The purpose of the calligraphy on this page is to present a clear hand. These pages were often used as teaching tools, and thus, a clear, legible hand with few flourishes is appropriate. Furthermore, I have used few abbreviations in writing the page. However, I did wish to put a bit of creativity into this piece; difficult to do whilst remaining true to the intent of the piece. To address this, I did provide a few alternative letter forms, used two abbreviations for "and", and the letter "w"--not seen on the model pater noster pages, but a usual letter in the hand used on my page--modified several letter forms (see below), and emphasized the word "Amen" by using a versal and alternate letter forms bordering on the textura type of letter. The Pater Noster page presented here was modeled on those used in illuminated manuscripts; single abc-pater noster pages were in use for horn books at least by the mid-fifteenth century (O'Day, in Morrill, p. 124), but this particular work is not significantly derived from these sources.
Paper: A purchased paper made in the same manner as medieval paper--this is the Fabriano company's deliberate reconstruction of the paper made by the first Fabriano in the thirteenth century. Per Theophilus, paper was in use by the twelfth century, but, of course, parchment was still the preferred medium. Paper, however, is less expensive and was certainly in widespread use by the time of this piece. Thus, I used the paper as a period, affordable material.
Ink: I used two period inks--a ferro-gallic ink and a soot ink. The ferro-gallic ink was made according to the recipe marked "A" on the page of receipts attached to this document; the soot ink was made according to the receipt marked "B". Both recipes are from a period manuscript on the making of artists materials. The gallic ink was used primarily in the calligraphy and vine work; the soot ink was used primarily in outlining and touching up.
This page is written in Gothic Littera Bastarda. This is an appropriate hand for this style of illumination; I have attached an illuminated page, similar to the style of illumination I used, that is written in one of the many variations of Bastarda.
The initial model for this hand comes from Marc Drogin's Medieval Calligraphy. I first stared using this hand more than five years ago. Over the years, I have modified it, sometimes unconsciously falling into a ductus more comfortable for me, sometimes deliberately choosing a preferred letter form. There is period precedent for this; the monk William Darker used ideas from several different scripts to create his own hand (Drogin, pg 68). I have attempted to chose all deliberate modifications from English sources to keep things consistent. I have attached the ductus page from Drogin for your comparison. Furthermore, I have attached a number of examples of English Bastardas that show characteristics similar to those I use. Lastly, I provided a page from a book that isolated letterforms from period documents, provided to show how many variations may occur in a single hand on a single page--everyone's writing is unique, and people modify the ductus to suit their style. Please look to the attachments for the citations of the specific source for each particular page.
Of course, the first thing I did was lay out the rulings. D. Thompson, in his several works, mentions the use of silver points, and Jackson the use diluted ink for ruling lines, but as these would have left permanent marks, I chose not to use these methods. Finally, Alexander (pg. 38) mentions that graphite, the material in modern "lead" pencils, was in use for lining and drawing by the eleventh century; while I could have lined with a modern graphite stick, I wanted to erase as little as possible. Erasing can damage paper and remove slight amounts of ink. If I were to use a period method, I would have chosen to prick markings for the lines into the paper and then draw the lines by scoring them with a bone stylus guided by a straight edge. As this piece is intended as a gift for someone who would consider permanent lines, scored lines, and small holes to be mars, I imitated the several lining methods by dotting the paper with a pencil and using a lined sheet under the page. As the paper is quite thin, I was able to see the lines well enough to write when the set up was placed under extremely powerful overhead light. The strong wire pattern from the papermaking process was also helpful in this.
I used a ferro-gallic ink to do the calligraphy, a wine-based ink as per the earlier referenced recipe. I applied it with a quill I made from a turkey feather. The ink went on slightly dark and became darker over the course of the next several days. Most of the iron-oak ink receipts I found (in Levey, Theophilus, Strasburg, and other period references listed in the reference section) were some variation on the iron/water/gum arabic/gall formula, with modifications based apparently on the availability of materials. I found that the wine/iron/gall ink produced a better darkness than the recipes that used only water, quickly turning dark enough to easily read and eventually becoming almost as dark as many commercially produced India Inks. I believe that this may be in part a result of the additional tannin supplied by the red wine. The soot ink was used to do any needed touch-ups, mostly within the illumination, but also in one spot on the calligraphy. Soot ink generally rests on the surface of the base, rather than penetrating the base material, as the gallic inks do. This makes soot ink an ideal candidate for touch-ups and outlining around gold; the soot ink, resting on the surface and immediately dark, generally provides good coverage without bleeding. This would be among the reasons why the anonymous writer of the G”ttingen Model Book believed that soot ink or lamp black was best for illumination. As soot ink has a tendency to flake off, however, it isn't suitable as a writing in on non-porus surfaces, such as vellum, explaining why the author of the Booke of Secrets viewed it as a writing ink of last resort.
This was a fun project, and I enjoyed it; I hope you will too!
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