The Scribal Art of Elizabeth de Nevell

A Letter Upon the Garden

A piece in the style of the Hastings Hours

This piece was started in Mid 2002 and has been worked on at many demo's and displays a little bit at a time since then. It was finally finished September of 2005. Originally I thought it would be an entry for an A&S competition, but I don't think that will be the ultimate case since it is so personalized. It would be hard to consider this as an anonymous entry. It's being entered in the Laurel Prize Tourney at RUM November 19th, 2005.

Text & Calligraphy

Though born Judah Ibn Gabirol of Cordova (c.1021-1058), one popular poet in Medieval Spain was called Solomon,

Solomon’s secular poetry deals with the standard themes of wine, friends, loneliness and sorrow; it expresses both a joie de vivre and despair at the vanity of life and worldly striving. In the following exquisite poem about nature, the poet paints a canvas of flowers and stars, the rains of autumn serving as a metaphor for the creative act of writing. [www.jhom.com]

“With the ink of its showers and rains,
with the quill of its illuminating lightning,
and the hand of its clouds,
autumn wrote a letter upon the garden,
in purple and blue.
No artist could conceive of such things.
And this is why the earth,
grown jealous of the sky,
embroidered stars in the folds of the flowerbeds.”

I felt that this poem lent to a lovely pun for a scribal project. It attests to the fact that though we can try to capture nature’s beauty with out paint and brushed we somehow always fall short. In this highly personalized illumination, the text additionally embodies my struggle to improve my own art and the battle in coming to terms with the fact that what ends up on the page never quite looks the same as it did in my head.

Illumination

The inspiration for this illumination was the Hastings Hours. Done in the late 15th century in the
Southern Netherlands this manuscript comes from the Franco- Flemish Illumination Ghent – Bruges school. It is considered a key work in the development of this style, last great hurrah of the art form.

The area had close ties to England, and often produced private devotional manuals. It was common for the miniature and borders to complement the text and often include the likeness or heraldic display of the patron or owner. The Hastings Hours shows a wide variety of color and background throughout it’s pages attesting to the creativity of the scribes. Largess is often represented by shower of gold reused many times through the works of the school but it also was common to represent such with flowers also with flowers.[Blackhouse 21]

Original layout sketches on the piece. Here you can see the unicorn and Lion that we’re originally planned for the miniature. These were later exchanged for a garden scene with evergreen and willow trees to represent my honors from the MidRealm. Coins of largess would be changed to purple and blue flowers in order to highlight the text.

The piece in progress. It sat in this state for a number of years only being pulled out and worked on at demo events.

Tools used

4H pencil
Sunlight
Window pane
Ruler
Vellum
Gouache & Cake Watercolor
Distilled Water Gum Arabic
Size 00 sable brush
Higgins Engrossing Ink
Dip Pen with a Mitchell nib

In Europe, parchment was the common material available for use in book construction prior to the 13th century. (Clement) Parchment has traditionally been made from sheepskin, and vellum from calfskin, the later being a thinner, finer product. In today’s market though there is much controversy over what constitutes “vellum” as the term means different things to a variety of experts.[Cavasin] For the purpose of this paper I shall use the more general term of “parchment”. I purchased a sheet of 8 x 11 manuscript parchment from a local supplier. Because of the quality of the manufacturer’s work, there was little additional preparation that needed to be done. To ensure ease of use however, I gave the skin a light dusting of Gum Sandarac , which helps the paint adhere to the page and prevents feathering of the ink. [Seligman, 18]

Precious Metals played an integral part in medieval illumination and of all metals used, gold was the most significant. Not only was it revered for its power to suggest richness and splendor, not only for its color, not only for its luster and permanence, but for all of them together. In fact the term “illuminate” is defined by Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary as “ to decorate with gold or silver or brilliant colors or with often elaborate designs or miniature pictures”[Webster’s]. The medieval illuminators along with their patrons joined in an enthusiasm for this precious metal that resulted in some of the most charming and radiant effects in the arts of the Middle Ages. For this project Holbein’s pearl gold gouache replaced the shell gold for reasons of both cost and convenience.

Every effort was made to use period pigments and/or match the colors to those in my copy of Janet Blackhouse’s book “The Hastings Hours”. Ultimately I am unhappy with the right panel. I struggled trying to recreate the look of the terra cotta wall shown on the back over of this book and never found the color combination that felt right.

Elements of Design

Bibliography

"Jewish Heritage Online Magazine”, www.jhom.com, 2002 http://judaism.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fjhom.com%2Ftopics%2Frain%2Fibngabirol.html. accessed September 2002

Blackhouse, Janet;”The Hastings Hours”, The British Library Board, 1996

Blackwolf, Master Gordon; “Gilding”, http://www.mtsu.edu/~kgregg/dmir/06/0605.html, 1984

Brown, Michelle P.; “Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts”, J.Paul Getty Muesum, Los Angeles, 1994

Cavasin, Rick; “Hand made Parchment and Vellum”, http://www.niagara.com/~acavasin/rick/rcav.html, 1995-8

Clement, Richard W.; “Manuscript Books”, Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies
http://orb.rhodes.edu/encyclop/culture/books/medbook1.html

MERRIAM-WEBSTER ONLINE; Collegiate Dictionary, (www.Merriam-Webster.com) Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 2002. Accessed October 2002.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright © 1994, 2000, Columbia University Press. http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/ent/A0824993.html, accessed October 2002.

[www.jhom.com]