From: owner-scribes@castle.org (scribes digest) To: scribes-digest@castle.org Subject: scribes digest V1 #51 Reply-To: Sender: owner-scribes@castle.org Errors-To: owner-scribes@castle.org Precedence: bulk scribes digest Tuesday, February 10 1998 Volume 01 : Number 051 In this issue: [scribes]: Wide gold borders [scribes]: whole page decoration ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 17:11:42 -0800 From: elsworth@erols.com Subject: [scribes]: Wide gold borders I realize y'all have gone on to other posts, but I've been moving, so I've only just caught up. I've been playing with painting over gold, and tooling gold for a while now, so I thought I'd add my two cents... The technique of tooling the gold can best be seen in Gilded Panel paintings of the time, and the techniques translate quite well to book illumination. Be careful how thick you make the size, or the book won't close! :) The other thing is to have a *very* light hand as you do the tooling, or the gold will break, and all you'll have is size. One of the best books on this is from the British Library, and it is called "The Wilton Diptych: Making and Meaning". If anyone's interested, I'll look up the info on ordering it (It's still packed). The technique of painting over gold *only* works if you have the right medium (the thing that makes the water and paint glue to the page - but then you all knew that...) and the only teo I've had any sucess with were rabbitskin glue (but it makes the paint rubbery) and egg yolk. Egg white is too thin. The emulsifiers in the yolk bind to the surfce better if it is unburnished, by the way. The other fun thing you can do with paint over gold is called "Sgraffito". It's very period, and is a technique of drawing with a fine point over the wet paint (at least, it works best if it's wet, in my experience), scraping away the paint to leave a fine line of gold in the middle of the painted area. It's also done in the panel paintings, to really spectacular effect. The Wilton Diptych book is fabulous for explaining this technique, and they go through a step-by-step recreation of an angel from the panel, showing how all the steps are done. BTW, the "Medieval Illuminators" book (the one that's part of the Medieval Craftsmen series) clearly shows a scroll in the process of being done where the gold is laid down first over a partially inked scroll. I've tried it all ways, and this seems to work the best, especially for the kind of gold and paint techniques described here. Cheers, Isobel Gildingwater, OL ------------------------------ Date: 10 Feb 1998 14:49:05 -0800 From: "Marisa Herzog" Subject: [scribes]: whole page decoration I recently happened on a manuscript on a webpage where the entire page had been diapered (the checker board pattern one sees filling in spaces on illuminated capitals and such). Of course, just as I was about to book-mark it, Netscape crashed...sigh This is the first time I have seen a page where the entire face was decorated, and then the calligraphy done over the top. The capital illumination was a few knights being belted. Unfortunatly the resolution of the web-page was not great, and it was not in color, so I couldn't even guess what techniques or colors were used on this. Has anybody seen other examples of this? - -brid mists, west ------------------------------ End of scribes digest V1 #51 ****************************