Scriptorium work - AoA calligraphy swap with Marieta

This is a tidbit of calligraphy work I did for one of Marieta's scrolls for a Bengali merchant.  The time period and source worked out that it would need my faux-Arabic hand in action again.  My work was just the calligraphy and the word smithing on this.  Everything else was all Marieta.

Source for words: The Humayunama (https://archive.org/stream/historyofhumayun00gulbrich/historyofhumayun00gulbrich_djvu.txt)

Hand: faux-Arabic

Apollo's Arrow - Nergis

This is my first Apollo's Arrow (helping with Mikjall's for wording doesn't count) and I was happy to know that the recipient was a friend of Mikjall so I could pick his brain for ideas.

The biggest challanges for this scroll were two fold: 1) Finding a Turkish/Persian source for an archer that specifically did not contain a sagittary (which is the symbol for the grant level archer award) and 2) wording.

The source page was one of a few options from a Mongolian source scouted out by Marieta.  I felt the illuminations were close enough to the feel of the Turkish pictures (and single Mamluk one) I'd scouted to give a correct sense of how to draw the figures.  I found one that I felt would work (a group of archers squaring off against a dragon) and tailored it to a single figure and the dragon.

Now for the truly hard part - words.  I messaged my closest poetry expert, Countess Marguerite (current King's Bard) for ideas for Islamic or Middle Eastern styles of poetry, because like an idiot, I thought this was something I could just whip up and have it done.  

First off all, Marguerite is a treasure trove of poetry research.  She found a few examples of Turkish and Persian poems and how they were constructed.  She gave me all the tools for a great jumping off point and a taste of things that could be a rabbit hole of digging through medieval poetry.  Thankfully, deadlines prevented any rabbit holes. :)

I chose to write a masnavi (also called mathnawi).  This typed of poem was written by Persian, Kurdish, Turkish, and Urdu cultures and has a few poetic variants (usually differing in style and content).  The mathnawi features rhyming couplets (aa/bb/cc pattern) with lines of 10-11 syllables.  Typically these poems can be as long as they need to, but I wanted to keep it short to make sure I had time to work on the illumination.  I ended up choosing to do an Arabic mathnawi (also called muzdawidj) which differs in that instead of couplets it uses a triplet rhyming pattern (aaa/bbb/ccc).  The original page I was looking at didn't make it clear if it also followed the 11 and sometimes 10 syllable line pattern, but after checking in the Marguerite, we agreed it likely would (later, supporting pages I found also agreed with this).  With a bit of peer editing for word choice, I had a poem.  The arms don't follow the poetic pattern and I was fine not messing with it.

Recipient: Nergis bint Mustafa
Award: Apollo's Arrow with Award of Arms
Hand: faux-Arabic script

Words: Arabic mathnawi poem by me
Specs: gouache on pergamentata, Schmincke gold watercolor
Source: (in process of redoing the link)

Words:

"To our great and wise rulers, words of praise came
of a fierce archer by the noble name
of Nergis bint Mustafa. They proclaim:

An Apollo's Arrow they would bestow
unto her. For she did nurture and grow
interest in archery; showing skill with her bow. 

Ionnes, Sultan, Honig Sultana fair
to their beloved East far and wide declare
Nergis would also be given arms to bear: 

Per chevron purpure and vert on a chevron above a

raven migrant to chief argent three bunches of grapes leaved proper."

Side by side comparison of the original and my scroll.  This is pre-clean ups on my scroll as there were a few spots that needed scraping (like where my elbow went into the green paint) and I hadn't erased the lines yet.

Sketch of art and finished calligraphy.  I had to re-tool the first line due to leaving out a word and had to cover for it.  It still managed to follow the poetic rules and it worked.

Close up of finished art and calligraphy before I added the page border.  

Something about the faux-Arabic hand makes it super fun.  I will say I sit there and work through permutations of the letters until I get a good picture of what the word itself should look like.  All in all, I'm proud of how this one turned out considering the art style is not in my comfort zone.

Seamstress to the Crown - Svea

Recipient: Svea the Short-Sighted
Award: Seamstress to the Crown
Hand: humanist bookhand
Specs: guache on pergamentata
Source: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=26600

My scroll with a print out of the original for comparison.  Final scroll was 5"x7".

Close up of the finished piece.

I felt like this piece has a lot of things going right for it.  The hand was light and airy enough, most of the capital letters looked correct (including most of the S capitals).  The scaling I think went fine except for the illuminated capital F which is a tad too small.  Measuring out the F to the predetermined block size went better than expected and all the guoache and shmincke gold cooperated.

Scroll text was fleshed out for reading in court:

"While the skill of our artisans is hailed through the Known World, it is also their generosity that makes them and by extension, the East truly great. For her creation of largesse for our kingdom do We, Brion the King and Anna the Queen name Svea the Short-Sighted as a Seamstress to the Crown. Done on this 25th day in March A.S. 51 at the Thawing of the Mud."

Burdened Tyger - Aethelhawk

Originally scheduled to go out at K&Q Equestrian Champs.  It did not go out at that time, hence the delay in posting this.

The recommendation was particularly inspiring and led to easily writing up the scroll text for this assignment.  Thanks, Lady Fortune!

The award was for a Burdened Tyger for their Majesties' Coronation which was a period Anglo-Saxon affair in terms of food (and holy cow was it delicious!!).  Gunðormr was gracious enough to find a very interesting source...but it was mostly pen and ink drawings.  Something I've never done on a scroll before.  I was gently encouraged by my friendly neighborhood Duchess to just do it since it was technically one step less than a regular illumination.  With arguments like that....

As I mentioned above all art was done using a crow quill which I've had varying success with in past projects.

First use - Too blobby and ink all over the place.  Gross.  Repaint the illumination so you can't tell and use a micron pen.  Scroll goes out and I'm mildly frustrated.

Second use - Blobby and still looks terrible.  Use a micron pen. Scroll goes out and I'm convinced crow quills are the devil.

Third use - Using it to put the "caps" on calligraphed letters.  Not terrible but I suffer from massive shakey-hand.  Final verdict is this is "okay".

Or sometimes I call them calligraphy hats. 

With that rousing bit of confidence....this is the original I chose to base this off of.  The goal was to keep the servant and cut down the high table to just the king and the queen.

Some pen work for a beard and a bit of detail work and the servant suddenly becomes a Aethelhawk.   I changed the facing for the man and added a bit of Kenric'ing to make it look right.  The Avelina figure needed some awesome hair (which I love on the figure and on the real person too).   Soooooo.....getting the draping right was the hardest part of this one.

Sketch work and hand smudges are all done

But once that was done, I was home free to do the calligraphy.  I added the Burdened Tyger  symbol underneath the vase to give it a little more sense of balance.

Recipient: Aethelhafoc Keyfinder (known to most as Aethelhawk)
Assignment: Burdened Tyger
Hand: carolingian miniscule
Specs: Pelikan ink on pergamenata
Source: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_24199_f016v

Finished scroll with a little bit of color.

The best part of this scroll for me was doing the wording. The award write up was immensely helpful in providing inspiration for this.

"Fortune favors fair Quintavia, made manifest by the miraculous feats of culinary skill by saintly Aethelhafoc Keyfinder who fed hundreds of pilgrims gathered at the coronation feast.  So, impressed by his work, King Kenric and Queen Avelina return to the Shire, and induct Athelhafoc into the Order of the Burdened Tyger."

Silver Wheel - Katherine

Well, I thought I took a picture of this scroll....my phone disagrees with me. *sigh*

Scroll assignment:Order of the Silver Wheel
Recipient: Katherine Murray

Hand: Early Gothic (still practicing this one)
Specs: Gouache on pergamenata
Source: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=57652

I only did the left hand border of the manuscript and did some pen sprays/leaf motifs instead of the knotwork toward the bottom left.  The center of the letter was replaced with a red background with some whitework and the Silver Wheel symbol. I was quite happy with the white work overall.

Biggest feedback, I have to learn how to do capital letters now. Boooooooooo.  

Scroll Wording - Eydis' AoA

Yes, the wording was for "that Eydis" who also happens to be a friend of mine and fellow Dancing Lady.  She was given her AoA by Brennan and Caoilfhionn on April 9th at the coronation of their heirs.

Marieta did a lovely craving based on the Osberg ship that featured intertwined cats.  For a lovely viking lady who happens to be a bard, I took a stab at skaldic style poetry.  I didn't have a lot of time to research how to phrase or set up sections of the poetry or to see if there were actually set "rules" for writing skaldic poems.  That will be part of my "to do" list when I take another stab at this.

This is my first attempt at this type of poetry.  Copious amounts of looking at text from rune stones happened and Googling Norse gods/patrons.  Bygul and Trigul are the names of Freya's cats that pulled her chariot.


"Fierce Caoilfhionn and wise Brennan called their people to hear their word. On this day of Eostre’s pride, winter wanes and the skald’s words are known to all:

Thorgrim’s daughter, fair Eydis

Friend of Bygul and Trigul kin.

Bragi-favored skald, gifts wordfame to the north.

Ring givers Brennan and Caoilfhionn

Honor and arms to her proclaim."

Scroll Wording - Tullia's AoA

I found the documentation for this and felt the need to share it.

We managed to gt Tullia to 12th Night and all dressed up since Simon was being elevated to the Chivalry.  What she didn't know was she was also getting her AoA that same day.

Mundanely, Tullia is a high school Latin teacher.  Taking her love for all things Latin to the SCA, it's no surprise she has a Roman persona. I did some searching for ideas for wording for Roman personas from period texts and found this :http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/augustus_001.asp. The wording was handed off to the scribe who was assigned the scroll and she managed to have it translated into Latin. :)

I wrote the following text based off the source.

"Emperor Brennen Augustus and Empress Caoilfhionn Augusta, supreme pontiffs, holding the Tyger throne for a second time, proclaim:
We know of an Eastern citizen who has done venerable work in the fiber arts of spinning and weaving and has distinguished herself in the study of Our noble Roman forefathers.

Whereas in accordance with the decision of Our advisory council, do We wish to recognize Tullia Tranquilla as a loyal daughter and citizen of Rome and award her the following arms: Azure fretty Or, on a chief Or three drop spindles azure.

Done at the celebration of the 12th Night, in Anno Societatus 50, on the second feast day of Carmentalia in the Shire of Midland Vale."

Carmentalia is a Roman festival taking place on two days (11 January and 15 January) . Since 12th Night happened to be January 16th, I thought it was okay to include it to make the scroll persona specific (and I was only off by a day).