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. 

DM War Banner

 Back in the beginning of Dragon's Mist's infancy as a Barony, I was asked to make a small war banner for the Barony, so I made one based off of an applique methodology. If was a fun, quick project, just had to make sure that we tacked down all the details securly. 

Amicus Musarum

 This was a requested Original scroll for Their Excellencies of Stromgard, Hlutwige Wolfkiller and Ivon Drengr for the recipient, Cara da Fortuna, in AS XLIX.

The layout and illumination is based on a 16th century, Italian, Book of Hours. 

Because of the amount of text and page/layout constraints for the original, I sketched some pieces as they were, and moved around other elements to work with our space needs. 

  

  

 I've decided to go back into my archive of projects and bring some out for public display. The next several posts will be from work I've done in the last 7-8 years. 

It was requested that an original (replacement) scroll be created for the Tessina Felice Gianfigliazzi in 2017. I used the following reference image: 

This was done on pergamenata with guache color.