Project: Black Hours Capital Letter and Marginalia

Created by: MeiLan Hua

Period: 1450-1470 French (from Bruges, Belgium; territory was appendage under the Valois princes)

Materials:

• Goat vellum 

• Bombay India ink

• Green paint: powdered malachite, glair, gum Arabic 

• Dr. Martin’s Iridescent ink: premixed blue ink and mica powder 

• FineTec: Pearlescent colors watercolor 

• Paper towel

• Painter’s tape

Methods:

Piece is based off of MS M.493 fol. 23r aka Black Hours. 

The vellum was prepared using 800 grit sandpaper. The surface was sanded to remove any residue and oils left over from the manufacturing process. The surface was then dusted with sundrac powder. 

Basic outline of the scroll was mapped and marked using a pencil and ruler. The area of the capital letter was isolated from the rest of the Scroll using painters tape that was cut to shape.

Lamp, black ink was applied to a piece of paper towel that was blighted on the page and smeared to cover the surface. The surface was allowed to dry. Additional ink was applied to areas that were discolored.

The blue border  was painted next, and the contours and shapes of the flowers were freehanded in blue paint before the negative spaces were filled in with paint. This step was followed by the green paint.  I created green paint using powdered malachite, binders and water, which is a period technique.  

Lastly, gold paint was applied using a 00 paint brush to delineate the flowers on the page.

Departure from Period Technique

Commercially-produced India ink was used to color the piece during the dying stages.  The period method for dying the parchment was with oak gall ink (Morgan Library, 2023).  The amount of literature that I was able to find on the parchment dying process is limited and anecdotal. Close inspection of the extant leads me to believe that another material, like India ink was used instead of oak gall based on the lack of deterioration on the extant and the color of the parchment when viewed on high res.  India ink is created by combining lamp black from carbon, a binder and water; and the practice of using India ink can be traced back to antiquity.  Visually, it is similar to the extant. 

Modern blue ink paint was used for this project.  The period equivalent to this technique would have been to manually mix the paint with mica powder (Glimmer, 2010).  I suspect that the extant uses either lapis lazuli and/or azurite as the foundation pigment.  At the time of creating this project, I do not have the necessary resources to recreate this pigment.  Closest to extant I could create was Dr. Martin’s pearlescent paint. 

FineTec pearlescent paint was used.  This decision was made based on the lack of availability of gold powder.  This is a comparable exchange for the period material, which would have been metallic powder mixed with mica and binders (Glimmer, 2010).  Visually, the results are very similar to using gold powder.    

The capital letter was painted with metallic powder rather than using raised gilding, which was the period approach to capital letters.  I did not use raised gilding because of the cost. 

Things Learned 

The techniques used to recreate this scroll involved secondary and tertiary sources.  

Malachite paint was difficult to create and mix, I’m not satisfied with the eventual outcome.  I suspect that I should have added a lot more pigment.  

References

Glimmer, R. (2010).  The medieval palette: medieval pigments and their modern equivalents. Barony of Sacred Stone. https://sacredstone.atlantia.sca.org/articles/the-medieval-palette.pdf

National Archive. (2016). Differences Between Parchment and Vellum.  National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/preservation/formats/paper-vellum.html

The Morgan Library. (2023).  Black hours.  The Morgan Library & Museum. https://www.themorgan.org/collection/Black-Hours