Notes From Lilies

Lilies was so much fun! I learned a lot about many different subjects, including how to do a handful of crafts, and met a bunch of fun and nice people in the process. I weaved a seamless bag which I need to felt now. My husband made a leather jack and did really well with the tooling. He is much better at basket-weaving than I. I also learned that Yoda speaks Latin in English. My husband (now going by the name he'll be submitting, Gamble) and I are going to buy a couple rapiers to practice Calontir Steel cut and thrust on our own. I really, really need to find a place where I can practice thrown weapons 'cause it is tons of fun. Especially spears. We also saw Their Royal Majesties and Highnesses from five kingdoms do the wave in court.
I drew two device submissions for heraldic consultants. One of the pre-prints I had painted previously was given to a new Boga-Fyrd. I was the only entrant in the borders competition, but was assured I didn't win by default. I drew up another zoomorphic border. I'm kicking myself for forgetting to take a picture before handing it off... I did two deer with their hind limbs flipped above their backs and long antlers filling up the extra space- one on the top left corner, the other on the bottom right with antlers extending vertically up/down the sides of the sheet (scroll is in landscape format), and horizontally to the center of the page. At the center, they turn vertically toward the center of the sheet for just an inch or so to hold onto a blank circle for an order badge at top and a blank escutcheon for personal arms at the bottom. Their Majesties' scribe suggested painting around the colors instead of over them since she's seen paint not stick to gold gesso before. I picked up an illumination how-to book which described a masking method that might make that easier to do. I'm excited to try it out next time.

I finished skimming through the giant French tamga book in time for my class at Lilies. I had one student who's currently exploring Mongol stuff and we had a lot of fun talking shop. It would probably be a copyright violation to post translations of the book online, but I will e-mail relevant passages to anyone who asks as well as discussing each chapter on here once I'm finished translating each one.

Ashina Turk on the left, modern Mongol on the right

On a related note, to the reader who asked for a raven tamga- There actually was a tamga in the book which means "crow/raven" (the French word used, corbeau, does not differentiate between the two). It seems that tamgas didn't have specific names or meanings (other than identifying the one who uses it) in the beginning, but later on some were given names. Modern tamgas in Mongolia are still used this way, including the raven tamga. This tamga first showed up in a source cited as "The Book of Tang". It was compiled from earlier sources in the tenth century and in it are illustrated the tamgas representing various nomadic tribes within the then-borders of China. A Turkic clan called the Ashina used a tamga basically identical to the modern Mongol raven tamga.


The dumpling class was an even bigger success. I had seven people show up and they all seemed to really enjoy themselves. I ended up giving out a couple copies of the recipe beyond the class as well. I almost entered them in the "Cooked On Site" competition, but given that I forgot to re-look up and write down the scant documentation I'd found beforehand, I decided to wait until next year.
If you have the opportunity to go next year, I highly recommend it. So much fun!

Possible kurta pattern

At the request of a reader, here's a possible pattern for a kurta. I don't have time to test it before leaving for Lilies, so if anyone tries this, let me know any problems or ah-ha moments you have. It's based on the child's kurta in the Hermitage Museum I posted previously.

I would recommend not actually cutting the triangles out of the sleeves (just sew along where the seam should go) until you've tested whether you have full range of motion with your arms. It's entirely possible that it could have a more complex shape than a straight line.

This post will be updated after I make one.

Zoomorphic Art as Illumination Take Two

I entered this scroll in the "8 of anything" A&S contest at Melon Wars about a month ago. My take on the theme is that there are eight sets of eight things on the scroll. It's intended to be a game for the viewer to try and figure out what they are. I'll give people some time to guess then put the answers in the comments if any are missed.

   I've continued to work on Sarmatian zoomorphic art as an illumination style. One thing I didn't mention in my first post about zoomorphic art as illumination is that when Sarmatians put animals on objects, they made them fit the predetermined space. Proportions don't matter so much as removing as much white space as you possibly can. That means elongated or shortened bodies and limbs are commonplace. And if the animal is a deer- expect its antlers to be ridiculously long with oodles of tines and fill every inch of white space they possibly can.

  The animals in the border are all from or based on artifacts pictured in my trusty Golden Deer book. As before, I used jewel tones to color the internal linework and whitespace in reference to the jewels that would sometimes be placed in the eyes, nostrils, etc... All of them are animals which have been depicted in Iranian steppe nomad art- mostly Sarmatian.

   The images inside the animal border are depictions of steppe nomad life, with one exception. The picture of someone picking melons I included for the Melon Wars event. I doubt Sarmatians actually harvested melons. I'm not sure they would have even been found that far north. The image in the bottom right corner is itself an actual artifact. The deer in the bottom left image are based on Scythian artifacts.

   I was working under a very tight time limit and didn't actually finish painting until an hour before the competition ended, so I had to rush and skip step 8, hence the rough look of it. I might go back and fix that later, but I have other more imminent things to work on for Lilies.

   The calligraphic hand is Rustic Roman. Since Sarmatians didn't have a written language, I picked one that was contemporaneous with them. I think it works well with zoomorphic art. It was invented in the first century AD. Like other early Roman fonts, there are no lowercase letters. Early Roman hands didn't have spaces between words either, but that makes it a pain to read, so I included them. Brown ink might have worked better with my illumination, but I already had black and didn't need to spend more money than I already had on the Micron brush pens for the jewel tone linework (which work fantastically, by the way; definitely worth the investment if you do illumination styles that can use them).

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

Creating a Scroll

This isn't a post about how to design a scroll in a period style, or how to design a scroll for an award- you can find those here, here, and here- it's about how to go from a blank page to a finished piece. The start of a project can be very intimidating. What it should be, though, is invigorating. It's a chance to try something out. If you mess up, that's okay, because you tried and that's better than doing nothing. You can try to fix it or you can start over, up to you.

Here are the steps once you've come up with the concept and a layout:

1) Lightly pencil in blobs that will one day be the locations of your illuminations. Realize that these might change, so plan on fluidity- particularly if your scroll will have multiple modules interacting with one another. (This picture is from my test scroll, hence the different levels of progression in different parts. I forgot to take picture of this stage from the actual scroll.)
2) Are you doing calligraphy? Do your entire calligraphy sequence a couple of times on scrap paper to get an idea of how much space it's going to take up. This should all be done in one sitting because your hand can be slightly different depending on your mood, energy, etc...- especially if you haven't been doing it for years and years. Experiment with width, height, and spacing until you're happy with how it will fit in with the illumination. Pick a hand that works with your illumination style.
3) Pencil in guidelines for the calligraphy and possibly box in the space it needs to be contained in. Now do the calligraphy. This should be done in the same sitting as the practice runs. Always do calligraphy first because it doesn't take anywhere near as long to re-do as illumination does. This means that if something goes wrong which can't be rectified, you waste much less time starting over. Pick the right color for the calligraphy- black is the default, but some styles (like Italian White Vine) call for brown calligraphy.

 4) Now start sketching the actual shapes and details for your illumination. You might think about doing general shapes first, then details if your scroll is very modular (i.e., has multiple parts). Like doing calligraphy first, this is to waste less time re-doing stuff if you change your mind, mess up, or find your style changing as you work.

5) Got everything all penciled in to your liking? Here's where the process becomes less linear. I like to ink my lineart first. My husband suggested I should paint, then ink, but I like having more visible lines to paint between. So this step is optional- ink over your pencil lines then erase them. Doing all one line weight is very simple but also very boring. Do major delineations in a thicker weight (a .08 micron is good), then smaller and smaller details in smaller weights (.05, .03, .02, .01, and .005 microns are all options).
 6) Here's another step that's optional- do your leafwork, be it gold, silver, or something else. This is particularly important if you're using metal leaf because it will stick to gouache, and you don't want you painted portions covered up by gold leaf.I used gouache, so in this case I didn't need to do metalwork first, though I typically do anyways.
7) Once you have your shapes drawn (be they in pencil or pen), lay down the base colors of paint.
8) Now do shading, highlights, and whitework. It might seem like you don't need it at first, but if you try any of the above, you'll probably think your illumination looks much better for it.
9) Draw ink lines over where the pencil was/is (erase pencil if still there). Do this step even if you already did optional step #5 because unless you are an absolutely amazing painter, there will probably be bits and pieces of your lineart covered at least partially by paint. You don't necessarily have to re-ink the entire thing- just fix what needs to be fixed.

Ta-da! You just made an illuminated manuscript from start to finish. That wasn't so bad, was it? :)


About the piece


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

Eight Strand Braid

   My sister convinced me to join Pinterest yesterday. I've already seen some interesting stuff on there, including this tutorial for braiding eight strands together, posted by another Shadowdalian. I saw it and the craft bug hit. It looked fun and easy and my SCA belt is MIA. But I'm not currently home, so I had to run to the local arts & crafts store and buy supplies. It was a Michael's, so the selection was minimal. I ended up buying some fasteners intended for necklaces and pendants to function as belt buckles. They didn't have any fasteners that jumped out at me (I bought a pack of plain ones in case I decide to give some away), so I had to do some finagling to make a pendant work. They also didn't have any string-type things similar to what the person in the tutorial was using in the colors of my device (the resubmission of which has finally been put on an ILoI. Yay!), so I ended up just going with yarn. This means the belt is very narrow (~1cm) and you can't make out the pattern anywhere near as well, which is fine. It's still functional, was fun to do, and I like the way it looks. And to top it all off, it only took about 2 1/2 hours to make.


Here's the pendant. I like that the two pieces fastened together look like they could be two parts of a belt buckle even though they aren't.

 
Here's an example of what the braiding looks like. I used two strands of black, one of silver, and one of blue (all doubled over to make eight strands). The black strands started on the outside.

To make it both removable and fastenable, I added the following steps to the parent tutorial:
1) Thread all loose ends through the other end of the pendant. I wanted the hanging part to be unbraided, but you could also braid it for the entire length if you so desire.
2) Slip it over your head and down to your waist, keeping track of the longest it needed to be to comfortably go around them.
3) While it's at this length, tie a knot just beyond the pendant. Pull to tighten and cut off unwanted length of thread beyond knot. This knot keeps the belt from coming out of that end.

4) To fix it in place, cinch it, then tie the same sort of loose knot as you would with the ring belts you see a lot in the SCA. To remove, just untie that knot and slip it back over your head and shoulders.

   UPDATE: I made this belt in Calontir's colors two days ago after finding a Joanne's with more selections. The buckle is actually intended to be part of a purse; I'm guessing the attachment for bag to handle. They had several options that work well as simple open buckles. The string is rattail cord. It's not period by any stretch of the imagination, but it's sturdy, holds it's shape well, and passes the 10-foot test. I could probably have left the end unknotted and it would be fine since it isn't prone to fraying, but I did it anyway just to be sure. It also makes the pattern very easy to see. The yellows both started on the outside, so there's a series of lopsided 'V''s running down its length.
   I did the braiding the entire length this time. It can accommodate up to about a 48" waist after being tied off. I intend to give it to the Crown as largesse, so the length puts much less of a restriction on who can wear it.

Phrygian Caps Take Two

   I made a second Phrygian cap to wear at Lilies. It's my first war (a big interkingdom SCA event), and I wanted something patriotic to wear. This cap is designed as Calontir's populace badge (a badge than any Calontiri can wear to show their association with the kingdom). The blazon is "Purpure, a falcon striking within a bordure Or".

   I used this pattern to make a different style than my red hat. It's taller and has flaps over the ears. The purple part is one piece. When you cut it out, the backside of the cap is the midline, so you fold your fabric over there. The two pieces are stitched together along the crown.  There isn't any overlap in my finished piece. I think the point of it is to size it to different size heads, so I cut off the excess.

I had to trim the open edge around the face a bit to get it to look right, so play around with the pattern based on how it sits on your head. Another thing I did differently is that I didn't fold the back piece under as indicated on the other website. The back wasn't sitting low enough for my tastes and I'm not sure what the purpose of cutting that flap out was in the first place. I had already cut the slots, though, so I didn't sew them back together. Maybe they'll allow a bit of give when putting it on one's head? They're covered by the bordure.

   Like my red one, it's entirely made of felt. I don't know if steppe nomads did felt on felt designs, but they did felt on leather (like this saddle blanket). I didn't have purple leather, though, so I used some of the purple and yellow felt I had leftover from another project. I couldn't find my yellow or purple thread before I left town to do research, so I used black thread instead. Had I found them, the thread on the bordure would have been yellow and the rest purple.

   The stitching is all blanket stitching (like the last) except for the stitching on the falcons and the stitching holding the bordure on inside the cap- those I did as straight stitches. The internal border was to save time since no one will see it. I've never done embroidery before, so I have no idea if what I did on the falcon is period or even correct, but I had to show the internal detailing somehow.

Here, the top is depressed so the point points up.

   I did the bordure as separate pieces since there are so many turns. The stitching holding the pieces together is also blanket stitching, but I did that stiching on the underside so less thread would be visible on the outside.

Literature Review: The New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History

I randomly found this book at the local bookstore (We’re still lucky enough to have a local non-chain bookstore. It’s fantastic and stocks all sorts of random stuff.). I highly recommend this series if your source is European, North African, or Near East.

The time range covered by this book is 40,000 BC – 362 AD, which means it cuts off before the traditionally cited (but unofficial) start date of the SCA period. Even if your persona is within standard SCA time, the end of this book might give you a little background. If not, try the next book, “The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History”. There are maps of language groups, cultural groups, civilizations, alphabets, population density, migrations- tons and tons of information, all presented very concisely in both the maps and the accompanying text.

The text is extremely helpful. In the introduction, the author points out the concessions and assumptions he’s made and his reasons for doing so where uncertainty exists in the academic literature. He also gives enough information so that you can look up the other hypotheses. He has a good sense of humor as well, so it’s quite entertaining. On top of all that, he even talks about what projection they picked for the maps and why.

Even though this book theoretically covers all of the above areas (and does in the maps themselves), the text focuses on only a few places. First, the focus is on the Mesopotamian area when civilization starts. Egypt gets brought in. Occasionally he spends some time talking about what the European “barbarians” are doing. For the most part, though, the focus is on the Mediterranean and Middle East minus the Arabian peninsula. There isn’t a lot of information on Sarmatians, but he does show where the three main tribes were at various points in time (no talk of the Aorsi or Siraces), and occasionally mentions them in the text. He doesn’t actually cover their absorption into other cultures, though. The Iazyges and Roxolani just kind of disappear and aren’t heard from again on maps or text. This happens a lot with those who are minor players in the grand scheme of things (at least from an Occidental point of view), which is understandable, if disappointing, given the small amount of space for text. The Alans are still around by the end of the period, though, and are covered in the next book.

Now I just need to get a hold of it. The index is visible via Amazon’s “Look Inside” preview and the Alans are mentioned in text eight times with an unknown number of inclusions on the maps and their language mentioned once. There’s at least a bit of coverage of their invasion of Gaul.

Minimal Sarmatian representation aside, I still recommend this book. It’s a fun read and if you’re a fan of maps, you’ll really enjoy it. Aim to get the revised editions if available, since they’ve been updated in light of new discoveries and realizations.