If you've really looked around the site, you may know that I once temporarily purchased a leaf from a Dutch book, and was greatly disappointed when the leaf turned out to be in rather poor condition. The Dutch style of the early 15th century is one of my favorite styles.
If you've looked around some of my other sites, then you also know that I play in the SCA. As a person who sometimes portrays a noblewoman--usually 16th century, but I've dabbled in the 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries as well--it seems entirely appropriate that I should own a prayer book. Too, I've promised a friend that I would do her Doe's Grace as a small book, and I didn't want her book to be my first attempt at making a book, for I find that inexperience brings many mistakes.
Thus, it seemed the perfect solution to create my own Prayer book, for I would not only get an illuminated manuscript in the style I love so well, but I would also have a little prayer book to carry when in persona. I also took the opportunity to experiment with some materials and practices.
The book is painted on "vegetable parchment," a thin, tough paper which seems to stand up to time pretty well (I have some around here that is more than 100 years old and still quite usable) but which does yellow with age. I used a combination of commercial gouache and home made paints to paint it. The colors used were:
The illuminated and calliged area of the text with illumination pages is 70mm x 100mm; the actual size of each folio is 105mm x 150mm. The two miniatures measure 60 mm x 88mm. The x height of the text is 3mm. The illuminations were inspired by various Dutch manuscripts pictured in The Golden Age of Dutch Manuscript Painting and the single leaf I'd temporarily purchased. The booklet contains 8 folios. They are:
Folio 1v: Blank
Folio 1r: Idealized miniature of Patron
Folio 2v:The
Arms of the Patron
These miniatures aren't based on specific manuscripts, but rather have elements from several different Dutch miniatures incorporated into their design. You may view a line drawing of the arms by clicking here.
Click here to view a line drawing of
5v.
The methods use to make this piece were quite similar to the methods described in other articles. I did some experimenting, though, and I learned some useful things:
1. Neither gold paint stuck well to the parchment. The golds were the only paints that didn't stick well. The toulene gold stuck better, and, furthermore, could be burnished down.
2. The parchment is very fussy about being folded on the grain, but even when folding with instead of against the grain, the parchment had to be scored before folding. The surface of the paper is very hard. I set up the margins by punching holes through the paper, and found that the parchment is rather difficult to punch through--not that the awl won't penetrate, but it was hard to tell if it did.
I bound the book in a belt binding; that is, a cover designed to be worn hanging from the belt, that the owner may carry the book at all times and read it as needed.
Well, that's all for now. Questions are welcome at this email box.
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Copyright 1999, Elise (Elyse) C.
Boucher
