Happy Halloween everyone!

What's better than celebrating the holiday with a Boo-Berry!  

I'm going to be starting a new project for my page here, and I'll be doing as many folios from the Mira hours as I can.  Stay tuned for more images!

I just updated the information for this particular page and connected it to the Mira Hours project.

If you've written words for this assignment, please let me know.  I can't remember if I wrote the words for this, or if I commissioned them.

I'm currently trucking along with my progress.  I have an AoA level fencing award to finish, a grant level fencing award and a court barony.  

I also received an email saying that I've been approved to teach my classes at AEthelmearc Academy.  Now, to sit down and prepare these classes for presentation.

This is a lovely article that I found on period pigments and their compositions in manuscripts.  This particular article is from the Sterling Museum's conservation laboratory where they analyzed the pigments from the Voynich manuscripts.

You can read the specifics of the analysis in the references beneath this post.  But the main takeaways from this analysis are as follows:

• The size of the mauscript pages are 23.5 cm tall and 16.2 cm wide

• The writing was done in brownish-black ink with letter sizes that vary from page to page, but they're consistent when on the same page

• The manual was written with a quill pen

• Aged iron gall ink assumes a deep velvet, purple-black color

• The ink used for the text and drawings are both iron gall inks

• There are blotches staining the page that suggests chemical staining.  It's believed to have been added there to enhance the writing.

  • I'm not sure what this means, but will research it further.

• The common pigments used in this manual are:

  • Blue paint: combination of azurite with small amounts of cuperite (a copper oxide)

  • Clear/white paint: identified as being proteinaceous with a large amount of calcium carbonate.  Suspected to be made out of glair (egg white) and calcium carbonate

  • Green paint: tentatively identified as being copper and copper chlorine resinate likely to be produced from salted copper corrosion

  • Red/brown paint: identified as red ochre consisting of ground hematite, iron oxide and some small amounts of lead sulfide and palmierite (lead-potassium-sulfer compound) mixed with a gum medium

References:

https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/voynich_analysis.pdf 

Lots of projects going on right now, I'm busy trying to keep up with my schoolwork and updating this site regularly.  Stay tuned to the projects I have coming up.

I'm currently out and about doing mundane things.  I started school at the beginning of this month, so my updates have been few.  I'm working very hard to catch everyone up on the progress and documentation of my projects before I commit them to social media or the internet.

Be patient with me as I work on getting everything caught up.  

Lots of scrolls went out for me, and now I'm just struggling to keep up with the documentation.

It was a long long awaited day, but it's come and gone.

I've retired as the kingdom rapier champion of Atlantia, only to step up into the role of Scrivener Royal of Atlantia.  I cant wait to see what new, artistic challenges this will bring me to.

Progress photo of me attempting to hand-dye my vellum with ink.  

Brand new month with a brand new project.

Back to sanding and cutting pieces of vellum for this project.  Lots has gone by since I last updated my page.

The massive map scroll that I was working on was finally given out yesterday at Harvest Raid.  It was wonderful and beautiful to behold.

Stay tuned while I work on writing up some tutorials.