Choices, Part 1

The beginning of any artwork, any project, involves a number of choices.  Sometimes it's easy: a drawing in a sketchbook needs no more than the book and a pencil (and maybe an eraser).  There the hardest choice is "which pencil?"

This illuminated manuscript I've undertaken has required quite a few more, almost all of them provisional.

The Text.  I chose The Lais of Marie de France, Text and Translation, edited and translated by Claire M. Waters (Broadview Press, 2018), because it includes all the lais, uses only Harley 978 for the text, and has the Old French text and the modern English translation on facing pages.

The Script.  Although I had been practicing textura quadrata, I decided in the interest of both authenticity and legibility to study and imitate the unnamed scribe of Harley 978.  I enlarged a piece of folio 118va until the thick parts of its letters matched the width of my pen (an Osmiroid calligraphy fountain pen from the early 1970s with a B-4 nib)  and started tracing.  Chris made me a slanted writing table with a plexiglass top I could illuminate from below that made both the lettering more comfortable and the tracing clearer.  Also, Canson XL Marker is a smooth, translucent paper that's a joy to write on.

Harley 978, fol. 118v and one of my traced pages

Many pages and days of practice followed before my hand got used to this script.

The Lai.  This book-to-be needs only one, but which one?  The romances of courtly love no longer appeal to my elderly self, which pretty much left Bisclavret, the tale of a werewolf, that enduring popular figure.

From a woodcut c.1475 in the Wellcome Collection, London

Genesis

I belong to a book club.

This isn't unusual in this small town: it seems like everyone I meet belongs to a book club, but it's never the same one.  "My" book club is Women Read, sponsored by the local library.  By September, each member has chosen a book for the club to read in the coming (school) year and agreed to lead the discussion.  My choice for April of 2024 was Matrix, by Lauren Groff, a novel about the 12th-century writer known as Marie de France, which I had read earlier that year.

The novel so impressed and intrigued me that I began to research (i.e., gather information on the Web about) Marie and her writings, and came across a manuscript in the British Library (Harley 978**) that contained the twelve lais* attributed to her, written in Old French (or Anglo-Norman French, as she lived in England).  I downloaded a couple of pages; this is the Prologue.

British Library, Harley MS 978, f.118v

The manuscript was created sometime in the middle of the 13th century; again, not much is known of its provenance.  

Also attributed to Marie is a collection of verse translations of Aesop's Fables (Ysopet). Here is the first page from an illuminated manuscript in the national library of France.

Bibliothèque nationale de France. Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. Ms-3142, f. 256r

And there my researches stood until it was close to time to talk about Matrix, Lauren Groff, and Marie de France for Women Read.  I decided to create a bookmark--because everybody likes a present.  In another revival of moribund skills, I found my calligraphy tools (some of them purchased 50+ years ago) and, on my shelf, the book Medieval Calligraphy: Its History and Technique by Marc Drogin, and started practicing early Gothic and textura quadrata scripts.  With the "portrait" of Marie from the page above, printed on Pergamenata paper (parchment-like, sorta), and gold acrylic paint for the "gilded" parts, the bookmark emerged.

The book club liked the bookmark.  I liked the calligraphy practice.

I liked trying new pens, inks, and paper (I do love collecting tools and supplies and materials).  In college I liked my courses on the Middle Ages, which included one on the history of the French language.  I like looking at medieval manuscripts.  I like book arts.  I like textile and fiber arts.  I like embroidery and beading.  I even like to paint.  

I like...making things.

While looking for a good book on embroidery techniques at the library, I came across a book called Celtic, Viking & Anglo-Saxon Embroidery by Jan Messent, an English artist whose main medium is embroidery. Rather than a history or a how-to book, it is a record of several of Messent's projects inspired by her love of textiles and design from the Anglo-Saxon period with all its influences.  I was thrilled and excited.  Here were books and boxes and textile pieces that combined all sorts of interests and techniques in ways that were both beautiful and informative.

Celtic Influences, page 17

I wanted to do something like that, a project that would combine my interests and my skills; a big, slow project that could be done in pieces as I had time and energy and focus for it.

And so, five months after the bookmark, I decided to make an illuminated manuscript of one of Marie's lais.

**********

*A lai (or lay) is a "short, rhymed tale of love and chivalry, often involving supernatural and fairy-world Celtic motifs."  From Wikipedia.

**In October 2023, the British Library experienced a significant cyber-attack that disrupted many of their services, including access to their astounding collection of digitized manuscripts.  Although they have been able to make some of the collection available again, Harley 978 isn't included.  Harley 978 is also the source of the Middle English song "Sumer is icumen in."

The Marie Project

Marie Project:  Frontispiece (f.3r)

I'm calling this activity of the last year The Marie Project.  It encompasses more than art making: I've been studying in my haphazard, undirected, autodidact way medieval history, manuscript studies, paleography, old French, 12th-century costume, calligraphy, historical scripts, gilding. My fingers are crossed that it will all come together eventually.

 

Resurrection

Eleven years later, this blog still exists.  I guess I'll try using it again, after some editing.  There were lots of broken links and outdated announcements, and I'm still pondering whether to delete some WIP posts that in retrospect just seem repetitive.  Also, it seems like there was an inverse relationship between the success of the painting and how many photos I took and posted.  

It's been some time since I retired from the business of art making, the galleries, openings, submissions to shows, carting the paintings around, trying to do marketing with the website and this blog.  I really don't miss most of it.  However, I have been recently reminded how much I do like to talk (and write) about what I do.  It gives me some clarity, a little distance, a bit of perspective; and I like the opportunity to share what I've learned about materials and techniques.

My intention here is to document my current long-term project (it will take a while to catch up), and also to use this space to archive some work, now that the website is defunct.

So here goes.