Silver Brooch scroll for Rosalie Jane Blackmoore

Okay so this scroll was more rushed than I wanted it to be. Between stress about the election and a trip to Vancouver, I had less time than is ideal to work on it, so I deliberately chose a relatively simple exemplar.

As always, I started with the text. The recipient didn’t have a lot of persona information on her wiki - basically all I had to go on was that the scroll should be in English, and that she spends a lot of time with her father, whose persona is 13th century English. Given that I was tight on time, I was originally intending to just do this as a template scroll - using the various standard phrasings given in the EK Scribal Handbook to compose a scroll text that sounds vaguely period and hits all the important elements, but isn’t based on any particular period text. Once I actually sat down to work on it, though, I figured it wouldn’t take much time to look through the Epistolæ database of medieval women’s letters (https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/) to find something reasonably appropriate.

I chose the letters of Eleanor of England (https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/woman/25295.html) as my basis for the text, as she fits roughly the right time and place. I did find myself wishing that any of those letters were written by her, instead of to her, but it’s still fitting to have a source text that’s about a woman. I looked through all of the letters on her page, copied the elements of each of them that I thought seemed likely to adapt well for a scroll into my working document, and then played a sort of mix-and-match with them.

I was particularly delighted to come across the salutation “To the excellent lady A., countess of Leicester, Brother Adam [sends] greetings and the glory of rewards after the grace of merits.” in one of them - that phrase is perfect for a scroll opening.

Taken all together in the order I used them in the final text, the chopped-up excerpted pieces of the letters in their originals would have read as follows (citations reference which of the letters they came from, in order as listed on Epistolæ):

To the illustrious lady A., countess of leicester[4], Brother Adam [sends] greetings and the glory of rewards after the grace of merits.[5] The diligence of your serenity knows well how difficult it is to find a single priest who would be serve the needs of the lord count and you and your family. For such a one is known to be required who would be devoted to the sacrament in divine things, vigorous in ecclesiastical services, honorable in customs and circumspect in actions. Indeed foolishness then spreads immensely when a fool is ordained out of reverence for the order.[4] I ask, admonish, and beg that for the rest, doing good with multiple increments of honest [deeds] you strive to clear your conscience before the Highest and reform the opinion among men, in all ways that touch on your husband and your children, your household and those close to you, together; presenting yourself constantly, vigilantly, reasonably, and peacefully, according to the examples of praiseworthy matrons.[6] Because of this only one counsel could avail in this matter; namely that [4] granting you both freedom from very troubling dangers and the exultation of very pleasing progeny.[2]

Adapted to the SCA context and the individual in question, we get the following:

To the illustrious people of the East do We, Matthew and Fiamuin, King and Queen, send greetings and the glory of rewards after the grace of merits. The diligence of Our serenity knows well how difficult it is to find a minister who would serve the arts and sciences of An Dubhaigeainn. For such a one is known to be required who would be devoted to the support of the work of artisans, vigorous in teaching, honorable in customs and circumspect in actions. Indeed, without the ministry of Rosalie Jane Blackmoore, foolishness then spreads immensely. She does good works with multiple increments of honest deeds, in all ways that touch on clothing and trim, weaving and looms, together; presenting herself constantly, vigilantly, reasonably, and honorably, according to the examples of praiseworthy gentles. Because of this only one course could avail in this matter; namely that we grant her both exultation of Our populace and entry into Our Order of the Silver Brooch.

Specific changes that I felt good about included the description of what would be required for a baronial MoAS - following the structure of the original, and keeping some of the phrases intact, but recognizing both the teaching work that the recipient does and the overall support work that she does as MoAS. Also, in the list of qualities (“presenting yourself constantly, vigilantly, reasonably, and peacefully, according to the examples of praiseworthy matrons”) I would have just used it wholesale were it not for the fact that the recipient also fights heavy list - it feels very inappropriate to describe a fighter as “presenting herself peacefully”! And in the modern context of the Society, it seems correct to adjust “matrons” to a more neutral “gentles.”

So we’ve got the text; now we need a source for the calligraphy and illumination. For this, I searched out a 13th-century English bible, to continue attempting to match my best guess at the recipient’s persona. I was particularly interested in finding one that was fairly sparse in terms of illumination/illustration, as I’m much stronger as a calligrapher than I am with any other type of art, so especially on a tight deadline a primarily-text exemplar means leaning into my strengths.

The exemplar I settled on was the Rugby-de Brailes bible, English, c. 1230-1250 (https://www.textmanuscripts.com/medieval/the-rugby-de-brailes-bible-195344). I chose the second page that’s available at that link as my source to copy, partially because I liked it but mostly because it had the highest-resolution zoom available, so I could really see the details of the hand.

I’m still working on my ability to categorize period hands, but I’m not terrible at copying what I see; I do probably lean on Drogin more than I should, but this text was a really lovely exemplar to work from, despite being rife with scribal abbreviations. I admit I didn’t copy it perfectly - my e, g, and y in particular are more in line with Drogin's examples than this text, and my overall letter spacing is wider than the exemplar (besides being wildly inconsistent), but I was nonetheless pleased with how it came out. I was also very pleased at how many of the capitals I was able to lift directly from the exemplar! Usually I have a smaller block of text to work from, and I end up either extrapolating or just taking something from Drogin; in this case I was able to get all but the W, S, and B directly from my exemplar. For the W, I used one from a text that appears in Drogin (and which matches the M from this text); for the S and the B, I leaned more into the aesthetic of Roman rustic that’s reflected in the A and D of this text.

Next scroll I do, I need to practice more on the actual paper I'll be using - the scrolls I’ve done so far, including this one, have been on Arches hot-press watercolor paper that was recommended at one of my first scribal classes, and with this scroll in particular (where I’d done quite a lot of practice on mixed-media sketchpad paper) I noticed that the paper was gripping my nib more than I expected and making the calligraphy harder than my practice had been. (Calligraphy details: Speedball C-5 nib, minim height 4/32”, two equal-height lines spaced between each row of text, Noodlers Black and Higgins Red inks.) I also will need to start adding in a phase where I sketch my layout before finalizing the text - both on this scroll and on the previous one I did, I ran into issues where the text didn't fit neatly in the available space and I needed to adapt mid-stream, and I'd prefer to avoid needing to do that again.

My biggest criticisms of my work on this one are of the art. I was originally planning to copy the exemplar exactly, which would have worked great if I’d started my text “Pray attend” or something, but instead I had the poor taste to start it with a T, and you can’t exactly extend the descender of the T down the side of the page without extending the crossbar into the margin, since it’s centered. So I changed course and put the Silver Brooch in the box I’d set aside for the capital (side note: I’d really like to get a template for the award badges so I’m not mutilating them quite so badly every time), and made the sidebar art entirely unrelated to the text, as seen on one of the later pages in the manuscript.

The sidebar is about twice as wide as it should have been, and the curl for the dragon should have started further up the page. I also forgot to add the dragon's teeth in after I filled its mouth with black - I had done all the rest of the white beforehand and then just plain forgot to come back for it, oops. I’m actually overall pretty happy with the dragon’s head itself, though I should have remembered that I have a specific liner/tracer brush sooner; the dragon’s head is lined with the same 5/0 round brush that I was using for the whitework, while all the rest of the black outlines were done with a 10/0 liner. The paints are all by Archangel Arts; on this scroll I used cadmium dark red, ultramarine, malachite, and yellow ochre, with their standard white and black (I don’t remember the specifics, but those two aren’t period pigments).

Overall, including time to write the text, do layout, practice the hand, and make the actual finished document, this scroll took me about 16 hours, ballpark. Despite my criticisms, I’m actually quite pleased with it, and I hope the recipient loves it.