Reenactment Group Chronicle.

[ksm]

My friend is a member of reenactment group. His group is focused on Vikings and Western Slavs of Xᵗʰ century. I used to make photos of their festivals.

 

He visited me lately and seen my calligraphy practice sheets, and my journal (I'm learning cursive italic handwriting). He found my handwriting visually attractive, and called it "chronicle like writing". Later he asked me about creating chronicle of his group (they are focused on costumes, weapons, arms, jewellery and fighting style, and not "spiritual culture").

 

I had to explain him, that my writing style was based on XVᵗʰ century documents, and a chronicle written with it would be as much out of period as a full plate armour. But I started to wonder how this kind of chronicle should look like.

 

The limitations are:

• readable (possibly with some effort) to people with no palaeography background.
• written in a script reminiscent of a writing style in use in Xᵗʰ century

I've looked for inspiration to historical writing, the closet example I've found was Chronicon Thietmari Merseburgensis (written in early XIᵗʰ century). It looks like transitional form between Caroline Minuscule and proto-Gothic. The tall form of "s" would have to be replaced with more modern curvy "s", but the rest of letters are pretty similar to modern expectations.

 

The language would be modern Polish (Church Latin would be more appropriate, but neither me, nor members of the group are conversant in the lingua Latina)

 

The project is not urgent, I've not declared yet if I'm interested in the position of the group chronicler. Even if I would agree, it would take me a few months gain necessary skills.

 

How do you look at this plan?

If you've learned to use two different broad nib alphabets, I would be grateful if you have any suggestions on not reverting to "default cursive italic" while writing Carolingian or Uncial?

On the technical front: parchment is out of the question, what kind of paper should be its substitute?

[Randal6393]

Harvard has a class on late Carolingian script and paleography that would give you a much better look at this alphabet. It's on edX, HUM1.7x Monasteries, etc. Also, Marc Drogin's Medieval Calligraphy covers the basics of Carolingian hands pretty well.

 

Enjoy,

 

PS: The problem of reversion is eliminated by practice and learning the rhythm of the two hands. Uncial and Carolingian have two entirely different paces and ways of writing. Might also suggest that you concentrate on learning to write the earlier, book-production version of Carolingian rather than the later, calligraphic version. Italic also has its own speed and pace, nothing like any other hand.

Edited October 9, 2015 by Randal6393

[smk]

You might want to try the Southworth Parchment paper. It takes ink quite well and is made to look like parchment.

 

There is a distinction in my mind between muscle memory and muscle control. The learning of calligraphic hands has more to do with gaining the knowledge of a particular hand than developing the ability to draw (or write) it. It is fairly straightforward to develop the muscle control needed to execute a variety of strokes. A calligrapher can easily develop the required muscle control while learning his/her first hand. After that, some practice might be needed to execute strokes particular to a hand, e.g. some hands require more nib manipulation than others, but most of the learning is done in figuring out the nuances of the hand. Calligraphers do not write as much as draw as they are conscious of the process and pay attention to each stroke, spacing and balance as they write.

 

Calligraphy is very different than handwriting which is executed more or less automatically and more attention is paid to what is being written than how the writing is executed. One has to develop muscle memory in order to do this.

 

I hope this helps a bit.

 

Salman