While in one of my favorite art stores, I happened upon a small, well hidden display containing papers from Fabriano. Among these papers was an unassuming brown paper box that was labeled along the lines of "Medieval Stationary . Made according to the thirteenth century method/recipe developed by Fabriano. Reproduction watermark. Contents: Linen and Flax".
What scribe would not see this as a treasure? Wincing at the price, I purchased two sheets and drove home. Before I arrived at my door, I knew what I would make.
From the first time I saw the ABC+Pater Noster reproduced in Marc Drogin's Medieval Calligraphy, I have wanted to make one. These pages were apparently teaching tools: it seemed to me an appropriate vehicle for displaying my own peculiar G. Littera Bastarda hand. As the paper is quite thin, I chose an illumination style that would allow me to paint with a minimum of water and still look good.
Paper: As written, a purchased paper made in the same manner as medieval paper. Per Theophilus, paper was in use by the twelfth century, but, of course, parchment was still the preferred medium. Paper, however, is less expensive. 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 Booke of Secrets. The Gallic ink was used primarily in the calligraphy and vine work; the soot ink was used primarily in outlining and touching up. In outlining the gold with the soot ink, I agree with the advice of the anonymous author of G”ttingen Model Book, who believed that this was the best ink for illuminating. The gold seemed to repel the ferro-gallic ink.
Paints: I used the following colors:
Ultramarine Blue: In period, ultramarine blue would have been made from ground Lapis Lazuli. Since my favorite materials store (Sinopia--online at www.sinopia.com) lists 5 grams of ground Lapis at US$ 145, I decided to use synthetic pigment when I made this paint. Thus, I used synthetic ultramarine in combination with gum arabic. (The gum arabic was made in accordance with the directions from one of the period tracts translated in Levey.)
Carmine: This is a period color. In the earlier portion of our studied time, this color was made from a variety of sources, sometimes from certain type of grains (referred to as "kermes" colors) and sometimes from various bugs. By the end of period, this color generally came from a lac preparation made from the shell of the cochineal bug (see D. Thompson, for example). However, as this pigment is generally time consuming to create, Cennini advises the artist to just purchase the stuff. I took his advice and purchased a tube of Carmine gouache. Commercial gouache is prepared with a gum arabic base, and so can be called a "period" paint. However, I added egg yolk to the paint, based on the advice of several of the writers mentioned in the attached bibliography--Theophilus, D. Thompson, Stasburg Manuscript, for instance. The fat of egg yolk increases the depth and color of red paints--this was certainly true in the case of this Carmine.
Sage Green: I made this paint based on the receipt found in Cennini. The receipt called for terre-verte and lead white mixed and tempered with an appropriate binder. I experimented with egg yolk, glair, and gum arabic, and preferred the results I received with gum arabic. Also, in the interest of safety, I substituted the safer Titanium White for the poisonous Lead White.
Soot Black: Essentially the same as the soot ink, but less diluted. I made the black pigment by holding a glass bowl in a beeswax candle flame and scraping off the accumulated soot; I then poured the pigment into gum arabic previously prepared into solution--the receipt is in the attachments, marked "b".
Bleedproof White: A commercially prepared opaque white. As I previously stated, I do not wish to experiment with toxic pigments in their dry state. While I could have made a paint from my titanium white, I choose the Bleedproof white because it behaves in much the same manner as lead white has been described to act, with a strong covering power and a tendency to dry with the slightest suggestion of yellow.
Gum Ammoniac: a period gum used to gild; prepared according to the directions found under letter "C" on the receipt page, attached hereafter.
Glair: According to Cennini and others, glair makes an effective gilding base, so I did try some glair gilding on this piece. The glair was prepared according to the directions on the receipt page under item "D". To gild, I added a small amount of a red earth pigment, as suggested by our medieval authors.
Gum Arabic: I made this per the directions given in Levey (see the section marked "G" on the receipt page). After some experimentation with the result, I added some honey to the mixture to increase the flexibility of the gum, as suggested in Hilliard.
It would have been the easiest thing in the world to simply pick one of the pater-noster pages and copy it straight out. Certainly neither one of the two pater-noster pages attached to this document would have required enough illumination to seriously warp this paper. However, I wanted to do something different. I have always enjoyed the illumination produced by the Dutch in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and I am particularly fond of the various border styles of these centuries. Again, I could have chosen any of the various plates in the reference book and simply copied said page. This, however, was too easy. To use models and remain consistent with prior styles was the goal of the medieval illuminator; innovation is not a key feature of most medieval art, but I wanted this to be my own piece--similar to the chosen style, but not a copy of any particular plate. That I might walk that fine line of "authentic medieval consistency" while satisfying my urge to be creative and make something unique, I chose elements from various models and incorporated them into this single piece.
I have attached photocopies of the six facsimile pages I used as my models. Five of the six models are from the fifteenth century; four of these were Dutch works. The basis of the border illumination comes from the Dutch models, and the initial and cross come from the two Pater Noster pages. The several Dutch works are similar in layout and color scheme, but differ in the whitework patterns, the presence or absence of a painted bar, and the compression of the illumination (i.e., in some, the leaf clusters are fewer and the vine work less compacted, more spacious). While I used a similar color scheme, my colors are somewhat darker than those in the facsimiles. The colors in the facsimiles appear to be a lighter ultramarine, minium or cinnabar, and a green that may have been malachite or a mixed green, depending on the model. The color differences may also be a result changes in the photography and printing, as no photograph can reflect the appearance of a manuscript with 100% accuracy.
Specific details on the elements of the illumination follow. The border shape was determined by the pater-noster page from Wieck, while the elements from the border come from the plates in Marrow. I chose the thin bar and gold bars from Marrow plate IV37 as the basis for the vine work, and the more compressed style of vine work in plate IV29. In the models, the number of whitework pattern on the painted leaves is two; I chose to use four to provide more variety. Both patterns for the blue leaves comes from Marrow figure 60. One pattern for the red leaves comes from Marrow plate V40, while the other pattern is one of my own devising, based on Marrow plate IV27 and what seemed a logical extension of style. In the models, the visible color bars were all blue-red, but I chose to make my bar red-blue, as this is also a typical bar in other Dutch works of the first half of the fifteenth century, and I preferred to make the cross blue; I believed that a blue and gold bar next to a blue and gold cross would be a bit much. The color scheme I chose is similar to the those used in the models, but was modified to a slightly darker hue and chosen in part based on my ability to make a non-toxic version of the paint based on the directions found in the variety of period instructional sources cited in the references--more specific details can be found in the documentation for the exhibit titled "Period Paint Experiment." The cross comes from the Wieck pater-noster but has had slight modifications to the whitework and has been created as a separate element rather than incorporated into the bar. Lastly, the initial "P" has been lightly modified in form from the Wieck pater-noster "P" and the whitework of the "P" is based on elements from the Drogin pater-noster and my own design. By playing with the subtleties of the design rather than the overall pattern, I tried to create a consistent medieval design that was not a copy of any of the actual models.
Based on the suggestions in Jackson and Alexander, I made this piece in the following steps:
I first did the calligraphy. 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 such things mars, I imitated the method 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 paper making process was also helpful in this.
I used the ferro-gallic ink to do the calligraphy. I applied it with a quill I made from a turkey feather (method in Child). The ink went on slightly dark and became darker over the course of the next several days.
In period, I would have probably drawn the illumination with a silver or lead point. As I do not own a silverpoint, I drew the illumination on a separate piece of paper and did a different period thing: I traced my drawing onto the Pater Noster page with the ferro-gallic ink. I placed the drawing onto a glass shelf, placed the piece on top of the drawing, and propped the shelf between my lap and a window with plenty of sunlight coming through. This was much easier than the method I had used for the calligraphy.
I then laid the gold, laying either the gum ammoniac or glair, whichever I was using at the moment (the gold work was done over the course of several days), allowing each to dry sufficiently, blowing on the size, and pressing gold leaf thereon with a brush. After the gold set, I burnished through glassine with a hematite burnisher. As the paper is quite thin, I put JUST ENOUGH size on the paper; while this prevented cockling, it also allowed texture of the paper to show through. I find that I like this. I then painted. I used sable brushes. Finally, I outlined, this time, using soot ink (or smoke black, depending on the consistency of the fluid).
I really love this border style; based on a search through my personal reference collection (smallish; only about 200 books related to calligraphy and illumination), however, I was unable to find any other examples of this particular border style. From this, I would conclude that this specific style, identified by the primary leaf shape, is limited to the early-mid-fifteenth century and was produced in a fairly limited area. Certainly it does not seem to be as popular a style as the acanthus-leaf and vine work style best exemplified by the Hours of Catherine of Cleves. However, this is just a preliminary idea; I don't have the resources at this time to more thoroughly research this.
Making or modifying my own materials for this project was very enlightening. Some period references advocate the use of glair and/or egg yolk as a binder, others suggest gum, still others set forth specific guidelines under which each should be use, both as paint binders and as gold sizes. I found that I quite agree with Theophilus regarding his use of egg yolk+glair or gum for red pigments and gum for blue; however, I can also see why gum eventually supplanted egg in most applications by the time of G”ttingen Model Book; egg yolk is not up to the wear and tear of book usage. Further, I note that there is a large amount of variance in the materials used to make colors in the reference books. For instance, Stasburg uses cornflowers to make a blue, ibn Badis (in Levey) uses indigo exclusively, De Arte Illuminandi contains a recipe for a blue from turnsole, Hilliard has asuggestion for the use of woad, Booke of Secrets provided instructions for elderberries, and Cennini uses the standard mineral blues--with the exception of a recipe calling for "Bagdad indigo". I did a quick dictionary search to determine the origin of some of these plants and compared the origin of the plants to the location in which the medieval books were written; it was interesting. I had heard the suggestion that illuminators tended to use what was available to them and thus that what was written down was not the exclusive and only available colors/materials available to illuminators in a given area. However, the comparison mentioned above struck me in another way; not only were many things available that we modern scribes tend to ignore as it wasn't written down, but this also emphasized just exactly how important location was to a scribe's materials. Certainly there is evidence for importing materials, but so also is "what was available" a vast range of potential materials. What is missing in the receipts mentioned above is information on the duration of the colors made from these plant stuffs; with the exception of the turnsole recipe, no one really mentions just what happens to the colors in a few years. This does lead one to wonder if the apparent preference for mineral blues expressed by some writers is based on fugitive qualities in the plant blues. But that is a research project for another day.
I enjoyed this project; I hope you did, too.
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