Pennsic A&S award scrolls

At the beginning of July Ibrahim, the EK A&S general, posted around that he was looking for scribes to some simple small scrolls for the A&S competition at Pennsic. I decided sure, I can help with that. So a few of us who volunteered were given the wording and told in previous years the scrolls were half the size of a 8x11 page.

So I mapped out how much room I had to put the words and figured out I could nestle the A&S badge at the top, only needed to nestle it into the first two lines. I had even bought a simple goache paint set and a could small brushes at Michaels so I didn't have to rely on anybody else to do that. I can trace a badge and do a simple coloring book style paint job, nobody's going to critique that.

Simple (for me) textura quadrata, and my first attempt at "illumination". I just dabbed a little paint from the tube onto the brush and slapped it on the scroll. Discussing it later with Fiona she said it's best to mix a bit of paint with some water, put it onto the scroll and kind of nudge it to the edge of where I wanted it. OK, so next time I have a badge to do I'll try that.

Rollant de Blois AoA

This was a nice and simple scroll. Brigit asked me to do the calligraphy on her scroll and she came up with the words, word count was just over 100. The exemplar was mostly picture with only 8 words, The Flight into Egypt; Master of the Harvard Hannibal (1420-1430). 

So it was definitely Textura Quadrata, but there wasn't enough words for me to really tell if there were any deviations from the standard alphabet. And Brigit gave me a nice big area to put the text, she's doing all the viney stuff and leaving the people out. So I measured out the lines and penciled in the words. They fit pretty much perfectly.

The pen and nib gave me no problem, the ink gave me no issues, doing my favored script/hand, and no smudges or smears when I went to erase a few pencil marks. All scrolls should be this easy!!

Markus Silver Crescent

I had offered to Hugoline to do calligraphy for a Silver Crescent scroll she was doing, since she was going to try for an early period scroll, but couldn't do the roundy-type hand (uncial). I said I loved doing that.

She couldn't find an illumination exemplar that she liked and felt was within her skills, but she did find something else that was pretty cool. She sent me the exemplar, Paris, Bibl. Mazarine, 729 Opera (Hugo de Sancto Victore)

It looked like early gothic, which is not my favorite to do, but I can do it. It had a spot with all Lomardic capitals which I've never done. I couldn't figure out a good way to integrate those into the words, so I left them out entirely. Comparing it to my books it was a cross between early gothic and foundational, which made it SOOO much easier for me to do. The text was not long, I'm sure Aislinn has a write up on her research for that. But I got the line spacing to a point I liked and got it done fairly quickly. I'm satisfied with how it came out, and the recipient seemed to like the scroll as well.