My Laurel (not officially so yet) was running the A&S competition at Ymir 43. This year’s battle was to be the Vikings’ siege on Paris. Just as the battle sides were divided, so too was the competition. The winner, by populous vote, would have produced either a Viking or French item. The award scroll had to represent either.
Looking for inspiration, I read up on the battles, and found a lovely map of 9th C. Paris (basically what is now Île de la Cité). Perfect and pertinent! Now, Viking….obviously not a ton of scrollwork from them, so I looked toward grave and hoard finds. There was a beautiful hammered cup from which I took the creature’s form and painted it, straightened out, onto the scroll. I considered going with gold or silver for its lines, but it would have made the map look rather drab and besides, my French persona would like to make a subtle (?) jab at the Viking invaders who dared blackmail my country, and I painted that creature in the colors of the French flag 🇫🇷 …Tiens (take that)!
The calligraphy is poor, hindsight making it seem more so. I believe that I did this before I had my “a-ha” moment with calligraphy and hands and the lettering is too large and difficult. The formation of them was a struggle…probably had my tongue stuck out in concentration and sweat beading my brow. I placed the award scroll in a small frame for presentation.
As an aside to the aside, we, at the Chancery, realized that there were a few things that needed to be adjusted. Some folks had never received their scrolls, and others were being awarded “impromptu” commendations by the nobility. We thought that a promissory scroll was just the thing. The receipient would have something physical to take home that day and it bought us time to be able to create something beautiful for them rather than use an off-the-rack blank. Not that some blanks aren’t beautiful, but we really didn’t have any of those either! Below is an example of the promissory scroll:
Philomene’s Scriptorium 