Research: Pen Flourishing and Puzzle Initials

I spent most of June and July looking for more information on pen flourishing and puzzle initials, but I found that there's a rather large void of information on these things even tho they turn up very often after the 12th Century.  I eventually luck across a mention of a thesis on 13th Century Pen Flourishing that lead to a book based on that thesis, but that's been it so far.

The book is The Analysis of Pen Flourishing in Thirteenth-century Manuscripts, by Sonia Scott-Fleming.

The book did help and I used Scott-Fleming's illustrations as a bases for the ones I included in the handout I created for the local Scribal guild class.  The class went well and next month's class should be on puzzle initials.  So currently I'm looking through hundreds of images of puzzle initials trying to see similarities and then grouping those.  I'm hoping that it will turn out as well as the illustrations in the Pen flourishing handout did.

Limp Binding

I tried my hand at some book binding after getting in an order of supplies.  I decided to start with limp binding before moving on to using wooden boards.  My first attempt turned out pretty well.

I used 50lb sketch book paper with the original size of 11 x 14.  I cut each sheet in half.

I gathered the sheets into stacks of six and then folded them in half.

I used a bone folder to crease the pages while holding down the sheets using a ruler.

I used a bit of scrap leather to made buttons and spine for the book.

 I placed marks on an index card to make the punching of holes quick and easy.

Each gathering was then stitched to the cover and spine.  The cover is from clothing weight leather that I had laying around.

I added ties that I made on a lucet and some extra stitches along the long stitches to help hold them in place.