The one thing I knew when I was assigned this was that it had to be beautiful. Mary is a lovely woman, kind, incredibly smart, and works her ass off for the SCA. So I wanted to do something that would at least match some of that. Her Pelican requested me as the scribe and I had access to a lot of info on what she might like so it was easy to personalize the scroll.
I know there is a lot of negative talk around having religious iconography in scrolls but I am fond of angels announcing things so I added one here. It's done in a fairly typical french 1400s-1500's style and I mixed and matched from a variety of sources to make the whole. The miniature is of her in her favourite dress, I had a picture of this so it was easy to do and the book has teeny weeny text. A message for her to read.
The text says: Dear Mary, congratulations on being made a pelican love Bridget ( this time I spelled my name right)
The capital letter. I really like sometimes just doing the backgrounds with gold paint. I don't use shell gold any more because it's unbelievably expensive and the schminke gold gouache or watercolour looks pretty much exactly the same at a fraction of the cost.
Over all I was very happy with this scroll. It's a little larger than A4, and done with gouache, watercolours, gold leaf and oak-gall ink. ( Rohrer and Klingner Scabiosa) if anyone is interested. I think it was done on pergamenata.
I have no problem in doing scrolls for people I don't know but it is easier when you can personalize them for the people you do know and care about. I think, that for me, doing a scroll for a friend is more akin to giving them a gift than just doing a scroll because it was assigned.
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