Scrolls in 2024

 

Because of changes in my personal life, involving a much higher workload in my job, 2024 has not been an especially productive year in terms of SCA scrolls.  In fact, I have only produced three award scrolls, though I have tried to ensure quality compensates for a lack of quantity.

Pelican Scroll for Gele Pechplumen.

Shortly before I was invited to do this scroll, the recipient had posted the image shown to the left, from a famous calligraphy exemplar book called "Mira Calligraphiae".  The creature is believed to be a sloth, though it looks nothing like one!  Knowing she liked the image, I decided to base my scroll for her on it.  Clearly, the sloth would not do... the award was for the Order of the Pelican, so I attempted to paint the order's symbol, the pelican feeding its chicks from its own blood, in a similar style.

The original would have been painted on dyed black parchment.  I was unable to find or create a suitable equivalent, and so the painting had to be done on black card. It is not an easy medium to work on... the pergamenata I usually use is a much easier material to work with, being less absorbent of the paint, translucent (which enables the design to be traced through) and any errors can be fairly easily scraped off with a sharp blade.  None of these things were true of the black card, which is a very unforgiving material allowing no room for error, but despite this I am happy with the final result.

Pelican Scroll and vigil book for Valda Kevinsdottir

Valda's persona within the SCA is a pagan Viking, which I find particularly challenging when it comes to producing suitable scrolls.  Prior to their conversion to Christianity the Vikings were largely illiterate.  I have seen SCA scrolls (many of them!) inspired by runestones, but to my mind these don't really work... unless they are actually inscribed in stone!

For my exemplar, I decided instead to go for a book a Viking might have looted, and settled on the Harley Golden Gospels, which is a Carolingian work of c 800 and thus would have been around at the time and in one of the regions the Vikings were raiding.  It is rather different from my more typical work, which is pictorial and representative, and instead relies on the sheer amount of gold (which is used for the lettering) and intricacy of the patterning.  The lack of pictorial representation may make it seem rather simpler than my other works, and in my naivety I did indeed it might prove quicker.  In fact, it proved to be one of the most demanding and time-consuming SCA projects I have ever done.

In combination with it, just to make things even more complicated, I also produced a vigil book (a book in which people are invited to write comments when the candidate for the order is sitting a "vigil" prior to the ceremony).  As wood-carving is a viking style art, I thought I would attempt to hand-carve the covers, something I had never done before.  "How hard can it be?", I thought.  Well, fairly hard, as it turned out, and certainly not to be combined with a particularly complex scroll!  I was very, very relieved when the two projects were completed in time to be presented!

Knighting Scroll for Ranulf Li Norreis

Though I have done many peerage scrolls, until now I had never done a knighting scroll.  I had wanted to do so, if only because of the vast mine of suitable images of fighting knights that can be found in mediaeval manuscripts which can serve as exemplars.  A particularly fine example is the bible produced for King Louis IX of France (St Louis) which told the story of the Bible entirely in pictures... though an explanatory text was later added.  It makes strong links with the king's own crusading experience, and is currently held in the Morgan library, so is generally called the Morgan Crusader Bible.  Sometimes, however, it is known as the Shah Abbas Bible, since at one point in its history it was presented to him as a diplomatic gift, and as such has Persian inscriptions as well.

The scroll is pretty much a direct copy of the original, except that I combined images which in the original are on different pages... this was to avoid using images which were too specifically tied to one particular Bible story.  Instead, I have stuck to generic battle scenes, which in the original are supposedly of the conquest of Canaan under Joshua. I have adapted one character in each painting to resemble Ranulf himself, easy to do as his SCA persona is of a crusader from just this period.  

One other change was a bit of a last minute decision... a little hidden joke.  So far, of all those who have seen it, only one person has yet spotted it, and I shall leave it unexplained here for any who might like to try and work it out.

Doing such a straight copy of the original is, in honesty, not very creative, but it did fill me with wonder and admiration at the sheer skill and artistry of the original illuminator.  I have read a theory that he was not normally an illuminator, but rather a designer of stained glass turning his hand to illumination, and doing the copy certainly led me to believe this to be likely... the subtle staining of the areas of single colour and the bold black outlines are key to the design, as they are to a stained glass window of that era.

Not quite a scroll

I was also asked by an SCA friend to produce a mediaevalised version of a "Clash" album cover as a logo for his armoured combat team.  Inspiration came from the carved musicians in Beverley Minster.

Also not quite a scroll.

Also during 2024, I did a little more work on my book of illuminated comic poems.  Sadly, the operative word is "little", but I am pleased with the quality.  I am not, however, going to show the results in this post, as I will await the poem's completion... at present it is very much "Work in Progress".

Recognition

Also, 2024 was the year my own work was recognised within the SCA by being awarded the Order of the Laurel.  So the final scroll shown here is not by me, but for me... produced by my good friend Kay Ellis, aka Agatha of Norwich.