Saturday, October 16, 2010

Heart of Fire Trial Layout

A trial layout for Elanor O’Ruark’s poem Heart of Fire.


Isaac

Friday, October 15, 2010

A Few Anglo-Saxon (Old English) Calligraphy Hands

I've been looking at and comparing various Old English manuscripts for awhile now. I've been using books as well as electronic facsimiles.  Much like handwriting of today, it's pretty much the same basics, just a few changes between each hand.

A Few Anglo-Saxon (Old English) Calligraphy Hands:

Isaac

Monday, October 4, 2010

Anglo-Saxon Culture Interest

With all the time I've been spending looking at the manuscripts I've gotten interested in the rest of the Anglo-Saxon culture.  To further this I've picked up two books, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England Revised and enlarged edition by Gale R. Owen-Crocker and Anglo-saxon Food and Drink by Ann Hagen.

Both have turn out to be really nice reads.  Both authors managed to give a lot of information is nice ways to the point I didn't feel like I was reading a typical history book.

Dress in Anglo-Saxon England references many of the manuscripts I've been looking at while it tries to put together the picture of how the Anglo-Saxons' dressed.  She mentions several times about items that are alluded to in the illuminations, such as decorative trim on sleeves, as well as objects that do show up, such as cloak pin, and how minor changes in things such as hair style, beard, shoes, clothes can help distinguish who is involved in the scene, older men tend to have beards, a halo and lack of shoes for an angel.

The History of English Handwriting book did prove to be a short read.  I really didn't get "oh that's cool" moments from it, but I'll let it sit awhile and read it again.

I have been working on a few leather working projects.  My wife now has a belt for her garb and I've been working putting together a ring frame pouch. The Dress in Anglo-Saxon England talks about rings found in graves are now thought to be pouch rings instead of suspension rings or bracelets.  My internet searching didn't turn up much of anything on the subject, so I'm currently going with a general design for the pouch that's seen in the Manesse Codex and a few latter manuscripts. 

Isaac