Spanish Royal Charter Set

 Continuing on my journey through Charter blank designs I've gotten to assist with, I present a set that was created for the First Reign of King Eiirk and Queen Driffina. 

I created these based on extant examples of illumination from the 600-1100 time frame, in the book, "Early Spanish Manuscript Illumination" by John Williams. 

This was a very trying project, there is a specific stylization to these texts that came out a bit cartoony, expecially when looking at the people charachters represented. But I think I did it pretty solid Justice.

 The creation of these was done through measurement of proportions and freehand drawing based on the extant examples provided. 

The major change I made to the imagry of these items was on the Goutte, where I elected at add TRMs image based on their photo, 

These were the final versions (The Jambe version with words didn't get saved)

Award of Arms

Sable Gauntlet

Goutte de Sang

Jambe de Lyon

Hastae Leonis

Norse Royal Charter Set

 I have had the great honor and pleasure to work on multiple Reigns' Scribal teams and create several series of charter blank designs to be used throughout the reigns. This is one such that was Created for the First Reign of King Kjartan and Queen Sha'ya, in the Norse Theme/time period. 

I decided to base these items on Metal jewelry and findings found in digs from Norway between 5th and 10th centuries. 

Other References can be found from Digs in Birka and Displays at the British Museum of Natural History:

Based on these items, I scretched out the award design and added words (Using a key in Younger Futhark)

I was very pleased with the way they turned out in the end. This was a type of art I'd never attempted, and I think they made really great charters to paint with a beautiful outcome. And I very much enjoyed learning a new language in which to try my hand, the rules and conventions of Futhark are not complicated, and I found it to be a quick learning curve. 

Early Period Celtic Knot Work Thank you Note

 In Early 2017, I had reason to create a special thank you for some family for their gracious support and donations to my Lord's Knighting Ceremony. They are no SCA folk, but since their actions pertained to the SCA, I decided to make them something lovely, based on a period work I'd seen and loved. 

This celtic knotwork illuminated letter 'b' from the late 10th century, comes from a latin vellum manuscript known as 'Evangelia Ottonis'. The notes at Rylands mention that it is possibly Italian in origin. 

Using Guache, Pergimanata, a light box and gold leaf, I attempted to recreate the majority of this work in detail as follows: 

Late period German Standard for Gera

 I was recently excited to recieve a request from the lovely Gera Gangolffin for a banner with her arms, in the style of late period German heraldic display, specifically centered around the Holy Roman Empire. 

The following references were pulled from the Bavarian state library via their Image similary search tool. 

From "Wapen. Des heyligen Romischen Reichs Teutscher nation" by Jacob Koebel, 1545 You can also see a copy here at the Library of Congress. 

Gera's registered arms with the society: Gules, a pall inverted Or and overall a trillum argent 

The challenge here was to incorporate her personal arms into the styles of a German Standard. In most visual references of styles for this period, a standard would be tapered to a rounded end, with the badge or ensign of the people/place it represents closest to the hoist (attachment point on the pole), as shown in a lovely display here, by HE Cormac Mor of An Tir. 

In the case of these German visual references, there seemed to be much more body to the standards with very little evidence of the taper, although this plate does seem to show a rounded and smaller(?) end to the body (one of dozens surveyed).

Here are a few of the reference images used for inspiration in creating the mock ups presented to Gera (below)

I presented Gera with the following Mock Up Ideas, the top being her first choice

The bottom two, as is probably obvious, differ dramatically, as they are based on a more English/French style for the period, Which included the taper/dove tale end as well as a host of more detail in the designs body. 

Ultimately, I created this Standard for Gera to most appropriately mix her personal arms, and the style of her chosen period/culture: 

As a minor note, this Standard measures 22" by 90", which would be considered small for a field Standard (as far as can be determined by the pictoral references included, handily with a human body for size reference). However, for Gera's request and uses, this size is plenty large. 

My inference about the size depicted in the reference material is that when the point of the Standard is to be seen by soldiers from across a large, loud, chaotic and potentially smoke filled field, the bigger, the better.