CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

I work, often in silence, coaxing fluttering leaves of pure gold onto a prepared page. The gold catches the light as it turns, a flash of fire in the cool of the morning. It settles into place and I polish it to bring out the shine. The burnished areas look like droplets of liquid gold, reflecting the light of the new day.

Pages throughout the centuries have been adorned with gold. The practice isn’t restricted to one faith or one continent. Buddhist scrolls from Japan were sometimes written in gold, as were many exquisitely decorated versions of Islamic Qur’an. The pages I’m most familiar with, though, are the Christian illuminated manuscripts of the European medieval era.

Holding a medieval manuscript is a tactile, and very human, experience, so different from looking at isolated digitised images. These books are gloriously and unashamedly handmade. Old wooden boards, corners rubbed smooth from centuries of use, enclose pages of vellum. Some are so thin as to be translucent, some so thick that they creak as you turn the page. Each page is painstakingly hand written, with a quill that had to be cut from a feather and continually resharpened with a pen knife, and ink made from oak galls. You can see, sometimes, where the scribe has tired at the end of a long day, with letter forms becoming less than perfect. There is the occasional misspelling. Some words have been missed out altogether and added later. Sometimes you can clearly see that the scribe had a tremor, his hand shaking as he tried to write.1 Unofficial illustrations in the margins may puzzle us or make us smile.

A beautiful illuminated manuscript from the Lincoln Cathedral library.

But it is the gilded elements that are striking. No matter how small the area, there is something captivating about the light catching gold as each page is turned.

A little pen and ink drawing in the margin of one of Lincoln Cathedral’s manuscripts.

An illuminated letter P from Lincoln Cathedral MS 145. You can see that the manuscript has been trimmed and rebound sometime in its past.

For medieval artists in Europe, working within the Christian faith, gold represented spiritual light. As the centuries passed, it also came to signify wealth, with manuscripts becoming increasingly decorated with gold, expensive pigments and precious stones. We now live in a digital era where the majority of books are not hand made and where lettering is generated by fingers tapping on keyboards and screens.

The various tones of malachite and azurite pigment extracted from rough minerals.

Plants and minerals that can be made into paint: weld, buckthorn berries, marigold flowers, malachite and azurite. If buying minerals, do give consideration to their provenance. There are ecological and humanitarian issues in some mining areas.

To be fair, I’ve done my share of ‘copying monks’ over the years. I’ve read translations of old manuscripts dealing with gilding. I’ve learnt how to make ink and transform minerals and plants into the beautiful paint colours that survive on pages decorated 800 years ago. I can create an illuminated page using only the materials and tools available to a fifteenth-century illuminator.

But now I use those age-old techniques to create new work. Styles of illumination changed between the eighth and fifteenth centuries, waxing and waning in popularity. I’m now creating work which reflects the era in which I live. Some of that work is text- and manuscript-based. I enjoy painting wildlife, and gilded elements have found their way into that work too.

I had some long conversations with my students when I was trying to decide whether to write this book. After all, there are already some excellent volumes on the market, with stunning examples of illuminated work and ‘step-by-step’ examples. Could I really add anything to what is already available? The general consensus was that I could. ‘The difference,’ said one student, ‘is that you teach us how to fix our mistakes. You tell us what to do when it all goes wrong. The other books just assume that eveything will turn out perfectly. You teach us how we can improve.’

‘Fixing mistakes’ is what we all do, all the time. The soup doesn’t taste good? Add a bit more salt next time. Illumination isn’t any different.

According to the website of the Heritage Crafts Association, a heritage craft is defined as ‘a practice which employs manual dexterity and skill and an understanding of traditional materials, design and techniques, and which has been practised for two or more successive generations’. Their Red List of Endangered Crafts, first published in 2017, ranks traditional crafts by the likelihood they will survive to the next generation. An endangered craft is one which currently has enough craftspeople to transmit the craft skills to the next generation, ‘but for which there are serious concerns about their ongoing viability’. Put simply, there aren’t enough of us – illuminators using traditional techniques – to ensure the continuation of this beautiful art form. And that seems a shame.

I believe there is room for both: an honouring of the craftsmanship of the past and a spirit of twenty-first-century experimentation. I’ve tried to include a little of everything in this book, with the understanding that not everyone will like every example. I’ve done comprehensive tests of all the gilding sizes currently available in the UK but haven’t found anything I like better, for my own purposes, than those which were available to medieval illuminators. I’m sure you’ll find your own favourites.

Gold laid on manuscript gesso, burnished to a mirror shine.

There are ‘step-by-step’ examples in all the early chapters, but not, for example, in ‘Writing with Gold’. I’m essentially an ‘illuminator’ rather than a ‘scribe’ – medieval artists generally were one or the other. My job is not to teach you how to write. There are many expert calligraphers better suited to that task.

As an illuminator, I walk in the footsteps of all those have gone before me. Henry Baundeney, ‘Henry the Illuminator’, worked in Lincoln in the thirteenth century, in a property on Lumnour (or Luminor) Lane.

As I walk up Steep Hill to the Cathedral, with what was Parchemingate, the street of the parchment makers, set off on my left, I think how lucky I am to be continuing this tradition. I hope you enjoy your walk through the various illumination techniques in this book and that,...