Unit V: The Illuminated Page

Writing is craft. Illumination is writing that has decided to be beautiful on purpose.

This is the unit scholars dream about when they picture medieval books, and I intend to give you the real thing rather than the dream. Every technique here is honest, repeatable, and historical. No talent required. Only patience, which you have been building for four units.

First, hierarchy and mise-en-page: the planning of the page before a word is written. Pricking and ruling, margins sized by the cost of the book, quires and catchwords and signature marks to keep the whole thing in order, and the ladder of decoration by which initial size told the reader what mattered. A medieval page was an information system before it was a picture. Learn the system.

Then gold. You will learn how gold leaf is made and how thin it truly is. You will learn raised gilding and flat gilding, gesso and burnishing, and when an illuminator chose shell gold over leaf. You will gild an initial with household materials and judge the result honestly. And you will learn what the word illuminated actually means. It is not about light. It never was only about light.

Then ornament: border bars full, partial, and one-sided; the ivy-leaf borders of France and Flanders; acanthus with its classical roots; the white vine of the early fifteenth century; historiated and inhabited initials; puzzle initials and penwork flourishing, the quickest way to put color on a page. You will design an original border from repeatable units, the way the workshops did.

And finally the margins, where medieval scribes let themselves play. Drolleries, the knight versus the snail (with three scholarly theories of what it means, because I will not hand you one answer where scholars have three), the manicule, the reader's medieval highlighter, and Michael Camille's argument about what marginalia do to the text they surround. You will draw your own drollery, with controlled pen work, in the medieval spirit.

Unit Learning Objectives

By the end of this unit, scholars will be able to:

• Rule a page and design a mise-en-page with justified hierarchy decisions.
• Distinguish raised from flat gilding, describe the materials and tools, and gild an initial.
• Explain what "illuminated" means and the symbolism of gold in medieval books.
• Design an original border using the repeatable-unit method, in a historical style.
• Define marginalia, drollery, bas-de-page, and manicule, and discuss scholarly interpretations of marginal imagery.
• Draw an original drollery with controlled pen work.

In This Unit

The Unit V Quiz closes this unit. You will find it, with its download, at the end of Lesson 20: Marginalia & Manuscript Creatures.

What Scholars Will Practice and Make

A ruled mise-en-page of your own design. A gilded initial, honestly judged. An original border in a historical style. An original drollery. By the end, pages that look the way you always imagined medieval books looked, made by your own hand, with technique you can name.

The page is beautiful. Now it must become a book, and the book must be kept, sealed, and found again. Unit VI is the scribe as builder and librarian.