Silver Mantle - Bia

This is my first Silver Mantle which was going to one person in a squad of combat archers up north.  The first thing that struck me on this was the recipient's name.  Woooo!  I get to do another Italian scroll!  I went looking for a new source and found one that was pretty neat and I happened to really like the color scheme on this one.  Since the source had a Hebrew script, I opted for my trusty Humanist hand for this scroll to match the time/place of the scroll.

Thyra and Marieta provided commentary on my wording flow as that was my main hang up.  .  Thankfully the write-up had some good talking points.  This is another 5x7 scroll so I tried to keep the wordiness to a minimum while being true to the deeds of the recipient.

This is my first time doing this much rubrications (aka pen doodles).  Thyra lent me some of her stash of walnut ink to get the right look of the brown designs.

Recipient: Bia di Firenze
Award: Silver Mantle
Source: British Library - Burney 70 f.1
Materials: gouache on pergamenata, silver gouache, Shminke gold watercolor, walnut ink (for the pen work)

Finished scroll, just needs the margin lines erased.

Comparison to the original.

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

Silver Crescent - Sara

Another Silver Crescent with a quick turnaround needed.  The recipient had an Italian persona so I checked my store of print outs for one of my favorite Italian sources. 

I spent a good chunk of time on this doing the calligraphy practice.  The finished scroll is about 8"x10" since I got a little wordy and wanted to make sure I have the right amount of spacing between the lines.

Recipient: Sara Sala di Peruta
Award: Order of the Silver Crescent
Source: British Library - Yates Thompson 29 f.3
Illumination: gouache on pergamenata, Schmincke gold watercolor
Calligraphy: humanist

Side by side comparison to the original.

Remember kids, practice sometimes means making a giant mess but it's still practice.