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So! Prior to the arrival-in-Copenhagen debacle, I was in Sweden for Kingdom University, my first visit to Nordmark (but not my last: I'll be going back to Attemark in < 4 weeks time for their Yule party, the day before I leave Denmark and head back to Amsterdam). Wednesday night I was a bit worried to get an email from SAS saying one of my flights on Friday had been cancelled, so I had to call them early Thursday morning and get rebooked, meaning that I had to change my pick-up at the airport Friday afternoon at the last minute. So I ended up having about 4 hours to kill at the Gothenburg airport, which wasn't as inconvenient as it may sound. I had all of my calligraphy stuff with me, and a half-finished scroll for an event in three weeks time, so I sat down, pulled out all my stuff and did some combat scribing (Swedish people are either (a) extremely polite, (b) extremely shy, or (c) extremely noncurious, because not a single person asked me what I was doing. Nor did I catch anyone glancing at me surreptitiously. Strange.). And then I napped for two hours.

Got onto sight around 10:15pm, and ended up just going to bed -- having gotten up at 7:00am, I was pretty tired.

I taught introductory illumination first thing Saturday morning, and had 12-15 students come (it was a two hour class while most of the others were one hour, so I had some people come for just the first hour, some for just the second). Two people actually completed a painted initial by the end of the class (both of which I got to keep, woohoo, scroll blanks!) and everyone else went home with a partially finished one, plus the exemplar they used. I look forward to seeing these get finished and turn up as scrolls in the future.

At lunch I sat across from Felicitas, the new baroness of Gotvik, who is a delight. She was also extremely helpful with my travel arrangements earlier in the week, as it appears that the Swedish train website won't accept foreign credit cards, but doesn't actually tell you this anywhere. In a reverse of the usual set up, lunch was the full three-course banquet, and then supper was a more relaxed and informal affair, with cushions and rugs on the floor for people to lounge during court.

In the afternoon I went to a Renaissance cookie baking class, where we made two types of cookies and then proceeded to eat them. I like that kind of class.

There was a pretty long court in the evening, what with the creation of the new Barony of Gotvik, but I was surprised when Princess Eleonora's herald announced that she was going to be presiding over a regency court for TRM, because the first thing that went through my head was "But Caoimhe didn't tell me they needed any scrolls for this event!" -- and then my name was called. They've granted me their sigillum coronae, which was truly unexpected and I hardly feel like I deserve; I've just been doing what I should do as signet clerk. All of the real work has been done by my scribes, to whom I often come at last minute with requests and then they perform miracles. I'm just the coordinator.

But it was a lovely surprise, though I did have to laugh -- the scroll hadn't made it to the event, and my thought was "it's because they didn't have their signet clerk make the arrangements for it." :)

After supper there was some fantastic live music, by three extremely talented musicians who had a huge repertoire of instruments and also sang. There was dancing, but not much actual medieval dancing, it was more the type of dancing you get when you go out dancing in a club. A little strange doing that in full medieval clothing, but still a good time. I didn't stay up too late; I went to bed about 12:30 and was sound asleep before anyone else in my room returned.

In the morning I got a ride to the train station, had an uneventful train ride from Mullsjö to Copenhagen (riding first class from Nassjö to Copenhagen, which meant comfy chairs and free wifi!), where I met up with Ana Maria. So the entire event itself was lovely and very nice, it's only what came after that was somewhat more frustrating.

I still promise to write about Indonesia.

ETA: I forgot to add that I finally got to meet cameleopard in person, and she gifted me with a bottle of cloudberry liquor that I am very much looking forward to trying.

I've been pretty scribally active lately, but only in facilitating terms -- making sure that all the awards for upcoming courts have scribes and scrolls assigned to them. I haven't been as active in actually making scrolls myself as I would like, since I've been traveling so much. But I did get to do a court barony scroll at the beginning of October, which was just given out this weekend (and for which I just got the most effusive thank-you email I've ever received for a scroll I've done, which just warmed the cockles of my heart and has put a grin on my face). I actually have a number of photos of this one in stages, but I don't have them to hand right now so I will just post the finish product, which I'm extremely happy with:

Court Barony for Rainer Wulfgar



It took me three days to complete this. The calligraphy was done the first day, the design drawn and the base colors painted the second, and the shading and whitework done the third.

The text based on the summons to parliament used by Queen Elizabeth II (though I believe it's essentially unchanged from earlier summonses); such a summons would make someone a baron if they weren't already one. It reads:

Ulfr by favor of arms of Drachenwald including all of the southern reaches King and Caoimhe by favor of beauty and inspiration of the same realm Queen to our right trusty and well beloved honorable lord Rainer Wulfgar. Whereas by the advice and assent of our peers for certain arduous and urgent and serious affairs concerning Us and the defence of our kingdom we are minded to surround ourselves with such barons as shall give us council in these affairs we strictly enjoining command you upon the allegiance by which you are bound to Us that the weightness of the said affairs and imminent perils considered (waiving all excuses) you place personally yourself before us so that we may make you a baron of our court so that with the said prelates, great men and peers you treat and give Myour counsel upon the affairs aforesaid. And this as you regard Us and Our honour and the safety and defence of the said Kingdom and dispatch of the said affairs in nowise do you omit yourself from our counsel.

Witness Ourselves at Griffinstor the 30th day of October in the 45th year of the society.

The design is based on Hs. II 119 f. 238v, from the 13th century.

Remember a few weeks ago when I was very happy with how a scroll went? As I've just gotten an IM from the recipient, draconisregena, I know it's been received so I can post it here:


Queen's Order of Courtesy for Saraswati-mán.ikkam, aka Ruth


The exemplar is a 15th C Dutch MS, Codex S 1399, fol. 2054. The design was picked, layout drawn, text written, and calligraphed on the first day, and all the illumination (drawing, inking, and painting) done the second day.

The text reads:

Vistors comes from far away lands et many make this realm their home. Yet few of them shine so fair as the flower of India lately bloomed in Drachenwald, Saraswati-mán.ikkam, whom we know well and love greatly and whom it is our pleasure to call Ruth. For her deeds and largesse and delicacies brought from abroad, we, Fiona, queen of Drachenwald, make her a member of our Order of Courtesy. Done the 19th day of June, a.s. xlv, at the coronation of our heirs and in witness whereof we have set our hand below.

Those of you on FB have seen that the last few days I've been city hopping across Europe. Friday morning I took the train to Hamburg, arriving at Volker's place (where I, though not him, would be spending the weekend) a little before 1:00pm, where he greeted me, handed me keys to the apartment, gave me a cold beverage, and told me that the antiquarian bookseller over by Stephansplatz had heraldry books in the window. I love friends with their priorities in the right place. :) He fed me and we chatted a bit and then I headed out to campus to stop at said bookstore (and buy one of said books) before the uneuphoniously named MoFPILE workshop started. I'd spent the previous two days angsting over my slides, knowing that I had either way too much information for an hour and fifteen minute talk, or way too little, or, more likely both. The audience was everything from die-hard Indologists doing philology to hard-core mathematical logicians, so finding the right pitch for the talk was causing me some grief -- especially since I wouldn't really be saying that much about Indian logic, since what I know about Indian logic fills up only about four pages. So I ended up being really quite surprised when my talk, the second Saturday morning, went over really well. It garnered me: (a) one audience member who came up afterwards, and again on Sunday, to tell me how exciting and inspiring he found it; (b) an invitation to come to Heidelberg for a week or so in fall and try to teach all the logical techniques I mentioned to a group of Indologists and Sinologists; and (c) an invitation to say some summing up remarks at the end of the workshop (with no warning: Jonardon was chairing the final roundtable discussion, and he opened it up by asking Benedikt to say something about what he'd hoped for the workshop and how well those hopes had been met; me to say something more about faithfulness in logical modeling; and Harunaga to say something about what the Indologists would be most interested in, in terms of collaboration with the logicians. Luckily, since Benedikt spoke first, that gave me a few minutes to pull together some useful things to say; and I'm glad I was asked to articulate on this question, since it's something I've found myself thinking more and more about lately, esp. given some referee reports I got earlier in spring, and then on the train to Münich Sunday afternoon I spent some time writing up these thoughts. And now I know what I'll be submitting on to SILFS next week.

I also had an interesting experience Saturday evening, after the last talk. The speaker made some claim that I completely disagreed with; he was reporting on an impossibility claim that someone else had proven, to the effect that Aristotelian syllogistics with existential import cannot be formalized in first order logic. Of course I had to put my hand in the air as soon as things were open for question, because I know that that's false -- I've done it. In multiple different guises. Read and refereed by a number of different people who never commented on it. The trick is that you can only have existential import for affirmative claims, and not negative claims, which is fine, because Aristotle only ever espouses it for affirmative claims. I tried to explain this, and the speaker simply refused to believe me. Since he had an impossibility result, clearly my route (or rather, Abelard's route, or Avicenna's) wouldn't work. A number of other people in the audience, though, seemed to have some sympathy for my claim, and said they were interested in details, esp. when I said "But I can prove that Abelardian truth conditions work, saving all the relations in the SoO and validating all of the rules of conversion needed to prove all the assertoric syllogistics". So in the hour I had before meeting Volker and Julia for supper, I went to Planten und Blomen, sat in the rose garden, and typed up my proof, which I then was able to distribute Sunday morning to those who were interested.

I tend to forget how unreliable Deutsche Bahn trains are, so I was rather peeved when my train to Münich Sunday afternoon was delayed by about half an hour, and then, when we came to a complete stop in the middle of some fields during the middle of the first leg, by an hour. Luckily, the problem causing the delays was effecting almost the entire western/northern quarter of Germany, which meant that I didn't miss my connection at Hannover, as it was also delayed by an hour. And since I was traveling first class (when I finally got around to booking the trip, all the cheap second class specials were gone, but there was a first class special that was cheaper than the cheapest remaining second class, so I went with that), I got vouchers for both legs which I can fill out and I should get 25% of my ticket refunded because the delay was more then 60 minutes. Conrad met me at the train station and soon after we got back to his and Ælfwynn's place they had dinner ready for me, which was lovely as I was pretty hungry by then. Monday I spent the morning calligraphing two scrolls for coronation, on blanks done by the Isengau scriptorium, as I hadn't gotten any bites for these assignments yet, and I knew if I did them after I got back next week, there'd be no way I could get them to the event on time. But that only took the morning and part of the afternoon, after which we went to their garden (and I got the largest, purplest radish I've ever seen), and then just lazed around. I left around 8pm to get to the train station around 8:30, and soon after that the night train to Bologna pulled up (it left a little after 9pm). I was in one of the sleeping rooms with six bunks; two of the bunks were a couple from Indiana who were on their second honeymoon, the other three were German businessmen. I had one of the top bunks; it's really quite high up when there's three. I drifted off to sleep pretty quickly, having still been pretty tired from the weekend, and also knowing that the train was getting in to Bologna around 4:30am, and thus I had to get as much sleep as I could in order to make it through the day. The steward for my car came by around 4:00am to wake me up, and then after we arrived I had 4.5 hours to kill before the symposium opened for registration. I was pleased when leaving the station to find that even though it was still dark, it was not cold at all; I didn't need to dig out my jacket. Because it was dark, I just headed to one of the bus stalls, which were all well lit, and sat down on the bench and dozed on and off until about 6:15. Then I figured it was late enough in the day to go to the park nearby that I'd seen on the map, where I found another bench, lay down, and again dozed on and off for another two hours. I figured by then the building where the symposium was would at least be open and I could find a bathroom to change clothes and freshen up. However, I'd only written down the name of the building not the street number (though I had a google map), and I walked past it without realizing it; however, while doing so, I also walked past the organizer and three others walking the other direction, so I turned around and caught up with them. Costantino, the organizer, recognized me and even remembered my name, which was surprising, since we'd last seen each other two years ago and we didn't talk much then. The building wasn't open yet so they were going to get coffee, and I joined them for a good strong tea which helped wake me up a bit. I've made it through most of the day pretty well so far, with only dozing off a bit during some of the afternoon talks (the room we're in is pretty warm), and I'm going to try to stick it out long enough to join people for dinner in about 20 min., though I won't stay out late. Two more days of symposium here, and then Friday morning I take the train to Genova for the final leg of my journey. This journey, that is.

Friday was Queen's Day, which is a university holiday. We didn't have any big plans, though I thought Joel and I might go walk through the vrijmarkt on Dapperstraat, since that's always interesting, but that ended up not happening: I spent almost the entire day sitting on the bed watching snooker and going through a stack of articles I'd printed two days earlier to extract any useful tidbits about medieval voting rules and electoral procedures. It was very productive. Saturday was spent similarly, with a break midday to join Joel and Nate getting kebabs for lunch from the market, and then dinner in the evening, after which we went to the Arendsnest (still got home in time to see the end of that semi-final). The goal was to do something similar on Sunday: Joel and Nate left in the morning to Eindhoven, for the start of their three-days biking from Eindhoven to Arnhem (they'll be getting home sometime tonight), and I leave Saturday for the U.S., which means I need to get through all the data I can before then so that Joel can work on it during the week I'm gone, as the paper we're collaborating on is due May 15. I did spend the entire day sitting on the bed watching snooker, but no research got done. Instead, when I could budge a very insistent Slinky from my lap (a lot of times during snooker-watching, she likes to curl up next to me, but occasionally she decides that she needs to be ON the lap, and when she falls asleep on my lap (usually when I'm sitting cross-legged, she'll sleep for about two hours before I finally disturb her), I did some C&I:

AoA for Mariken van Oostbroek


The initial and side border came from Codex S 1943 fol. 170v and the top and bottom borders came from Codex S 1943 fol. 196v. This is a late 15th C MS.

The hand is (yet another) attempt at Gothic. I'm more happy with it than I have been with other recent attempts.

From start (that is, writing the text, browsing to find a good exemplar, plotting out the lines, etc.) to finish (whitework is so satisfying), it took me about 9-10 hours I think. I'm very satisfied with this, and I've already picked out elements from three more folios in the same MS to do a companion piece (which I started; I got the calligraphy and the basic painting of the initial done Sunday as well). It was a Sunday well spent; it was horribly cold and windy and rainy out, so it was nice to spend all day at home inside in the warmth. I feel terrible, though, for Joel and Nate; it was rainy again on Monday (though sunny and nice today, though still a bit cold), which means they picked two of the worst days in the last month or so do to cross-country biking. Unfortunately there's no way they could've known this when Nate booked his plane tickets. I hope it didn't ruin things too much for them.

After a bit of a dry spell where I was too busy to think of anything but work, I've recently picked up my pens and brushes. I'm really happy with how this backlog AoA turned out:



It is based on British Library MS Burney 275 f.336, French, between 1309 and 1316. This design caught my eye because it combines both penwork and painting. I only wish that I had had space to try including the grotesques.

It took me about four days; the penwork P was done the first day, the border was drawn, inked, and painted the second day, the white work and the painting of the arms on the third day, and finally, the calligraphy on the last day.

Here is the text:

Pay heed to the words of Gerhardt and Judith, King and Queen of Drachenwald. We, not only through common report and the testimony of many worthy and credible gentles, but also by our own witness are well acquainted with and informed of the deeds and doings of our subject Balduin Valke, and it is our solemn and joyful duty to recognize the worth and nobility of the said Balduin by raising him to the rank of lord with all the rights, responsibilities, and privileges appertaining thereto including the sole and unique right to bear the arms blazoned as follows and depicted more plainly below, that is to say: Or, a pair of wings sable. So that none may give the said Balduin any let or hindrance or other impediment in the displaying of the said arms and in testimony of our action we have set our hands below on the 12th day of December, a.s. xliv, being the feast of Saint Lucia.

It's always way more fun to do an AoA scroll for someone who has registered arms than for someone who doesn't.

I've also completed two scrolls for Crown, but I'll wait until after the event before posting them, even though I've got versions with the names blocked out right now.

bend_gules asked me back in January if I would be interested in doing some penwork initials for scroll blanks to be given to the first Prince and Princess of Insulae Draconis, to which I responded enthusiastically...and then promptly failed to garner either the required motivation or time. I did manage to do one on Tuesday and will try to do another tonight, so I won't be going to Coronet this weekend completely empty handed.

Here's Tuesday's effort:

Scroll blank with initial A

The A is based on British Library MS Arundel 11 f.9, English, either between 1440-1447 or after 1465. I only just now realized that the initial was done in red, blue, and gold, not just red and blue; the printed copy of the image I was working from didn't make this clear. Oh well. If I'd realized, I would've done it in gold too, but I didn't.

Not too surprisingly, I didn't do any C&I over December -- there was just too much other stuff going on. My first big project in January was belmikey's Pelican scroll, which was done the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings before I flew out to MN Friday morning the day before the event. That was cutting it a bit closer than I would've liked (it took about 17 hours all told, 2 on Tues., 3 on Wed., and then I got home around 5:00pm on Thursday and worked straight through until about 12:30, with a short break in the middle for supper), but I'm still very happy with how it turned out. Unfortunately given how late it was finished, and how big it is, I didn't have a chance to scan it before leaving, so I'm now waiting on him to get me a scan or photo of it for my records, and as soon as I have it, I'll show it off.

A few weeks ago I took over the care and feeding of the Drachenwald scroll backlog, which right now involves going through the list of backlog scrolls in the OP database, comparing it to the list that mbroidress sent me, trying to figure out (a) which ones have been finished, (b) which ones are actually assigned, and to whom, and (c) which ones are still up for grabs. I figured one way I could make progress on the list as a whole would be to work on some of the backlogs I've signed up for, so Tuesday night and last night I did a back-log AoA, for Alyssoun of Adamestor:




The exemplar is British Library MS Burney 212 f. 1; column 1 and the second column to the end of the sentence was done the first night, and the rest the second night. For the second third of the second column, I had a terrible time getting my ink to flow; I have no idea why, since nothing had changed from the night before.

I still have a lot of trouble getting all the white parts of the inner filler penwork right; mine always turned out to have a lot more oclor and a lot less white than my exemplars. Gotta keep practicing!

Here's the first, the one with the border that took me 2.5 months to actually complete:


And here's the second, the first in my Visconti Hours borders challenge:


I didn't bring my camera with, so I don't (yet) have pictures of Robert's pelican scroll; he'll photograph or scan it when he gets back home next week.

Last weekend Ælfwynn and I spent some time flipping through the Visconti Hours, picking out our favorite plates and pointing to some of the bits and pieces we'd copied ourselves. It had been awhile since I'd looked through that book, since over the last year or so I've acquired so many other books that I'm always looking for inspiration in the newest acquisition. (That, and there are so many plates in Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures, that I have bookmarked to copy that it will take me a long time to use all of them!). Also, at the time when the Visconti Hours was my primary source for illumination exemplars, much of what was in there was way beyond my ability. I was surprised last weekend by the overwhelming feeling of "I can do that!" that I had while looking through it -- particularly the borders (though the architectural ones still scare me). It got me all excited again about using some exemplars from it, so I sat down today to pick some to work on (it's always good to have some started or even finished blanks on hand), and decided to be even more ambitious:
I am going to copy every border in the Visconti Hours.
I'm starting at the beginning, and I'll do every plate until I reach the end, no skipping, no changing the order. While I can start the next one before I've finished the first one, I always have to do the steps -- rule the margins, draw the border, ink it (if necessary), paint it -- in order, i.e., I can't paint #2 until I've painted #1, though if I've drawn out #1 I can draw out #2. How I interpret "border" and "copy" will be flexible; it doesn't have to be exact, and I can simplify the border if I need to (though extra credit to me if I can use all of the elements, or an interpretation of every element). I'm putting no end point on this, since I want to leave open the possibility that some day, I'll get sick of this, and put the challenge aside, and then come back maybe years later. But if I can do this, at the end I'll have not only a whole bunch of beautiful scroll blanks, but I'll hopefully improve my copying, drawing, paint-blending, and shading skills tremendously.

I made a good start today: I drew out the border of fol. BR1 and inked it (I had to ink it in order to be able to erase all the extraneous pencil lines) this afternoon, and I drew out the border of fol. BR1v this evening; this one probably doesn't need to be inked before I start painting it.