Patricia Lovett MBE

Calligraphy | Illumination | Design

Tag Archives: Renaissance

‘The Art of the Scribe’

‘The Art of the Scribe’ is the latest book published by the British Library in Spring 2025. It focuses on the scripts and the illumination and decoration used in the seven major periods of mediæval and Renaissance book production. Each of the seven chapters includes information about manuscripts of those times, what they were, who they were produced by – the scribes and illuminators – and the people associated with the books. There is also a detailed second section on tools, materials and techniques for calligraphy (including analysing texts, spacing of letters, words and lines, layouts, and serifs), illumination, painting, and simple book binding.

For each of the seven writing styles there are clear exemplar letters with guides for writing each one – here are Uncials as in the St Cuthbert Gospel in the British Library. Both the alphabet is shown as well as the letters arranged in families that have similar strokes – this makes learning and practising the letters much quicker.

Illustrations are large, often taking up the whole page as here – a page from one of the huge bibles produced at the monastery of St Martin, Tours, in France. The script is Caroline Minuscule and is a lovely dancing script, very legible, and wonderful to write.

At the end of each of the seven chapters are three graded projects – foundation, intermediate and advanced. This is a favourite from Caroline Minuscule – a zig zag or concertina book using text from Dorothy Wordsworth’s ‘Grasmere Journal’ describing the walk when the ‘host of golden daffodils’ was seen. The illustration along the bottom matches the text, with a few daffodils to start with and then more and more.

The second section consists of a comprehensive consideration of materials, tools and techniques; for tools and materials – what is needed, how to use them and how to take care of them. The pages here are how to mix gouache for ink and paint and how to mix repeat colours.

This double spread is about vellum, how it’s made, types of skin – vellum and parchment – and the differences in thickness in the skin which affects the final result in use.

Included in the section on tools is a section on quills, quill curing and quill cutting – all clearly illustrated with excellent photographs by the British Library photographer, Jonathan Vine, and with step-by-step instructions. Just visible on the left are the final steps for laying gesso, adding gold leaf (illumination) and painting a mediæval miniature.

Here is a sneaky peek inside the book showing the seven chapters – Uncial, Caroline Minuscule, English Caroline Minuscule, Gothic Textura (Black Letter), Bâtarde, Humanistic Minuscule and Italic – and also the second section of detailed information.

‘The Art of the Scribe’ is available from the British Library bookshop, and I have a limited number of copies for sale where I am happy to write in a name calligraphically; contact me through this website for this and for the cost of p+p (it is a heavy book, so that isn’t cheap!).

This entry was posted in Blog, Books, Calligraphy and lettering, Calligraphy techniques, Craft, Gothic Black Letter, Illumination, Interesting stuff, Italic, lettering, Lettering, Manuscripts, Starting out – tools and materials, Uncial and tagged British Library, calligraphy, decoration, egg tempera, gesso, gold, illumination, manuscripts, mediaeval, Medieval, oak gall ink, Patricia Lovett, Renaissance, The Art of the Scribe, tools and materials, vellum on 10 March 2025 by Patricia.

A stunning Renaissance manuscript

BL, Add ms 19553

The British Library has a stunning array of manuscripts and one that has been recently digitised caught my eye because of its lively and idiosyncratic lettering; the shelf reference is BL, Add ms 19553. The page shown has typical Renaissance decoration – the manuscript is dated to c.1505 – with a rather restrained red, blue and green decoration on shell gold (powdered gold in gum Arabic base).

It is the lively lettering, though, not the decoration, that caught my eye, particularly the exuberently free curved stroke on the letter q in the middle of the second line. This is an abbreviation and indicates that this word should be tibisque. There is wonderful control of the pen as the pen moves from the right to the left, and, with again great control, moves to the left with a slight hesitation at the finish of the stroke adding a hint of a thickening at the very end. Note also the letter g with the exaggerated lower bowl, and no little ‘ear’ to the right of the upper bowl. This scribe is really enjoying making these strokes!

Another beautiful stroke is the one from top right to bottom left in this letter x; it is rather more successful that the slightly more wobbly stroke from top left to bottom right. Notice also the very flat pen nib angle to the strokes. Usually the nib angle for this writing style, Humanistic Minuscule, is about 30°. The flatter nib angle gives a more chunky feel to the lettering.

When the letters a and e are combined as a ligature it can be a rather clumsy form. Here, though, the scribe has sloped the usual upright of the letter a and the e nestles in neatly, sharing the same stroke. Extending the ‘crossbar’ of the e and just pushing it up slightly at the end, which thickens the stroke, gives a very elegant letter-form overall. Note, too, the second thoughts the scribe has had with the long s and t in posteritate . The long s started just above the line for x-height, and the letter t was written normally. Then the decision was made to extend both strokes and join them together. It’s great when watery ink like this is used as these sorts of things can be detected.

The ampersand (et = and) is very graceful here, with the smaller bowl written as a complete letter o, and the lower stroke travelling to the right has a real swoosh to it. Note, too, the additional extension to the letter f written after the letter had been completed.

And lastly another wonderful stroke on this letter y, where the slight thickening at the end of the stroke bottom left not only collides with the letters o and n on the lines below, but the pen has also caught a little on the surface so it looks a bit messy.