I was hoping to have more swording for this weekend, but life intervened and aside from doing an authorization bout, I was needed in other places. I’ll make up for it this weekend in Rhode Island.
The scroll I pictured above went out at this event, and started not too long ago (as most of these things do) as a Bad Idea. Baroness Aislinn and I often collaborate on shenanigans, and while she and I took an insanity break from me learning how to sew and pattern things for myself, she pulled up an image of a manuscript she found with the most gloriously tacky (we’re talking reminiscent of 70’s wallpaper tacky) border ornamentation, as seen below:
After gazing on this wonder, inspiration hit (read as: “koshed me over the head with a sap and dragged me into a convenient dark alley”) as we realized that the border reminded us… of the Silver Crescent badge! That evening, I hurriedly wrote the Signet to intercept the scroll assignment for Broch.
For you non-SCA readers at home, the Signet (among other things) assigns award scrolls to be created by artists and coordinates them with the Royals for presentation in Court. That level of coordination and organization is not for me (I am very much a creative chaos type myself), but I have deep respect for anyone who can manage herding this collection of cats, because it would drive me nuts.
We were given the nod and I got to work on the illumination while Baroness Aislinn and Lord Arthur le Taverner went to town on the wordsmithing. I changed the palette to coordinate with Broch’s heraldic colors, and then rendered the Silver Crescent badge as a wallpaper for the border. In the interests of keeping the badge recognizable, I didn;t attempt interlacing them like the original design. I knew that the wordsmithing was going to be chock full of Serenity/Firefly references, so my inspirational word for this scroll was “Shiny”.
After the line art, the first part of this process was to lay down the gold. Gold has been a source of grief for me ever since I moved from the desert to the northeast and I struggled to get the stuff to behave the way I was accustomed to in a more arid climate. In the increased humidity, I found it sticking to places I didn’t want it to, and to add insult to injury, I just couldn’t get the shine I wanted to see on it. The size would either soak through the gold (!!!) or not get tacky with a breath. In the recent past I tried a number of formulations with no joy, and even the addition of cerumen fell short of the mark.
In short, gold was a sweary process for me.
Readers of my previous blog entries will recall that I had the pleasure of rooming with Mistress Ari while in Atenveldt. Gold happens to be a specialty of hers and we got to talking (among other things) about the grief the stuff caused me when I attempted working with it. The first thing I did differently was I used a garlic size, specifically Mirandola’s formulation since I had some on hand. Straight from the bottle it behaved better than my attempts with miniatum and other sizes.
The other factor, which was a facepalm “why didn’t I think of that?” moment (as someone who is mostly self taught from reading, I have plenty of those moments) was when Mistress Ari informed me that the real gold leafing we use today is much thinner than what was used in period. “Cobweb leaf” I believe it was called. Consequently, when I worked on a section, I laid down at least three layers of gold before any burnishing. While there are things I need to fine tune, this was the most success I had with the stuff since moving into the humidity. I still looked like I beat up Tinkerbell at the end of the process, but at least I had something to show for it!
I didn’t have white gold leaf on hand and was a bit worried about masking the gold sections so I could leaf the silver toned crescents, so I opted instead to use shell silver. While not as shiny as the leafed areas, I was pleased with the overall effect.
Because of the turnaround, I went with my go-to hand, since this wasn’t going to be a copy of the original inspiration. I enjoy working along with others; even though I can wordsmith a scroll and have done plenty, having someone else craft the words allows me to concentrate on the presentation, especially with a fast turnaround.
In Court, intermittent sprinkles kept the scroll from being displayed while it was presented, but I find myself not dreading, but looking forward to my next opportunity to work with gold, and am already thinking of what I want to try next.
By Sword and Pen 