Hiatus

It seems I've taken an unintentional hiatus in my efforts to focus on school. It's comprehensive exams season, so I think it's probably best that I make the hiatus official. I will be posting the results of the tamga class at Bellewode come the end of March, but after that the hiatus will resume until late April.
EDIT: I had forgotten about some posts I wrote ahead of time and scheduled for April. Three of them will be showing up during my hiatus from real-time blogging, so as far as you guys are concerned, it ends at the end of March.

Medieval limp bookbinding

My wedding was very DIY. We designed all the stationary and made the RSVPs ourselves. The RSVP paper was the type made to look like parchment, so I decided I wanted to use it for an illumination project (no point buying the good stuff as a beginner). I enjoy bestiaries and decided that would be a good project which would use all or most of the paper. (For those who don't know, a bestiary is a medieval catalogue of animals. They include ones we now know to be mythical and each entry typically has some sort of moral lesson.)
I'll go into the contents in a later post once I have some pages completed; for now I want to focus on the actual book itself. I decided to make one of my own and stumbled upon this [sadly dead] blog with lots of A&S tips on a variety subjects. The link will take you to her posts on bookbinding.
The style is called "limp binding" because the spine of the book isn't stiff. I've never done bookbinding before and this seemed like an easy place to start (plus we have some scrap leather lying around). I'm not going to go into how it's made or what materials you need because she does such a fantastic job of it.

The one thing she doesn't give is an idea of how far apart the holes need to be. I had found a written how-to which said half an inch from the edges was a good place for the end holes, so that's what I did. The next set in I did an inch away because that roughly seemed to be what she did for her book.

Horizontally, I ended up placing them way too far apart. I only have two signatures of four sheets each in my book and put them about half a centimeter apart. I could probably slip an entire third packet between them, so a quarter of a centimeter apart seems like a good place to start if you make your own.

The flap on mine looks completely different because I only trimmed off the part of my scrap that went beyond overlapping the front cover. It already had an appealing shape, so I decided to keep it.

It's no masterpiece, but it was a fun, worthwhile project. It was really quite easy and only took a single evening to make, so anyone doing an A&S 50 Challenge which could count this, I recommend it.

Heraldic, Scribal, and Dance Symposium 2012

This is a fun event which I attended last year. It's nothing but classes- lectures, discussions, participatory how-tos... It's fantastic for anyone interested in these three broad subjects from the novice to the expert. Even if you're not particularly interested in them, you can take useful classes like Awards and Sumptuary Laws of Calontir, wherein you learn which pointy hats are what rank and how to address them, who wears what color belt, and what each award is for. Last year I taught a participatory class on how to debke. This year I decided to do something related to my persona, so if you're in the neighborhood, why not attend:

 Tamga: The Pre-Heraldic Tradition of Eurasian Nomads

Eurasian nomads used abstract rune-like symbols called tamga in ways much like later standard European heraldry. Some of those funky abstract symbols in Polish heraldry may be later adaptations of them. Basic information about tamga and the particulars of the Sarmatian style will be presented with a Q&A following. 

I'm planning on about 30 minutes of lecture. I'll go over some basic information about tamgas, then switch tracks and discuss the Sarmatian style (like the blurb says). I'll have a Power Point with lots of pictures and provide a handout as well. I'm hoping I can intrigue the audience enough to provoke discussion about how tamga are like Western heraldry and how they differ, and if I'm lucky some discussion on the possible modified tamga in Polish heraldry.
The event takes place in Bellewode (Kirksville, MO) on March 31.

P.S. I haven't gotten my tamga submission together yet, though the incoming new rules seem like they might make it easier to register one. Gathering the materials and writing a convincing academic-sounding argument will take time that I, at the moment, do not have in excess.

*Debke can't without a doubt be traced back to the SCA's period, though there are snippets [that I can't re-find the citations for, grrrr] of information describing a dance that could be debke or proto-debke. It's a least closer to period than belly dance, which is extremely popular in the SCA...but that's a topic for another day.

Ask the Readers: New Year's Day

Post idea stolen from Juturna, who posts questions for writers to think about.
A fun thing to do to develop your persona is to think about what they may have been doing at a given time of year. Would your persona have done anything to celebrate the arrival of a new year? Winter is about to hit full force- what sort of preparations would they be making? What would they do to pass the time indoors?

I have no idea if Sarmatians had any sort of  celebration this time of year. Holidays falling around cross-quarter days, solstices, and equinoxes were definitely tied to agriculture (when to harvest, when to plant...). It's possible they could also be tied to calving and breeding, which would be the more prominent interest of the Sarmatians given their nomadic lifestyle, but I don't recall that being mentioned in my Archaeoastronomy class.
The steppes of Eurasia would have gotten pretty cold in winter. I imagine fur-lined kurtas, pants, and caps would be made and mended right about now if they weren't already, as well as any repairs to the covering of the wagons they lived in. I'm not sure what they would have done to pass the time.

Scytho-Siberian zoomorphic art style as illumination

  This weekend some of us in the Shire roadtripped down to Kansas City for Kris Kinder.  Kris Kinder is mainly a holiday market where craftsmen can sell their wares, but it’s also where a lot of meetings take place. There are meetings for specific offices (chatelaine, chronicler…), and meetings for special interest guilds (fibers, scribes…). The arts & science type of groups sometimes have challenges where the members decide on a thing to make. Members work on their pieces and everyone’s are collected and given to Their Majesties as largess (items they can then give out to people as thank you gifts).

  The Winter Scribal Challenge this year was to decorate a bookmark or card with illumination and calligraphy that you did yourself. The idea was that you would be stretching yourself out of your comfort zone if you normally only do one or the other. The pieces that ended up being collected seemed to come solely from illuminators as most only contained a word of text (and actually none in a couple cases…), and there was some fantastic illumination done. I wrote “Home is where the Heartland is” (the name of our kingdom is Welsh for heartland) and was surprised that I was the most verbose. My calligraphy sucks, so it didn’t look great, but I did try, which was the point of the exercise.

  We were each supposed to do two- one to give to Their Majesties and one to give to another scribe who contributed pieces. I think only myself and one other person ended up taking pieces home, so the rest went to Their Majesties. I saw a style on a couple of the bookmarks that I’ve seen before but know nothing about (tri-lobed ivy leaves with bezants scattered about), so I took one to study and practice from.

  Aside from the one class on bianchi girari I attended, I know nothing about illumination styles, and I have yet to actually try any. I wanted to do something Sarmatian for my first non-pre-print illumination, but Sarmatians didn’t illuminate—they didn’t have a written language around which to paint pretty pictures. They do have a very distinctive zoomorphic art style, however.  They used it in goldsmithing, leatherwork, feltwork, metalworking, and all kinds of stuff that’s not painting parchment or vellum. The closest  to it is their tattoos (which I would love to find some pictures or reproductions of).  So what to do?—take advantage of the “creative” in Society for Creative Anachronism.

  I did my illuminations in the Scytho-Siberian zoomorphic style- one a Scythian variant and one a Sarmatian variant. The first, the Scythian piece, is based on a torse and quiver cover pictured in "From the Lands of the Scythians". The colors I used don’t have any particular significance because the artifacts are all in gold; they’re just what I felt like doing.

  You’ll notice this isn’t zoomorphic so much as straight realism. It's because these pieces were made by Greeks with Scythian themes and motifs for the Scythians. Scythians and Sarmatians love griffins. They also love to have predators attacking their prey. I decided to have my griffin attack the big letter ‘H’. See that fin on the neck and head? That’s something that Scytho-Sarmatian griffins have which Western griffins don’t (likewise with the short fin around the back of the jaw and the lion front limbs). The griffin on the quiver is actually shown pinching a chunk of flesh in its beak, so I replicated that here.

   The floral motif inside the ‘H’ and the border both come from the torse. I didn’t draw any birds strewn amid the flowers like on the torse just to keep it a bit simpler. There are several different types of flowers shown (or at least a couple different views of one and a thing that could be a leaf or a flower which I don’t know the identity of). There’s the main vine with branches splitting inside leaves (kind of like on corn stalks), then there’s the really skinny vines which end in the flowers that wrap around those main vines. 

  The Sarmatian piece is the one which actually shows the zoomorphic style. Both designs come from gold plaques shown in "The Golden Deer of Eurasia". For this piece, I painted both gold, in salute to their origin, with complementary colors filling the white space and closed shapes to make it stand out more.

I picked one of the deer plaques and reproduced it inside the H, once on each side, then added more points to the brow tines (based on a third plaque not pictured here) inside the horizontal bar so it wouldn’t be empty.The shape behind the deer is actually a leg that's been twisted up behind the animal. Twisting limbs is fairly common in this style.

 The saiga antelope is my favorite part from both of these bookmarks. I really like this particular version of the zoomorphic style. It has such nice swoopy curves and shapes. Everything just flows together. I had to make the hindquarters less tall than they were in the plaque in order to have it fill the space better, but it’s otherwise a direct reproduction of the plaque.

After drawing and painting him, I feel really inspired to make an entire scroll illuminated in that style. Someday when I have time…

From the Lands of the Scythians: Ancient Treasures from the Museums of the USSR, 3000 BC-100BC, Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol 32, no. 5, 1975.

The Golden Deer of Eurasia: Scythian and Sarmatian Treasures from the Russian Steppes, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000.

KWHSS: Conflict-checking armory

In period, when close relatives (fathers, sons, brothers...) were all alive and kicking, they would do slight variations of a theme to show that, while they were related, they were not the same person. Typically, these devices were only one step away from each other, like having a field of a different color, or adding a chief. In some places and times, there were specific ways one was supposed to change their device based on how they were related to the current holder of the unchanged arms- a first son would add a label, for example.
In SCA armory, two differences are required to show that you make no claim of relation to the person bearing similar arms. You can, of course, ask for letters of permission to conflict (LoPtC) regardless of relationship, but when designing your armory, don't submit it if you know of a conflict and haven't received a LoPtC.

There were a series of conflict-checking classes at KWHSS. The one I went to was run by Pipa Sparkes, who supplied a very handy cheat sheet which I've been using extensively. To conflict check, you'll want to access the SCA armorial and/or ordinary (oanda.sca.org) and potentially the compiled precedents (http://heraldry.sca.org/laurel/precedents.html).
You'll also need to know how to read a blazon. The field comes first, followed by a comma. Then comes the primary, followed by any secondaries, tertiaries, peripherals, and lastly overall charges.
So, in:
Azure, on a bend between two cups Or, an arrow azure
the field is azure, the bend is the primary charge, the cups are secondaries, and the arrow tertiary. In:
Sable, a gryphon passant within a bordure argent
the field is sable, the gryphon is the primary, and the bordure is the peripheral.
In: 
Argent, three bendlets azure and overall a cross moline gules
the field is argent, the bendlets are the primaries, and the cross is overall.
Sometimes there are no primaries, so in:
Or, a tierce gules.
the field is Or and the tierce is a peripheral.


So now that you know what your charge groups are, you're ready to do some conflict-checking.

Step 1: Identify the primary charge group.
A) Addition or removal of primary charges means no conflict.
A rose does not conflict with a lack of primary charges.
B) Substantially different primary charges on simple armory means no conflict.
Simple armory is armory with no more than two charge types which both lie directly on the field. In my previous post, the triskelion of legs is one type of charge while the bezants are another. There's nothing else on the device, so it's simple armory. The pall with an overall gryphon, however, is not simple armory because the overall charge does not lie solely on the field. Note that all charge types must be substantially different (a cross and a sword  in bend can potentially conflict with two crosses in bend).

So look for armory that has the same type of charge(s) as your piece. A leopard's face does not conflict with a sword.  If your piece has a wolf's head as the primary and someone else's has a dog's head, they can potentially conflict because there isn't much of a difference between a wolf and a dog as far as heraldry is concerned. Knowing what charges do and don't conflict is simply a matter of learning it through a mixture of common sense (a cat looks nothing like a shoe) and memorizing or looking through precedents (the SCA does not grant a difference between rampant and salient, for example).

If, via these two rules, nothing conflicts, then congratulations! Your device probably has no conflicts (Make sure to ignore "transparent charges" like laurel wreaths. I won't go into that right now.). Skip to Step 3. However, if you have a list of potential conflicts, you must now make sure none of them are less than two steps away from yours (In our jargon, these are called "clear differences", or CDs. However, this will probably change when the new rules go into effect, making it "distinct changes", or DCs.). So on to-

Step 2: Counting differences
Pipa did a fantastic job with her cheat sheet, so all but the italics is basically copied and pasted directly from it.
A) Field difference (i.e., my field is different; what does this mean for me?)
          i) Charged fields (other than uncharged peripheral ordinary): all field changes=1 CD Max
          ii) Field-primary armory has uncharged peripheral charges only: chief, bordure, base, canton, gyron, orle, flaunches...
                    (a) Substantial change of partition type= no conflict
                    (b) Complete change of tincture (including furs and field treatments) = no conflict
                    (c) Other field-primary armory: all other changes= 1 CD
          iii) Fieldless vs. field/less, tinctures vs. no tinctures, & Japanese mon= 1 CD
B) Addition/removal of charges on field= 1 CD
C) Addition/removal of charges overall= 1 CD
D) Tincture changes (including furs) to charges on field= 1 CD
E) Type changes to charges on field= 1 CD
F) Number changes to charges on field (note that a semy can be anywhere from 6 to however many the person/heraldic artist cares to put on there)
          i) 1, 2, or 3 vs. any other number- 1 CD
          ii) 4 vs 6+= 1 CD
          iii) 5 vs. 8+= 1 CD
          iv) 6+ vs. 7+= no CD
G) Arrangement changes to charges on field (charges in fess vs. charges in pale)= 1 CD
H) Posture changes to charges on field (this is the attitude and only major changes count, i.e. rampant vs. passant as opposed to statant vs. statant reguardant)= 1 CD
I) Addition/removal of tertiary charges= 1 CD
J) Changes to tertiary charges
          i) At least 2 changes to tertiary charges= 1 CD Max
          ii) If all of the following are true= 1 CD Max
                    (a) 1-2 types of primary/secondary charges: (1) simple and void-able, and (2) correctly drawn with an interior substantial enough to display easily recognizable charges
                    (b) No overall charges
                    (c) Substantially changing the type of all charges of a tertiary group

If, at this point, you still have at least one potential conflict, either seek out an LoPtC from the holder of the armory or change your design to avoid conflict altogether. If you have successfully removed all of the potential conflicts via at least 2 CDs each, then you get to go on to the last and final test-

Step 3: Visual test
This one doesn't come up often because being two CDs clear usually makes pieces of armory look completely different, but on occasion devices which don't technically conflict still look a lot alike and will be counted as a visual conflict. For example:
The submitted device:
Per fess azure and argent, a pale counterchanged
The registered armory:
Party of six azure and argent
A party of six means the field is divided per fess and then into three columns of equal width. A pale is a thick stripe down the middle which could potentially be the same width as the middle column of the registered device. Both have azure in the upper left corner and alternate from there. These look a lot alike, so even though they are clear of each other (the submitted device has a primary charge- the pale, while the registered armory has no primary charge), they visually conflict.

Charge Groups

To write a post on conflict-checking, I must first address charge groups. A charge group is simply a group of charges in similar locations and of similar visual weight on a device or badge. There are several different types of charge groups. All but one must lie in the central region of the shield.
Primary: The primary charge group is the most central thing in your armory.
Secondary: The secondary charge group is an accessory lying around the primary charge group.
Tertiary: The tertiary charge group lies completely on top of another charge or charge group.
Peripheral: The peripheral charge group is located on the edges of the field.
Overall: The overall charge group lies partially on another charge or charge group and partially on the field.
If lists of definitions aren't your thing, you can use this handy flow chart I made:

 

And here are some examples drawn at random from the Calontir populace armorial:
NOTE: If you can't see these pictures on your computer, use Ctrl+F to look up the names here: http://armorial.calontir.org/Pages/populace.htm I'll try to figure out what's going on and fix it later today.

Amelyn Pope: The axes are primaries because they are central to the design and lie completely on the field. The cauldrons are a tertiary charge group because they lie completely on top of the axes.

Jane Corwin: The triskelion of legs is the primary charge because it is central and carries the most visual weight. The bezants (yellow circles) are the secondary charge group because they lie around the primary charge and carry less visual weight.

Titus Decimius Alexander: The skull is the primary charge because it is central in the design. The embattled bordure is the a peripheral charge because it lies on the edge of the design.

Wolfger zum Grifen: The gryphon carries the most visual weight, but it doesn't lie completely on the field, so it can't be the primary charge. The pall it lies on top of is the primary charge. The gryphon is in an overall charge group.