Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Elspeth's Rose


A number of years ago Brigid Caileen and Mittion were the Crown of Trimaris and TRM Caileen had a very special project. Her friend, Duchess Elspeth, had been in the SCA quite a number of years and although she had received many accolades, she had not received many illuminated pieces to commemorate those awards. Caileen set up to have scribes create all of the pieces that Elspeth was missing.

Caileen asked me to take the commission for the Rose scroll and although I was swamped at the time I could not say no to her. Saying no to Caileen is like saying no to your sweet grandma wrapped in a hurricane because she is a darling and a force of nature in one.

I had been toying with the knot-worked calligraphy from the Mira Calligraphae Monumenta for some time and decided this would be a good piece. I selected three of Hoefnagel's roses pictured in separate parts of the book and paired them with the knot-worked calligraphy. In the calligraphy, the award text was not long enough to create the cross shape so I added in lines from a medieval poem that I cannot recall.

The calligraphy on the curves was not easy and I recall not being entirely happy with it but the illuminations helped me to feel better about the piece as a whole.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Again. Be still my heart because this is freaking breathtaking. I have so much love for these!

Kristen said...

Thanks :) This calligraphy was *really* challenging until I found a way to tackle it. Now, I'm pretty sure I can knot-work text into any shape without swearing an throwing back an entire bottle of wine.