Making a New Hand

Why Am I Doing All of This?

I made the decision to create my own hand based on the extant for this project because I could not locate a similar reference hand in my calligraphy library. The closest hand that I was able to find to the hand used was a modern brush script made by American calligrapher Arthur Baker. While it did have similarities to the extant, I found that too many letters were either too modern or didn't quite look right.

PRO TIP: Scribes refer to the lettering used in scrolls as "hands." Most people will refer to them as "fonts" or "typeface." I'm not a printing press, so it's not a typeface. I'm literally using my hand to make these letter, hence the term "hands." I may have made that last part up, but it made sense in my head.

Extant Sample from Catalan Map used for Reference

For the purpose of this exercise, I will be referencing this segment. This segment has the most examples that I derived my alphabet from. I was too lazy to screenshot and edit other parts of the same page when it more or less said the same thing.

Missing from the alphabet are the following letters: K and W

According to Encylopedia.com, the K is missing because it originated from the Phoenicians, later adopted by the Greeks then the Romans via the Etruscans, but it was not used much in Latin. The letters C and Q were preferred for the period.

The letter W was also not found in the text. The letter W is another Phoenician letter. According to Dictionary.com, the letter W wasn't recognized as an official letter until the 1500. The Catalan map was written in 1375 making the letter W out of period for this piece.

SPOILERS: I actually include a "double u" in the examples because I actually found one. But only one.

The Catalan Alphabet

This is my interpretation of the Catalan alphabet that I was able to derive after spending hours staring at this page. I've included a side-by-side comparison with the extant. This is not exact, but it is as close as I could get it.

My writing has my pencil markings in it. The extant will have other notations in it, such as underlining, circles or arrows.

Letters "A" and "B"

I show two different examples of the letter A in my recreation. Some areas have the letter A more defined, and other areas, like in the top example, have the middle of the A is completely blacked out.

I extracted the letters "A" and "B" from ab" and from the word "infant."

I believe that the original scribe intended for there to be a little window in the letter A, and was being sloppy with some of the letters.

Letters C, D, E, F, H

I underlined where I extracted the letter C from because it's almost identical to the letter E. The difference between the two is E has a pointed top and C is more rounded.

I extracted most of the letters from the word "chief"
The bottom two images are from my alphabet.

Letters G, I and J

I've drawn in arrow signs on the bottom right-hand corner to point out the letter G. The letter G ranges from having the top part look like an o to being triangular in shape. I've done my best to feature all 3 of the ones I noticed in the extant.

The letter i has been drawn in several different ways. I just decided to illustrate what I felt was the nicest looking out of the bunch. The appearance of the letter I ranges from a straight vertical line, to having a curved tail to having a lip on top and a curved tail. All of the letter i seem to feature a long horizontal line over it to take the place of a dot.

What I think is the letter J I've marked out with an arrow on the bottom left-hand side. It also shares a horizontal bar over it, like the letter i.

Letters L, M, N, O, R

For these letters, I pulled the letters from the words "matrimoni" and "en malalta," which I circled. I also think that matrimoni is mis-spelled because, in another instance later in the page, they spell it as "matrimonie"

PRO TIP: Malalta refers to a low hill; matrimonie I assume also refers to matrimony

Letters P, Q, R, S, T, U

Words I extracted these letters from were from qui, quey, uiura, primer and maruulats above.

I circled out the major words, and pointed a big arrow at the s. I am almost certain that it is an S because the shape of the blob is consistent with the curves of a lowercase s. You also see another example of this style of letter S in the sample for "Letters G, I, J" in the words "ceps" and "es."

The letter T can be seen in the previous set of letters in the word "matrimoni"

Letters V, X, Y, Z and the Illusive W

Okay, so I did, but didn't include the W. The top image has the underlined word "maruulats." That is a literal "double u."

The V and Z was from "ventifoza". The Y and X are from "equiynaxa"

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