Aryanhwy's Calligraphy and Illumination: June 2009

Thursday, June 18, 2009

PCS for Margarite the Magpie

A Hiberno-Saxon style PCS. The initial was done by someone else (I don't know); Trinite had it in her pile of scroll-blanks and I saw it and said "ooh, let me!" I really enjoy the Celtic/Anglo-Saxon style illumination, and haven't had enough opportunities to do it yet. The choice of hand and the gold and black letters with red dots at the top were inspired by plate 5 of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Painting, by Carl Nordenfalk, fol. 86 of the Book of Darrow, The Beginning of the Gospel of Saint Mark.

Unfortunately, I made two lettering mistakes -- I started writing "gree..." instead of "gentles", and I spelled "kingdom", "kingdmo". I did my best to write the right letters over and then scrape out the wrong ink, but you can still tell that I screwed up (and how). Oh well. Mistakes are period.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Dragon's Bowle for Arenvald von Hagenburg

Scroll	Exemplar

	f1r of Codex Admontensis 139, a 13th-century MS

The text is adapted from a 16th century Swedish grant of arms, translated into English by Frithiof Sigvardsson Skägge, available at http://www.geocities.com/sven_noren/Patents/joka-eng.html. The scroll was done June 11-13.

Dragon's Bowle for Signe Scriffuerska

Scroll	Exemplar

	The Manesse Codex, 342v

I should have made the roses bigger. The three bees are a reference to the recipient's device, Gules, three bees Or.

The text is based on the Of the Chief Conditions and Qualityes in a Waytyng Gentylwoman, available at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/courtier/courtier.html#chief, part of Sir Thomas Hoby's English translation of the Book of the Courtier, 1561. (This text is not longer available at this URL, but it can also be found here.

The scroll took two days, Jun. 12 and 13.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Four initials

A friend was putting together a little book and she wanted some extra decorative touches when she printed it, so I painted some capitals for her. These are based on three capitals from Codex Admontensis 139, 13th C, and were done Jun 4 and 6:

f.1r
f.1r
f.48v
f.48v
(there was no B in the MS, so I had to design my own)