Tag Archives: vellum

Rectors of Chevening

Being asked to create a panel listing the rectors of St Botolph’s Church in Chevening, Kent, was a fascinating project with a number of interesting design challenges. The list goes back to Reginald in 1262 and there were 56 names in all. It’s always a problem working out the size and style of the lettering so that there is a wide enough space for names as long as William de Wintreshull but also accommodating short names such as John Wode and John Crull without having a large white space on the right.

Because it is a formal piece and the script should reflect that, I began by writing out the names in round hand (English Caroline Minuscule), or Edward Johnston’s Foundational Hand as here. However, I soon realised that those long names were causing me problems and the columns would be too wide. I had decided at the start that there should be three columns as two would have made the piece too long and four would have resulted in a wide panel and the lettering for the names would be too small.

So I changed the lettering to Compressed English Minuscule and this worked much better. I wasn’t sure whether the dates should be in black or red – the problem with a vibrant red is that it can be overwhelming sometimes. I tried both and realised that actually the red dates looked better than the black. I also asked the client if there were flowers or plants associated with the church.They didn’t have any ideas so I looked for suitable biblical texts and thought that John 15: verse 5 seemed very appropriate – ‘I am the vine; you are the branches’, the rectors being the branches in spreading the word. This also gave me the opportunity to use vines and grapes as decoration.

It took a little while to get the information correct. After I had written out the rough it was suggested that where there were two rectors in one year the date was omitted which really didn’t look right, and then that there should be an ampersand rather than the year as here, but this didn’t look right either. In the end it was decided to revert to my original layout.

The piece was so large that I couldn’t stretch the vellum before I started as I wouldn’t have been able to reach to letter the top, so I prepared the skin, which was quite bumpy, drew all the lines and set to. Because the heading is often the most daunting I always start with this to get it over with, and then worked my way down the board. I left the red lettering so that I could do it all in one go.

Then it was on to painting the vines and grapes.I decided that the vine should start in the middle of the piece and then the branches should extend out to the right and left. This also gave a nod to mediæval images of the tree of Jesse which also seemed rather appropriate. To get the best balance with the lettering and the position of the paintings within the piece, I designed it so that the leaves and grapes were the largest at the bottom, a little smaller either side of the name ‘St Botolph’s’ and then smallest of all on the row just above the columns. I don’t know how many leaves I painted, and certainly not how many grapes, but there were thousands it seemed!

The skin was very bumpy as can be seen when unstretched, and so it needed to be dampened and then pulled round a strong piece of wood and carefully attached at the back. This will also help to keep the vellum flat in the cold and sometimes damp atmosphere in many churches.

No roses for Christmas

Each year I try to find something a little different for our Christmas card, and the Shakespeare quotation of ‘At Christmas I no more desire a rose Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth; But like of each thing that in season grows’, from Love’s Labours Lost, seemed rather apt. I so enjoyed writing and painting the card I did a couple of years ago where I used the words of the first verse of the ‘Holly and the Ivy’ carol, writing round an oval and then painting holly and ivy in the centre as here, that I thought I’d do something similar again.

I sketched an oval and made a first attempt to see if the words fitted. Interestingly, the number of letters was about the same as the Holly and Ivy card so I knew it had to work. As before, I wanted the first line to go across the top of the oval rather than starting at the top middle. The first attempt here almost worked, but I started too high up on the left hand side, which meant that it didn’t balance on the right. I tried once more and finally I had it about right.

So I prepared the vellum, sketched on an oval, and got ready to write. I do wish that I could just keep things simple – but no! Writing in a circle, spiral or in an oval shape is always a challenge. The substrate has to be continually turned so that the letters are upright compared to the baseline and it’s very difficult to develop any rhythm and flow. And now I’m thinking, bearing in mind all of the above, why did I decide to write in not one, not two, but three colours? I thought the lettering would look good in oxide of chromium green (a really lovely colour to write with – the Schmincke Calligraphy Gouache version is so smooth), madder red and vermilion but this additional challenge was one whereby each individual stroke had to be considered in terms of the colour that was used before, and the colours were changed even in single strokes. I held the brushes apart in my left hand and simply stroked the quill nib gently on the paint to pick up the smallest amount of appropriate colour before writing.

But it was so lovely writing on vellum that even these challenges couldn’t put me off! Yet again authors don’t always consider calligraphers! Why didn’t Shakespeare know that at some point a few hundred years later I would want to flourish his words when written round an oval? Fortunately the two stretches of words without ascenders from ‘wish’ to ‘fangled’ on the right, and from ‘that’ to ‘Christmas’ on the left, fell sort of evenly either side of the oval, so there weren’t loads of extended strokes on one side and few on the other, and the two areas with no flourishes balanced out. Some of you may also notice that in concentrating on the writing and colours being fed into the pen I got a little short on space and so had to drop the ‘e’ from ‘fangl’d’. I reckoned that this was something that Shakespeare may well have done so didn’t feel too badly about it!

Then it was on to the rose painting. I had taken some photographs of the last roses of summer from our garden, and although it’s always better to paint from life, doing this in November meant that there were no decent roses left to paint! Here I’m two down and three to go. (The colours here are slightly different because I took this photograph in the evening under artificial light – I was working long hours on this!)

And again the finished piece with the three colours blended in places in the text picked up by the different reds and greens in the paintings. The darker areas on the right are wear the unstretched vellum has dipped. It seemed to turn out reasonably well despite this.

Friendships are the best!

Calligraphers are commissioned to write out many varied texts, some of which appeal and sometimes, some not! These words very much appealed and they are sometimes used as a toast; surely most people would agree that actually the best ‘ships’ are friendships! This artwork was to be given to the client’s friend who enjoyed shooting, so I suggested incorporating pheasants into the design.

I wrote the words out as a draft and experimented with various layouts. Essentially, these are four lines at the end of three of which are the ‘good ships’, ‘wood ships’ and ‘friendships’. However, having long lines meant that the these various ships were just lost in the text at the ends. So I re-wrote the ‘ships’ words in majuscules (capital letters) to try to give them more emphasis. But even then the ‘ships’ didn’t stand out sufficiently and the design also looked rather blocky and dull, and so I decided to change the whole shape of the piece. I cut the text into strips of short lines and aimed for a long and narrow piece, but even here writers are sent to try us! The line ‘But the best ships are friendships’ wouldn’t break where I wanted it to! As the whole essence of this toast is about friendships, I wanted that on one line, but that left the previous five words as a long line, and it didn’t break easily before ‘ships’ leaving the three three-letter word ‘are’ stranded on its own line! However, I bit the bullet, thought this the best layout and wrote ‘are’ very slightly wider to give it a bit more emphasis.

To show the client I wrote the words out on paper first with an indication of the size. Depending on the length of the piece and time involved, I sometimes do this or sometimes just sent them the finished pasted-up draft. I was using the equivalent of a size 5 nib so the writing is all quite small and elegant. Although I wanted to give an amount of space around ‘friendships’ for emphasis, here on the draft there was much too much space and the word looked rather adrift from the rest. This needed to be changed in the finished piece.

Once that was approved I prepared a lovely piece of creamy vellum, sharpened the quill and set to. The vellum and quill reacted together like a dream! It was such a pleasurable experience writing out the words in this way and the result was very crisp writing with the finest of hairlines! The writing is very small.

And so to the painting. How fortunate we are now to have the internet! It was not difficult to find a number of images of pheasants. I chose a male and female and painted these in different poses at the top and set in that green sward to pick up the green of the writing. These birds are tiny – just over a cm (10mm) each high. And then to the brace of pheasants for the bottom of the piece. Again I wanted a male and female and, because I thought that the male was probably the bigger bird, I hung them slightly unevenly, so the greater weight of the male was pulling down lower than the female. In the image I had found the birds were tied together with bright blue string which would have looked completely wrong in the subtle colours here, so I changed this into a piece of suitably subtle brown cord. If you look closely, you may even be able to see the twists!

My hope is that it will give pleasure to the recipient and his heirs, as vellum will last!

Props for film and TV

As a professional scribe and illuminator, I am often asked to make props for film and TV. These have ranged from 19th century petitions of ‘thousands’ of names, Elizabethan maps, writing in ‘invisible ink’ and making it reappear onscreen, any number of documents, poems and letters, and, a few years back, to coincide with a big exhibition in Venice by one of the UK’s most well-known artists, a double spread of a 12th century manuscript written in Greek.

The story was that a freed Roman slave had amassed great wealth such that he was able to buy up great treasures. He wanted a suitable palace to display these and planned to take them on the ‘biggest ship ever made’ – the ‘Unbelievable’ – and then build his palace. Sadly, it was said, on his journey a sea monster caused the ship to wreck and the treasures were lost only to be found again hundreds of years later and brought to the surface in the twenty-first century. I was given a very wide brief and set to creating this double spread, checking the designs as I went along. I researched palaces in mediæval manuscripts, and it was lovely to create my own … in the style of! Of course the palace would have a fountain and fish pond and, as with many pieces I’ve done I enjoyed adding a bit of personal amusement. Each fish, for example, had an extra fin from one to four.

I knew that the spread was going to be aged but selected a piece that had a lot of character to it anyway. There was a fair smattering of brown spots which indicated the hair follicles. In my rough sketch I had planned to have carts with treasures being loaded on to the ship but realised that this would take far too long so in the end settled for wrapped bales on the quay, and a few treasures being shown on the deck of the ship. The freed slave, Amatan, is shown here, again in his fur hat and rich red robes lined with cloth of gold, supervising the loading. At this point I didn’t know what form the treasures would be so I painted in a few objects. To ensure that, mediævally speaking, the ship was in character, as it was meant to be so big, the prow extended well beyond the border.

They did give me a sketch of a mediæval monster from a manuscript as a suggestion but I thought it looked far too benign (a bit like a Tellytubby!) so I asked if I could make mine much more scary, to which they agreed. So here it is with horns – because it was evil – rows of sharp teeth and sharp claws. And because the monster was wrecking the ship by creating a storm, I drew a waterline which wasn’t horizontal to reflect that. (I did try it with a very angled sealine but it just looked weird!)

There are quite a few miniatures of ships in mediæval manuscripts, especially connected with the Jonah and the whale story, and I found a lovely image of a sailor falling overboard, which I copied, painting treasures tossed into the sea by the storm too. Amatan and another sailor are here pointing in horror at the monster, and even the ships’ prow is looking a bit scared! The mast is broken and the sail in tatters.

I also decided to have the monster coming up the side of the page and towering over the boat to make it seem even more menacing and had his gold tail pointing menacingly towards the crashing ship.

I then wrote the supplied Greek text and worked hard to ensure that it fitted the space exactly, rearranging the line spacing and the length of the lines to ensure that it did. I was also able to pretty much justify the lines so that the right- and left-margins looked neat.

I knew that they wanted the page aged, and so, once it was all done, took some sandpaper to the painting and roughed it all up a bit. However, when I saw it being used in the accompanying film about the story of the ‘find’, I saw that they had really roughed it up, with the gold leaf blistered and some of the images almost gone completely. The film of the story and the ‘find’ is available on Netflix if you subscribe. And the artist is still causing controversy about the whole project as here.

Quills and Calligraphy

Sixteen eager students were ready to start a day of learning and practising calligraphy as part of the events associated with the fantastic Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms 2018-2019 exhibition at the British Library. We were focusing on the Angled-Pen Uncials as in the St Cuthbert Gospel of St John, a very pleasing writing style, and which has only majuscules, or capital letters.

Everything was set out before the students arrived with a sloping board, pen and nib, ink, etc and sets of A3 information and exemplar sheets so that no ruling lines was necessary while learning.

The morning was spent learning and practising the letters and then the afternoon focused on quill cutting and preparing and writing on vellum. Cutting quills was a lot tougher than it looked – the barrels of swans’ feather are really strong!

It does take some preparation, but once the steps are clearly explained and reinforced to everyone as they cut the feathers, really good quills resulted.

Then it was on to preparing the vellum, practising writing names using the quill and then, with a deep breath, writing on the vellum itself. I suggested using Schmincke Calligraphy Gouache in vermilion as a contrast for the initial letter and this worked really well. The results needed to be admired even halfway through the writing!

And the concentration here was intense!

But the results were very much worthwhile! Congratulations to all students for such a successful day – and for being such a lovely group to worth with.

Plaxtol Roll of Honour

The vast number of people involved in the First World War is being highlighted during these centenary years. This huge number is perhaps particularly exemplified in the small Kentish village of Plaxtol. Over 150 men, all former pupils of the local village school, went to the front, as well as four members of staff. I was asked recently to prepare a Roll of Honour on vellum recording the names of these men.

I was given a typed list and the requirement that there would be a decorated border of cob nuts and hops, as these were local to the area, and so set about designing the panel. I experimented with the styles and sizes of text, spacing between the lines, placing of the blocks of text and so on.

I decided on Edward Johnston’s Foundational Hand for the text, as it was this style, and Roman Capitals, again championed by Johnston, that MacDonald (Max) Gill used as his lettering design for all the First World War Memorials; Max being a student of Johnston. As always, everything was written out in rough first, and then positioned where it was to go. In the typewritten version the letters ‘RIP’ were written without fullstops, which I copied for two of the columns, and then inserted the fullstops for the other two – we all agreed that the latter looked better. I also used the traditional colour scheme for such panels of red and black.
Then it was deep breath time, the vellum was prepared, ruling up done, and I had to start the writing. I tacked the four columns of names first to get the body of the panel done, writing all the names and then returning with the same size nib and red paint to insert the words ‘Wounded’, or ‘R.I.P’ where appropriate. However, I used a compressed Roman form for ‘Wounded’ so that the columns weren’t too wide.

I left painting the border until last. My original design had the hops and cob nuts entwined but this was not was wanted. The suggestion of having separate blocks of the two plants would have made this part of the panel very disjointed, so I drew a long wavy line along the whole border, with the cob nuts growing up from the ‘valley’ and the hops hanging down from the ‘hills’. The width of border was about an inch (2–3 cm) high. The hops are about 1–2 mm each in size and each have about 5 different colours on them.

The panel was too large for me to stretch the vellum first around a board as I couldn’t then reach the top of it, so I had to do this after it was all done. The need for stretching is obvious from the way in which the skin is bumpy in the picture on the right.

It was a huge job and difficult to cost at the beginning – I spent far more time on it than I charged for, and now it hangs in Plaxtol Village Memorial Hall. It would be nice if more people knew about it and were able to see it.

How Mediæval Manuscripts were Made

It really was a great joy and privilege to be part of the great Polonsky Project, which was a joint venture between the British Library and the Bibliotèque nationale in Paris to digitise manuscripts which from before the year 1100. They were keen to show how those manuscripts were made, and so it was on two very hot days in the summer of 2017 that Dr Alison Ray, filmer Jan and I spent many hours recording those processes. The films are now on the British Library’s and the Bibliotèque nationale’s websites (the latter being dubbed into French) and sections of the films were also used in the fantastic 2017–2018 Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition at the British Library.

The first film features the pen used for the writing, which, of course, was usually a quill cut from the feather of a large bird. I always use penknives which have curved blades as the curve rolls over the slight curve in the barrel of a feather to cut the nib tip, whereas a straight blade tends to squash the feather. Indeed, penknives today (the clue is in the name!) still always have a curved blade. Here’s the link. There’s more on quill knives and how to cut a quill on my website on this link.

Ink was usually made from oak galls, although in fact peach, cherry and apricot stones can also be used but give a less dense colour. It’s the tannic acid from the galls reacting to copperas (iron sulphate) that creates a dark liquid, and which needs an adhesive, in this case gum Arabic, to ensure that it adheres to the writing surface. To see the process, click here.

The writing surface was vellum or parchment – calfskin, sheepskin, goatskin or ever deer on occasion. In this clip I explain about the differences between the hair and flesh sides of vellum and also the qualities of other types of skin. More here.

Having cut pieces of skin to size for writing, the page needed to be set out, and often dividers – similar to sets of compasses, but with a point at the end of each leg – were used as it was easier to mark the exact positions of the guidelines in this way. On occasion, the lines would be set out using a ruler and lead point (or similar) and then the positions marked using the tip of a knife (perhaps a penknife). Here the ‘point’ would actually be a triangle shape and this can be seen in some manuscripts. There’s more on setting out a manuscript page here.

Pigments used in illuminations came from animal, vegetable and mineral sources. Perhaps the most famous is ultramarine, as Cennini Cennino called it ‘perfect, beyond all other colours’. A very similar blue, but much cheaper was citramarine. Woad and indigo are from vegetable sources along with madder. And Tyrian purple and carmine came from animals. There’s more on this link, including dragon’s blood!

These pigments have no natural adhesive (apart from saffron interestingly!) and so this needs to be added. Traditional either glair, the egg white or the egg yolk was added. This film clip explains the process, including the equivalent of a hole in one! It can be tricky removing the egg yolk from the egg sac, but when this was being filmed, it worked with the very first egg! Here it is with the knife being withdrawn and the yolk falling out at the bottom. See the whole thing and more here.

And having got everything ready, it was then only the setting out the illumination, laying the gesso, applying gold and then painting bringing everything to life and with wonderful colour. Watch the process here.

It is hoped that these short films will add to the knowledge and understanding of these historical craft processes and ensure that more people understand and appreciate the skills that went in to creating the wonderful manuscripts now in great collections such as those at the British Library and the Bibliotèque nationale.

Recreating the ‘Beatus’ page from the Eadui Psalter

As part of the Polonsky project for the British Library and the Bibliotèque Nationale I was asked to show how mediæval manuscripts were made to create a series of short informative films. To show the process of completing a miniature we selected the ‘Beatus’ page from the Eadui Psalter, (although, to be honest, I immediately regretted it because it was so complicated!). We agreed that for filming, because of time and logistics, I would concentrate only on the central letter B, but aim to complete it after the filming.

The first stage was to trace the outline from a print out of the original. It was such a complicated image that the tracing alone took 5 hours. The tracing needed then to be transferred to vellum. I used my own Armenian bole paper as ‘carbon’ paper; doing this took another 5 hours.Then the outline was reinforced in red, which is the traditional colour; this process took 6·5 hours.

The next step was to lay the gesso with a quill. Gesso is the plaster-based cushion that raises the leaf gold from the surface, and the slight rounding of the cushion, once the gold leaf is attached, really catches the light so it looks as if light is coming from the book itself – truly illuminated. I had made a batch of good gesso and was filmed laying this on the letter B. The interlace at the head and foot of the minim was very complicated and it took a while to work out the pattern and lay the gesso according to the original. I had one day in between the schedule before the next filming session to lay, scrape and prepare the gesso. However, there was so much to be gilded that I ran out of gesso halfway round the border. I made another batch but didn’t have time to test it, and found out as I was laying it that it was rather bubbly. Laying, preparing and scraping the gesso took over 12 hours.

And then for the gold. The stickiness in the gesso is reactivate by moisture in the breath and the leaf gold (23·5 carat) attached immediately. Once secure, the gold is polished to a high shine with a stone burnisher (just visible on the left). Building up layers of gold improves the depth of burnish.

The gold leaf can attach to the surface of the vellum as well, especially after a hard burnish. It was particularly difficult to remove the excess in the gold interlace area.

Well-burnished gold really does catch the light.

Applying the gold, burnishing it and cleaning it up took 14 hours, but the end result was worth it.

It was a difficult to decide what to do about the colours. Although contained within a book, pigments still deteriorate over time; some of the colours had changed even in adjacent areas. So should this copy of the manuscript page be exactly the same as the original that has deteriorated, or should I try to recreate the page as it was? I decided to plump for trying to paint it as it was. Matching the colours was a bit of a challenge!

Painting mediæval manuscripts is a little like painting by numbers sometimes. Each colour is done completely and separately. Here the blue has been done.

And now the magenta red, no doubt it’s madder.

The basic colours have now been completed. At this point, I often feel that any artistic skills I may well have had have disappeared because it all looks so flat.

However, adding tones and shades starts to lift the image.

The white highlights improve the image even more and it starts to take shape.

The black outline makes all the difference, separating the gold from colour and colour from colour, also emphasising what look like folds on draped cloth. Notice the difference between the letter B which has been outlined in black and the rest of the border where there is no black.

And the final result again.

If you would like to recreate your own mediæval image, then my book and DVD on Illumination: Gold and Colour have clear instructions on making and using gesso, cutting quills, treating vellum for painting (and writing), and the process of creating a mediæval miniature shown step-by-step. See here.

The Bury Bible

The Bury Bible is a stunner! It is thought that it was made about 1135 at the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk in the east of England. We even know who did the illuminations and who commissioned the bible (quite unusual for a book of this age). The Gesta Sacrum includes this (in Latin obviously!): ‘This Hervey, brother of Prior Talbot, met all the expenses for his brother the Prior to have a great Bible written, and he had it incomparably illuminated by Master Hugo. Because he could not find calf skins that suited him in our region, he procured parchment in Scotia.’ Although it may seem an obvious translation that the skin came from Scotland, the skins could also have come from Ireland.

© Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

Master Hugo’s talent was certainly as incomparable as his illuminations. Detailed figures with expressive faces react with one another and look out from wide and heavily detailed framed borders. There is not a lot of gold and the adhesive isn’t very raised, but the vibrant colours make up for any lack of it. The figures in many of the larger illustrations are set against a dark green rectangle as here; in many manuscript books this would have been gold leaf, but the detailed drapery (wet-linen-look) and active, realistic figures would have competed against shiny raised gold. (Note the interestingly cut hole in this image so that the text from the previous page shows through. I can’t see any reason why this hole was cut out; it is unlikely that there would have been anything which was later controversial in this picture that then had to be removed, nor is there anything that I could detect on the previous page of text that should be cut out either. Another mystery about the book!).

Another mystery is that most of the illuminations are on double pieces of skin. A smaller piece of vellum has been pasted on where the images are to the main page. It’s intriguing why this should have been done. I think there are two possibilities. First, there is a lot of paint over the illuminations and it is possible that the water in large areas of paint can relax the structure of the vellum and cause it to cockle and buckle, by having a reinforcing layer underneath this may prevent this. In addition, this density of colour can cause serious show-through to the other side of the skin. By adding an additional layer of skin this will help to prevent this show through. However, it doesn’t look as if the images were produced on separate pieces of skin and these were then pasted in afterwards. As can be seen here, the piece of skin is longer at the bottom, so some of the second line of green lettering is written over the join (look at the letter ‘S’), and the foot, neck and part of the head and ear of the lion on the top right also are painted over the join.

This image gives an indication of the detail of the painting. Even in small areas three or four different tones and shades are used to create a three-dimensional effect, a fine white line gives a highlight and a lift, and the areas and shapes are outlined in black. In this small section, there are two bearded men’s heads also squeezed in, and although tiny, they have been painted so carefully that they still look terrified!

There are very detailed decorated initial letters too such as this one with two blue and orange winged animals munching on a blue swirl, two bearded men, that same green background, and a narrow double ribbon of gold outlining the letter. The intense blue is ultramarine pigment made from lapis lazuli from north-west Afghanistan. Interestingly, it is thought that this actual pigment came via the Holy Land as a result of raids by the Crusaders, although tests have shown that much of the blue in manuscripts at this time was foliate.

The incredibly detailed painting can be seen easily here with just about every hair in the prophet’s white beard and eyebrows painted separately, and the care with which this face and the modelling on the pink (madder) robe have been minutely picked out is also shown. It is thought that the bible took two years to produce; my very rough estimate is that it would have taken this long to do the illuminations alone.

There are other enlarged letters too, in red, blue, green and a tan colour. Calligraphically, these are called Versals – letters where the width of the letter is made by repeated strokes. Note here where letters have been placed inside others to save on space. Perhaps the second word on the second line is a little too contracted!

That tan colour is most intriguing. The blue is, as indicated above, lapis lazuli which produces ultramarine pigment. The vibrant red is cinnabar (vermilion), and the green, verdigris (‘Greek green’ produced from copper and quite corrosive).But what of that tan? It is certainly very wishy washy and doesn’t stand up at all against the other jewel colours. And it’s not an adhesive for gold as it’s not sticky. As yet, work has not been done on identifying the pigments used in the bible, but it would be interesting to know what this colour is. Master Hugo and whoever wrote these wonderful letters were experts in colour and balance, surely it was a much stronger colour originally to hold its own against the rest, and has just deteriorated over the years – but what is it?

© The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

There has been some debate as to whether these letters have been painted or made with a pen. This shows clearly that it is a pen that has made repeated strokes to build up the width as some of the verdigris paint has been worn away revealing the process.

Here the central part of the letter has almost worn away completely.

And what inventiveness, as here various patterns have been etched into the strokes of the letters to add interest – or this may have been done by someone not particularly competent later.

It is thought that the text was written by one person. It is particularly strong and vibrant – and needed to be with such wonderful illuminations; it had to hold its own.

As is typical with manuscripts of this age, there are many abbreviations. The one here indicates that the letters ‘us’ have been omitted (eius), and is usually written as a curving comma just above the letter ‘i’. Here, the scribe has used the left-hand corner of the pen to draw what looks like a bell-shaped flower. In the absence of a more technical term, we decided to call it a ‘bluebell’ abbreviation!

The usual swiftly written abbreviations are taken to another level of careful construction in the Bury Bible. A horizontal bar above letters, again indicating an omission, is written with a thick stroke downwards and slightly to the right (some are almost hooked), and then the second thick stroke is made after a pen lift and with the pen repositioned before making the stroke.

It is clearer here where the repositioning of the last, third, stroke is made after a pen lift as a tiny part of the thin horizontal stroke peeps out beyond the second abbreviation.

And the abbreviation looking like a little ‘2’ shown here on the second line is written by making first a stroke to the left. The pen is then lifted and the curved stroke moving right is made then downwards to the left, and finally a thin stroke to the right. The abbreviation is finished by lifting the pen to make a serif downwards and to the right. This is a tiny curved abbreviation, not even an actual letter, and yet it involves three separate strokes. In this image the surface of the skin can be seen easily, with a wonderful speckling of dark hair follicles.

It’s not known whether the incomparable Master Hugo completed the lettering as well as the illuminations. He certainly was a talented man and could well have done so as it is of such a high standard and the care taken on writing matches that of the illustrations. There’s more information about of the book itself here, and images of each page on the Parker Library website here.

To My Dear and Loving Husband

The Art Workers’ Guild in London is a great institution, set up by followers of William Morris, and providing a forum for those who work in craft, art and architecture. Fortnightly lectures for Brothers and their guests on a variety of topics are held in the Lecture Room attached to a beautiful 18th century building. In this room a bust of William Morris, a previous Master, looks down on all proceedings. The Art Workers’ Guild held an auction in November 2017 to raise money for roofing over the atrium to create exhibition space. As Brothers of the Guild, we were asked to produce work that could be auctioned, and this is mine.

I chose to write out this poem by the American Anne Bradstreet because it is one of my favourites. And I decided to set it out just a little bit differently. I designed it as a landscape book and made it wide and narrow. I fed two colours of Schmincke Calligraphy Gouache into a quill as I wrote (more on this here). I really like doing this as I feel that it represents two separate people coming together in a relationship, sometimes one colour, sometimes the other, but mostly a variable mix of the two. The treated vellum was a dream to write on, and the lettering came out very finely, as can be seen by the title where I have left in the pencil guidelines. (Note the upper pencil line for the poet’s name. I was enjoying writing so much that I rather generously flourished the letter ‘g’ and then wasn’t sure that the tiny writing for Anne’s name would show up with the loop of the flourish, so had to drop it down a bit!)

I wanted to ensure that the balance between the title page and the poem worked well. It wasn’t quite as easy as normal to get the measurements right with this unusual shape of book.

I selected the colours red and blue gouache and found hand-made paper which matched exactly that of the paint, and, with a white title page and ‘endpaper’ to ensure that the colour behind the vellum was the best to show it off well, I prepared a ‘liner’ of the dark blue paper which had been made in India, and a cover of stiff red paper, a paper which had been made in Thailand. I made deckle edges on both.

I sewed everything together with a dark blue ribbon, wrote the title on a piece of vellum from the same skin and attached it to the front cover. Everything seemed to work well together and I hope that the successful bidder enjoys their book.

Patricia Lovett MBE

Calligraphy | Illumination | Design