Guest Post: Another Scribal Perspective –Still Making Art and Having Fun

~by Aidan Cocrinn, O.L., mka Holly Cochran

Since starting in the SCA in 1985 in a small shire, I have been an officer and helped run events. Two wonderful scribes in that shire introduced me to the arts of calligraphy and illumination. Luckily, a large Barony with at least two C&I Laurels was also nearby. Over the next 10 years, I fell in love with the Scribal arts. I created 80+ original scrolls as well as the original art for many of the preprints used in Calontir. The kingdom also allowed me to serve as our Kingdom’s Falcon Signet twice, and to be the person in the Royal privy chamber, filling out preprints at the last minute. In 1994, the Crown honored me by elevating me to the Order of the Laurel for my C&I skills and service to our Kingdom.  

Since becoming a Laurel, I have continued making original scrolls and preprint art, as well as painting the preprints and serving the Crown as their last-minute person.  Both Calontir and the Outlands have allowed me to serve as a local officer as well as in a Kingdom position.  Royalty has allowed me to be their personal Royal Scribe in two Kingdoms. Of course, teaching, whether one-on-one, in classrooms, and even at three Known World Heraldic Symposiums, has been a part of my post-Laureling work, too.

To keep to my oath as a Laurel, which includes “ever seeking knowledge,” I have sought to learn more about Scribal Stuff as practiced in the Middle Ages. This has taken me on a journey into what one might call the “Science of Scribery,” – “off the page.” The journey has included learning to make ink and pigments from the ground up, as well as learning to make pigments from common hardware store items. 

Making iron gall and oak gall ink turned into adventures making other inks from period recipes. I made walnut ink and took a period recipe for Brazilwood ink and used ethically sourced purple heart wood shavings to make ink.  The two woods are related species, and they have similar properties in terms of pigmentation.  I hypothesized that what worked for one might work for the other. I was right! The purple heart wood produced a lovely deep wine-oxblood colored ink and pigment that I made into a pigment lake. It is not particularly lightfast. I should note that purple heart, like brazilwood, changes color as it oxidizes in light, so store the ink in dark wine bottles once it has reached the desired color. 

One project was learning to make the three historical black pigments – bone black, lamp black, and willow black – over an open fire. I created a way to do all three over one fire rather than having to use three different kinds of fires as Cennini and Theophilus recommended. Since I live in a dry state prone to fires that get out of control, this seemed to be a good idea. All it took was a simple and cheap hardware store pot metal BBQ grill, some hardwood scraps to make a hot fire, and some clay plant pots to make chimneys. The rest was simply following the recipes as laid out in Cennini and Theophilus. 

Another lesson learned, much to my housemate’s horror, was that I did not already know that linseed oil and boiled linseed oil are not the same thing, but that is a story for another day. From those pigments as well as the iron gall ink, I dyed a large sheet of vellum black and recreated four pages from the Morgan Black Hours.

These sorts of “living archaeology” experiments are what I believe keep the SCA fun for a lot of people, especially those of us who have been in for a long time. It is important to push our envelopes and do new and unexpected things. 

Another area of enjoyment has been relearning everything I thought I knew about pigments, and what pigments were used when and where. When us old-timers started, back in the early 1980s, there was no Internet. Research meant going to the several libraries on campus and wading through tons of very old books, most written before we were born. If I were trying to create documentation for a competition, it also meant lots of change for the black and white copiers and the library. 

There was no research by academics to analyze pigments on manuscripts because to do so would be destructive to the manuscripts. Manuscript research academics took the word of art historians about what pigments must have been used. Thus, it was gospel that only lead whites, ultramarine processed from lapis brought from Afghanistan, purple processed from murex snails in the Mediterranean Sea, yellows from arsenic, and reds from mercury were the pigments used, even on early manuscripts such as the Book of Kells. The Trinity Library in Dublin was not about to let researchers snip off bits of Kells to dunk the bits into solutions to test those statements, and so they stood as the gospel truth. 

We early SCA scribes were almost entirely self-taught, or taught by other SCA scribes who were similarly self-taught. As far as I am aware, there were no manuscript academics, at least not anywhere other than on the east or west coasts. 

Fast forward to manuscript studies in the last 15 years or so. Academics, thanks to physicists and engineers, now have amazing non-destructive means to examine pigments in very ancient manuscripts, called Raman microscopy. Through this, we now know that a lot of what we preached about pigments was wrong. It turns out that pretty much anything that can be used to dye textiles – including plant-based dyes – can and was used to make paints. 

The British Isles sit on some of the largest chalk deposits in the world, and chalk is a fine white pigment. The Book of Kells used chalk, not lead white; indigo and woad, not ultramarine; plant dyes such as weld for many of the yellows; and a native lichen called orcein for the purples. This is not to say that the other, more exotic colors were never used. We have simply learned that the people of regions far from those exotic sources used what they had nearby to great effect rather than spending massive amounts of money on imports. They also did not use materials that were poisonous to make and use as much as we had thought. 

Learning these things, learning to make these things, using them, and teaching others to do the same is part of keeping the SCA and the arts and sciences of Scribery new and fun for me. 

Staying invested in the SCA is important, so I stay involved with the “business” end by still being an officer at times, running or helping with our events, and so forth. Continuing to learn new skills is also vital, and my latest crush is learning to enamel with crushed glass on copper. Staying still and never growing beyond one’s original “thing” seems a waste of talent.  Creativity flows where it goes. 

I hope I have given each of you a taste of what it is like for this particular Scribe. Go do Art!