just because...

I was at an event in Naples, a coronation and I had some work with me at the time. One of the people saw me with the scrolls and wistfully mentioned that they wished they had a nice AoA instead of a print. In some kingdoms they don't hand out original art it's painted pre-prints. I understand this if the kingdom is huge and the scribes are too few but at the same time I find it kind of sad. We tried it in Drachenwald for a while, printed letters for the three awards that came with a token and people hated it and I do mean HATED it. It didn't matter that they got a token because they wanted THE scroll and a pre-print, no matter how nice the calligraphy was did not cut it. It was interesting to see this because it became very clear that what people wanted more than anything else at first was the pretty piece of paper, a hand made, original work of art. Desire for the token came after the fact.

When I first took over as signet ( the first time) Signe told me that part of the job was procuring tokens for the crown to hand out. It became apparent really quickly that this part of the job sucked monkey balls big time. There is a huge difference between artists who make scrolls and artisans who make the tokens. One does the work for nothing and the other expected to be paid. The number of times I put out a call for tokens only to be told yeah I'll do it but only if I get money for my materials was sad. I always wondered what would happen if ALL the kingdom's scribes did the same thing.

 One of the things I made sure to change during my 1st year as signet was this ridiculous rule and informed the incoming crowns that it was NOT the job of the signet clerk to obtain tokens for them - end of discussion. It turns out that people are far more willing to create things if the crown asks them than if some nobody doing a minor office does. The signet office deals with scribes and scrolls and that is all.  The experiment with the pre prints was a massive fail and we redid a scroll anyone who got a print but wanted a real scroll and made it an unofficial rule that this kingdom would never ever do that again. The sigh of relief was palpable.

So I felt sorry for the person in question when she told me her story about only having a print, she did a lot of work so I decided to make her an AoA scroll and this is it. I don't know if she liked it or not, I never got any feedback but it felt good to do something nice anyway.