My First SCA Award Scrolls.

 

Having gained confidence from my Columba paintings, I was then encouraged to have a go at a "backlog" scroll... that is, one for an award which had been made some time ago but for which, at the time, no scroll had been produced.  As by then I knew Duarte, I chose to do a scroll for his "Dragon Steel"... a fencing award.  Since fencing really only came into being late in the SCA period, this implied a Renaissance style scroll.  My knowledge of styles was rather hazy in those days (it has grown over the years, learning by doing), but I came across a style commonly used in the 16th century where illusionist pictures of flowers, insects and birds are painted on a gold border, often surrounding a full-colour painting and text.  This was my attempt at it, with a personal touch in that the cat was our cat which had once scratched Duarte.  It was not based on any one particular example (except for the two fencers) but on my general sense of what a "renaissance" manuscript painting should look like.  The inexperience shows... this isn't a piece I am particularly proud of, but it does have the distinction of being the first SCA scroll I produced.  It wasn't the first to be presented, however, as it actually got lost by the Queen of the time and only re-surfaced much later.  When Duarte finally received it, he was very surprised, as it turned out that he had already had a scroll for the award, and it should never have been included on the backlog list in the first place!  Not a very glamourous start to my new career.

Thomas and Edith were aware of my work (it was at their house that I had produced the first Columba picture) and asked me to do a scroll that they could bear with them from the Kingdom of Drachenwald (Europe) to the Kingdom of Lochac (Australia).  The wording was by Thomas, and, because time was short, I did no more than an illuminated initial and some not-particularly-convincing gothic hand.  The initial included a portrait of the two of them on their travels.  I suppose this was my first "commissioned" piece with the SCA.

The first of my scrolls to be formally presented in court to its recipient was this one.  Sun and Chalice is a Principality of Insulae Draconis award made only once per Princely reign for conspicuous service.  I was asked to do it shortly after having had the rare opportunity to visit the library of Salisbury Cathedral.  By the standards of cathedrals, Salisbury has a surprisingly poor collection of illuminated manuscripts, the prize of their collection being a rather mutilated 10th century Psalter (see below) with initials formed from dragons.  It had a certain charm, and I felt privileged to see it, so I decided to use it as the basis for Constanza's scroll.

From a technical point of view, I think this was the first scroll in which I used pergamenata (a plant-based substitute for parchment which has the translucent quality of parchment and a surface that responds to ink in a similar way to parchment), and the first time I used real gold on a scroll.

Here is Constanza receiving the scroll.  The poem was not mine, it was written by Aodh.

Presented at the same event (though not in public, as it was a backlog scroll and the recipient was not present) was this one.  A Dragon's Tear is an award for laying on an event (the "autocrat" is the organiser of that event).  The event in question had been at Ingestre Hall, so I used that as the basis for the design.  My knowledge of illumination styles was still pretty ropey, and this is rather a hodge-podge of generally "Renaissance" styles, dictated by the fact that the hall itself dates from the very end of our period (in fact, just after... 1603). The painting was inspired by a fashion for painting of houses which mostly post-date our period (see an example below showing Ingestre).  The border is Italian, and completely anachronistic (from late 15th century).  For all this inauthenticity, this remains one of my favourite scrolls, despite being one of the earliest.

Engraving of Ingestre Hall

Photo credit Marlein Eberlin (Linnea Skog)