I tend to follow several SCA scribes on Instagram. One of whom posted the most delightful project they had completed. It was an oath of fealty written out on purple perg with gold lettering. The photo was stunning and my little magpie brain wanted to make one of my own.
Lucky for me they did a full write-up on how one makes such a treasure! I urge you to go read their blog post first and marvel at the beauty of their project.
Realizing I had half the supplies and a new scroll assignment, I did what I do best.
Make the thing.
One of the first things I debated over was if I would use the same ink that Konstantia used. The Dylusions ink-sprays crushed grape that they used was an acrylic-based paint. Not a bad solution however given that Perg reacts to moisture it is prone to going all wrinkled and wonky. My brain then jumped to why not alcohol-based ink? It would dry quickly, in theory before the Perg could wrinkle but still give the purple I was after. After a lengthy discussion with the store associate on what ink they had, I walked out with two. One was Pinata-alcohol-ink the other was FW acrylic-ink as a backup should the alcohol ink not work. Both are archival quality and I felt would hold up to what I was trying to do. In addition, I also grabbed a silver ink to add lettering as my original had both gold and silver.
I should note right now. If you choose to do this, use better workspace protection. Like gloves, a cover for your table. A piece of foil is a good start but as the small purple splotch on my table will attest not enough.
None the less I forged ahead.
The acrylic was up first and just applying a light amount it curled right up. So I set it aside and jumped into the alcohol ink.
I simply dripped on the ink and then used a paper towel to get it all over the perg.
I will let the photos do the talking.
It was dark perfect and no wrinkles or fussing. The only downside was that you could clearly see where I had applied the color with the paper towel
I decided that maybe I could get more of an even coverage with an isopropyl alcohol as a carrier for the color. It lost the lines but where the color pooled it did create variation in the overall color.
By this point, I was over dying my fingertips, and the splash of ink on the table made me decide that I had enough to make the scroll with.
I realized as I looked at the dark purple paper that I one wasn’t going to be able to trace calligraphy and two I was going to have to use a brush. I did end up finding an examplar of the hand used on the codex. I took some time to work out a few of the letters as it wasn’t the full alphabet and to make a ductes to reference as I painted.
At that point, I put brush to page and copied over the words. I found that some parts of the ink did not like the paint. So there was very little illumination done as I wasn’t up to figure out why. I also realized I had miscalculated the amount of words
Once finished I did do a quick mounting onto a back paper and then a regular 11×14 to help transport and hopefully make getting it framed less of a task.
Now because I wasn’t attending the event where the award was being given. I made some notes one being don’t store in direct light. So I did send a small container of the silver ink to sign with. Unfortunately, it ended up drying out and wasn’t used I was advised they made it work.
Now as I was showing this around I got the question. “How lightfast is that?” “Err that is a good question”
So I chopped a corner off one of the leftover pieces and taped it up in my southeast-facing window.
Oh, my was I glad I wrote that note.
The sun fading was BAD. (If the recipient reads this please know I will replace it should it suffer damage!!)
Lesson learned. Test more before you let something go out the door.
It did however spark another question about black parchment. That is a whole other post so stay tuned for more adventures.
