Coursera: Medieval Manuscript Class - Week 5

This 5th week of the class was on different writing hands, their ductus, weight and angles. It was a really simple and short week. While the grading period is not yet over, I so far have good marks on the hands-on project. This week it was to analyze two different hands and post our results about it. I really liked one and will continue to peruse that hand.

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I decided for this assignment to try two different hands than I am used to writing in. I chose the Carolingian hand and the Humanist Chancery Italic. I normally use Blackletter so please excuse the poor quality of my writing. I was also running out of ink and tried to get this part of the project done with what I had.

For my two writing instruments I used a Speedball C-5 nib and a Speedball C-3 nib.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/464011567843872231/

Carolingian

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/464011567843874878/

My Writing: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.

This sentence allows you to write every letter in the alphabet at least once

C-5 Nib https://www.pinterest.com/pin/464011567843872252/

C-3 Nib https://www.pinterest.com/pin/464011567843872236/

Here I shown the ductus of 5 letters, but s, g, and q have three strokes to them. The angle used was a 45* angle on both. And the C-3 nib has more weight with the thicker lines than the smaller C-5.

Humanist Chancery Italic

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/464011567843874315/

My Writing: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.

This sentence allows you to write every letter in the alphabet at least once

C-5 Nib https://www.pinterest.com/pin/464011567843872258/

C-3 Nib https://www.pinterest.com/pin/464011567843872240/

Here I shown the ductus of 3 letters, but with the humanist hands, the number of strokes are reduced. The angle used with this hand was 30*. Once again, the C-3 nib has more weight with the thicker lines than with the smaller C-5.

I actually liked the Chancery Italic and will continue to try to improve this one.

As for what I intend to put into my manuscript, well, I thought I would make it a gift. It will chronicle the royal line of a kingdom. http://www.lineage.meridies.org/

Will look something like this:

A History of The Royal Line of Meridies

Sample Page One

Barthelemy - King

Oda - Queen

October 8, A.S. 51 to Date

Barony of Iron Mountain

Sample Page Two

Adhemar II – King

Elina – Queen

April 2, A.S. 51 to October 8, A.S. 51

Depedale

These entries will actually start from the first king and queen up to present date as I expect this to take me about a year to complete, and should be ready for the 40th year coronation.

Then there will be additional pages of Kingdom history, songs, Crown Lists and more.

For illustrations I will paint from photo's of various tournaments and wars that I can find on the internet; as well as maps, coats of arms and so forth.

As you can see here, I have now planned out all 120 pages of my manuscript.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/464011567843799152/

Alas I only have the photo of the plans for the first two quires uploaded.