and Annys can tell you where all the egregious and obvious (to her) calligraphy mistakes are. I don’t know as anyone else would notice, though. With luck we’ll be asked to do another. 🙂

So, on to the specs – in this case, I knew the recipient, and had some channels to double check what I knew of her persona (or, in this case, new persona). Since Emeline has moved from “some sort of piratey English” persona to some form of Viking, I began looking to Viking eddas and other sources for inspiration. I eventually found said inspiration in the doorposts of the Hylestad Stave Church in Norway, famous for the elaborate carvings representing the Lay of Sigurd.

• Hylestad’s Wiki page
• a time line of stave churches

The carvings gave me a great jumping off point, and as I thought about it, it seemed more and more appropriate since Emeline is known to work in wood a fair bit – I have a tourney prize from some years back which made. The particular image I worked from is one of Sigurd and Regin forging Sigurd’s sword Gram. The final piece is a bit of an abstraction, as it’s an ink rendering of a carved wood relief, but I think is does a fine job of evoking the feel of the original. (I elected to forgo drawing the wood grain.)

To go with it, we looked for a later-period hand that might have gone with a Scandinavian stave church, settling on artificial uncial. Our differing pronuncitions of “uncial” inspired the following exchange:

Me: “Artifi-shul un-shul.”
Annys: “Un-see-al.”
Me: “Um… then it should be artifi-see-al un-see-al.”

We wrote the text based on the Thorpe translation of “The Lay of Sigrdrifa”, from The Edda of Saemund the Learned. The meter is pretty close to the translation, but that’s a bit of a fudge since most translations don’t really do justice to their originals. All the same, we came up with a fun little bit of edda-like verse to explain what award it was, to whom it was given, why it was given out, and by which royals.

Who has Our corslet made?
Stitches fine of golden thread:
Who hast regal draped
This King of East?

Emeline Patterson
Has by her hand
attired Us
for Birka day.

Thus do We
Gregor three and Kiena
Make her Seamstress to the Crown
In Our Settmour Swamp
At the Thawing of the Mud
A.S. forty six.

Process images after the jump.

Continue reading →

Last year’s A&S Champion, Lissa Underhill, commissioned Annys and me to produce a scroll which would go to her successor at Yule. This one also eluded us for a long time, artisticly, until the details finally fell into place the week before the event. In a funny twist of fate, the person who most wanted to own this scroll ended up winning (for her second time) – Alesone displayed a range of different sugar works and methods, including an example of how bad sugar can go if there’s too much moisture in the air.

We ended up with a scroll text written between the two of us, which happily included an intial “A” which I could illuminate into a salamander enjoying proximity to a candle, the symbol of Arts & Sciences in the Society. The decorative borders are pulled from the Book of Hours for the Use of Paris, an example of which I found here. I haven’t gotten to working with raised gilding, otherwise I would have employed that method here. Annys had, by this time, truly begun to own the gothic hand she was working in, and the text really sells this piece. As pictured, it still has the lines we left for the name of the winner and the signatures of the Baron and Baroness.

Unfortunately for those who love a good piling-on of process shots… I don’t have too many, since this piece came together so quickly. I ‘ll see what I can find and put some up if they’re worth the trouble. 🙂

Red pencil, gouache, and Higgins Eternal ink on pergamenata. Roughly 4″ x 6.5″

Our local barony’s service award is the Order of the Salamander. Members of this order are recognized for a career of exemplary service to the group, and wear a medallion of a salamander on a red ribbon.

A good friend was to receive this honor, and Annys and I were given the scroll commission. We based it on a sixteenth-centry example of a writ for a knight of the Order of the Garter, both in text structure and in format. We thought it would be a cool touch to replace the seal of the Garter with something more appropriate to our sea-faring and foppish friend, whose baronial title (one of many) is Admiral of the Bhakail Navy. I found an Elizabethan-era example of what they thought sea-going vessels looked like, and based our “seal” on that, complete with sail art for the award and his personal arms.

Note: because he has a letter of marque from the barony (also one from the Kingdom, but that’s different), he is a privateer, if you please. Call him a “pirate” at your own peril, especially if he’s standing on the deck of your ship, pointing out how nice it is of you to donate so generously to the Baronial Coffers.