Work: The Write Stuff

 

The other day, I ordered a book from Amazon. It was available in a Kindle format, so I pressed a couple of buttons, and, Wallah!, as they say around here, it was on my device within seconds.

Now I don’t mind reading books on a Kindle, and I’m well aware of the amount of shelf space I’ve saved over the past eight years by using it as much as I do. In addition, I have the “Kindle Unlimited” subscription, and I’ve found that very handy and cost-effective, when it comes to loading up on light reading which, for me, mostly consists of binge-reading mystery and detective novels in series, when I find an author I like. Is it the same as holding a book in my hand and turning the pages slowly, one by one? No. But it serves the purpose, and gets me by, and through.

I do love the feel of actual books, though. And second-hand bookstores. And the smell of a nice library. Not to mention museums and collections of antiquarian tomes, the few times that I’ve been lucky enough to be in an especially good one. (Such as the Library and Archive at Worcester Cathedral, a hidden gem in the English Midlands. I’m not so down with their exhibition of the fragment of human skin, flayed alive from a Viking who was caught stealing the Sanctus Bell somewhere around 1000, after which his skin was nailed to the door as a warning to others. But the manuscript and early book collection is spectacular. )

Most of us know the stories of medieval monks toiling in their scriptoria, diligently copying other manuscripts, either for their own or other monastery libraries, or perhaps as a private commission for the Duke of Thusandsuch, who had his own collection, and enough money for the purpose, and who wanted to show off his erudition and wealth. The end result, whether or not it was the tactical objective at the time, was the preservation of the wisdom of the ancients, and there’s nothing not to like about that.

But what was involved in getting a manuscript together? And suppose I wanted to duplicate the process today. What would it actually take to do that?

Well, first there must be a surface to write on. No problem! I have a couple of reams of paper I picked up at Sam’s Club, last time they had a BOGO on the stuff.

Ummm, not so fast. Instead, how about we gather up some dead animals. The most highly prized are stillborn goats or sheep (their end product is called parchment), known for the whiteness and smoothness of their skin, but calves do almost as well (if you’re making vellum), and have more surface area per. Skin them, and dump the skins in a vat of lime, to remove the hair or wool. Next, stretch their skins on wooden frames, held taut with laces, and let them dry. Then scrape them, using long knives with two handles (one for each hand). Even further back in time, and you’d be doing the job with flints. Keep scraping until the skin is the thickness you want it, still opaque enough that you’ll be able to write or draw on both sides, but so that it’s thin and fine enough that it can be bound into a book, or stored easily between boards. That process is the subject of the illumination at the top of this post.

OK. Got that. Writing surface? Check.

Now, there must be something to write with. Both a means and a medium. The means is a quill, and the medium is some sort of ink.

First, to misquote Hannah Glasse, author of several 18th-century English cookbooks (short pause for the cognitive disconnect at the words English and cookbooks occurring in the same sentence), “catch your goose.” And pull a suitable feather from it. Or, if you’re lucky, perhaps you’ll find one (a feather, not a goose) lying around, in a field or by a pond. Let it dry for a good while (weeks or months), until it stiffens, and will hold up to the pressure that’s going to be applied as you write page after page. Scrape away any oil, grease, or dirt, and trim the end at an acute angle. Slit the barrel of the feather about half-way up, as that will be the reservoir for ink once you get going, and then make a small cut straight across the very tip, defining the “nib,” and, by its width, indicating the boldness of the letters you’ll be making. You’ll probably need to have 50 or 60 quills ready to go (those poor, naked, geese), as they dull quickly, and if you don’t have a copious supply, you’ll spend half your time sharpening and reshaping the nibs over the course of your writing day, and you won’t get much writing actually done. Have several dozen quills at hand, and you can sharpen them all during your downtime, when you have nothing else to do (sarcasm off).

So. Writing implement? Check.

Now, a writing medium: ink. Crimenutely at this point. Can’t I just go to Staples and buy a bottle of the stuff? No.

You’ll need three ingredients for good quality ink: A few dozen oak galls, some ferrous sulfate, and some gum arabic.

Oak galls are lumpy swellings that occur on the bark of oak trees when a wasp lays its eggs in their buds. The larva develops in a spherical, hard, cocoon, and when it is grown, the wasp bores through the shell and flies out. Oak galls can occur anywhere, so you can go foraging for them in the woods and by the roadside yourself, but the best are thought to come from the Middle East.

Ferrous sulfate (iron vitriol) was brought from Spain. It’s a mineral that’s still used today, medically, to treat anemia.

And gum arabic is a sticky sap from the acacia tree, usually imported from what is now Turkey or Egypt.

So yes, you’ll need ready access to trade routes, fairs, and traveling salesmen, and you’ll need the resources to buy these exotic and expensive products. Otherwise, you might have to resort to one of the cheaper, less effective, not-so-long-lasting ingredients — for example, rather than using gum arabic as your fixative, you could collect several months worth of earwax from cooperative family members and co-workers, and mix that in, instead. Failing that, egg yolks (stinky). You might substitute charcoal or lamp black (soot) for the oak galls. Whatever is accessible, affordable, and will serve the purpose. Just do your best.

Best case though: Boil the oak galls in rainwater, until the mixture is reduced by half, add your gum arabic, and boil again, and then mix in the iron vitriol (which you’ve pre-mixed with some wine). I’d suggest at this point that you also pour yourself a glass of the same wine and drink it (you could try adding a bit of iron vitriol to your beverage if you’re feeling faint or wobbly–medieval Geritol, as it were). Then leave the new ink to mellow for a couple of days, and strain out the bits so they don’t get stuck in your pens, or blotch up your pages.

Done. Writing medium? Check.

All set, right? Not quite.

Image result for medieval illumination writing deskYou’ll need a writing desk. If you want to go full Medieval, this desk will not have a surface that’s parallel to the floor. It will look more like a lectern, so your manuscript will be angled as you write. This will introduce a bit of gravity into the equation, and help with the evacuation of the ink from your quill. Don’t worry; after a time you’ll find the writing position quite comfortable, and if you don’t, well, it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s not about you. It’s about posterity.

And, you’ll need a small knife (which you’ll have to make) in order to scrape away your (probably) frequent mistakes. Be careful when you do, because you don’t want to make a mess, or scrape a hole in your nice parchment or vellum.

Now, I think you’re ready to go. Take several sheets of your writing surface, and either poke little holes in them, or mark guidelines with very watery ink, so you’ll have straight lines to follow. Let the ink dry, if you used it.

Set your original on your desk where you can easily follow along (or find a hapless novice, or even better a woman, to hold it for you), and get busy. Be careful, and don’t make a mess. Set each page on a table to dry, and make sure you keep them in order. That’s important, because when everything is done, you’ll either bind them between two wooden boards into something resembling a modern-day book, but which you’ll call a Codex, or you’ll leave them loose, and just place them between the boards and tie decoratively with a ribbon. In either case, depending on the financial circumstances, or political sway of your patron, you may decorate the wooden boards with cloth, intricately tooled leather, writing, or jewels.

But before that final step, the illuminators must get to work! This step is done after the writing, because it’s even more time-consuming, and it would be a real shame if some dolt of a copyist messed up so badly that the whole page, including your lovely illumination, had to be scraped off and done over.

Illuminators use inks into which even more exotic ingredients have been added or applied: cochineal, azurite, lapis lazuli, volcanic or rare earths, gold, and silver, just for starters. The lasting and vivid colors of medieval illuminations is a testament to the care that was taken and the quality of the inks used. As with this beautiful example from The Book of Hours of Notre Dame, around 1470:

Hours of Notre Dame

As you can see, the scribe left plenty of space on the page for the illuminators, when both were working amicably together. Sometimes, the illuminator, who had a great deal more freedom than the scribes, would get carried away, and would carry his drawings, and sometimes his doodlings, into the margins. Sometimes, his drawings cast a satirical, a fanciful, or even a vulgar, commentary on the work:

The theme of “Knight versus Snail,” and “Knight versus Rabbit” is fairly common in medieval manuscripts. Theories as to why that’s the case abound, but a common one is that it’s a commentary on the “elites” versus the fast-reproducing and intellectually slow “deplorables.” No prizes for guessing who represents what:

I’m never other than thrilled, charmed, and humbled by the original medieval manuscripts that I’ve been lucky enough to see, and in some cases, even touch. In doing so, it’s impossible not to feel the connection, across hundreds of years, to the ordinary, but very human, beings who, with much toil, and if not in all cases, at least in a great majority of them, with much love, produced great wonders for the ages.

Image result for medieval st john scribe

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  1. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):
    On the other hand, I think Russian cuisine throws up a lot of unpleasant surprises

    You mean like sour cream (сметану)? I try to avoid sour cream here in the U.S., so I don’t know if I’d get along well in Russia.

    I knew that lard (with a few chopped greens mixed in) was something to be found in Russia, so I wasn’t too surprised at our first restaurant in Poland (a rural roadside restaurant) for my order to be accompanied by bread and a small bowl of lard. It was all nicely presented, and I used a bit of it on my bread in order to be polite. But the taste stayed in my mouth for a long time after (and it wasn’t the taste of the greens).

    Then again, a few weeks ago in New Mexico my brother-in-law expressed enthusiasm for the pecan beer that was served at a restaurant. So I had a bottle, too. The aftertaste stayed for about a day, having morphed into black licorice a few hours after our meal. It wasn’t terrible, but I don’t think I’d ever drink a full bottle of it again.  

    • #31
  2. She Member
    She
    @She

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    She (View Comment):

    It sounds like a variation of tripe to me. (Not a recommendation. Just an observation.)

    Here’s a page describing a modern-day equivalent, in China ( . . .): https://liyenfoodmoments.wordpress.com/2016/07/27/eating-sheep-intestine-soup/

    The noodles and greens look good.

    Looks like I have a lot to learn before I try to order food that way. We got by OK ordering from Polish menus in places where nobody spoke English, but this would be a lot more challenging.

    There are some cuisines that I think are more forgiving of blind ordering than others. My very kind, older roommate my first year at uni was from northern China and she brought be to a Szechuan place she had been countless times before during my first week of classes, along with her boyfriend and another friend. Everyone picked a dish and she encouraged me to chose whatever I wanted, a generous offer somewhat mitigated by the fact that 85% of the menu was untranslated and what was looked like it had been done by Google Translate high on meth. The random jumble of characters I picked out turned out to be a really lovely noodle dish with chilis and a beef broth. (I had a lot of fun because the first thing her boyfriend ordered was some kind of cut of pork roasted on a stick and slathered in Szechuan peppercorns and red chili powder, and I ate it without issue. He looked at me admiringly and said “you eat spicy better than any other white people I’ve seen, cool.”). On the other hand, I think Russian cuisine throws up a lot of unpleasant surprises, and people fail to realize that home cooking there is impacted by the lack of availability of fresh ingredients.

    Sounds delicious.  I love spicy food.

    One of the biggest surprises I’ve ever had with regard to national cuisines came when Mr. She and I attended Ostatki, an annual event sponsored by the Polish Cultural Council, and the Polish equivalent of Mardi Gras.  Up until this point (2010 or so, it was), my only experience with Polish food was from the perspective of the peasantry, and almost exclusively involved dumplings, potatoes, bread, blood puddings and noodles.  Mostly “stodge”, as it were (a good English word to describe such foods, I’ve always thought).  Ostatki was a rather more upscale event, and the food (as well as the bison-grass vodka) was delicious.  Couple of photos from their Facebook page, from this year’s event (they’re in the next comment):

    • #32
  3. She Member
    She
    @She

    Image may contain: 2 people, food and indoor

     

    Image may contain: table and food

    • #33
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