[Ravensfort] My A&S entry at Legacy of the Lions

Lemoine Beers loco.cerveza at gmail.com
Mon Oct 17 22:09:55 PDT 2011


For all those good folks that missed Legacy of the Lions I am sending a copy
of the poem, documentation to list along with an image of the finished work.
The image is going to be sent as an attachment.


 A Rondeau

called

Noble Lions

by

Lemoine de Gascony

Apprentice

to Shanahan the Fey


 Lions of the pride guard our land,

Lionesses at their side stand,

Guardians of the black star dream,

Working together as a team,

Spreading knowledge across the land.


 Kind in word and gentle of hand,

Noble and loyal forever grand,

Vivat defenders of the dream,

Lions of the pride.


 From you, our knowledge will expand,

Aiding young and old of our land,

Mighty lions you make us dream,

Easy is how you make it seem,

How you protect our noble land,

Lions of the pride.



A Rondeau

called

Noble Lions

Documentation

by

Lemoine de Gascony

Apprentice

to Shanahan the Fey



 The project that I have submitted for judgment is twofold. First, I have
composed a poem in a period French verse form called a Rondeau. I have also
illuminated the poem with a simple design using period materials and
methods. I have only attempted illumination a few times, and this is my
first attempt at illumination using period materials and methods.


 *The Poem:*


 The rondeau poem verse form descends from French medieval courtly music,
and dates back to the fourteenth and fifteenth century. Rondeaus were
originally sung, one of the earliest composers in this verse form was
Guillaume de Machaut ( 1300 to 1377 ).


 The rondeau's name is derived from the French word rondel, meaning round.
It is made up of fifteen lines in two rhymes, broken into three stanzas. Two
of the fifteen lines are refrains that are made up of the first few words of
the first line.1 <#sdfootnote1sym> The refrain is found in the last line of
the second and third stanzas. The lines of a rondeau are composed of eight
or ten syllables. The number of syllables in a line is consistent throughout
the poem.


 The rhyme of the rondeau is an end rhyme, in the first stanza the rhyme is
AABBA, followed by AABX in the second stanza. In the last stanza the rhyme
is AABBAX. X represents the refrains. In my research I have not found any
rules limiting the use of the same word for the rhyme. It should be noted
that the English language has a limited number of useful rhymes, in order to
better convey the message of the poem I did use the same word for the rhyme.


 I chose to use an eight syllable line for this poem. It was my goal to
convey a message in as few syllables as possible and still write a good
poem. I did how ever find that how a person pronounces a word and how a word
is properly pronounced can effect the over all make up of a poem. For
example the word Lioness is made up of three syllables, and by making the
word plural it adds another syllable. When I was first composing the poem, I
had one extra syllable in the second line and did not discover it to I had
another person read the poem. I was not correctly pronouncing lionesses. The
best known rondeau is a post period poem titled In Flanders Fields, by John
McCrae2 <#sdfootnote2sym> written during the first world war.


 *The Illumination:*


 The illumination of this poem is simple. I chose to paint the two shields
bearing a representation of the arms of Ansteorra along with two white lions
to honor the Lions of Ansteorra.. It should be noted that I have omitted the
laurel leaves from the painting of the shields, on the grounds that by
kingdom law only the king and or the queen may display the Ansteorran arms
with the laurel leaves. I chose a fancy shield over the standard heater
shield design.


 For the illumination of the shields, I chose to use an egg yolk tempera
binder. I used a store bought yellow ochre for the field, the red in the
base is a store bought red ochre mixed with red ochre made from Raven's Fort
dirt. The black is a pigment that I made by carbonizing peach pits. In
period egg yolk tempera would not have been used as a binder for the
illumination of the pages in a book. Egg yolk tempera lacks flexibility and
would crack and chip on repeated turning of the pages. This project is going
to be framed and placed on a wall to be viewed. I took this opportunity not
only to see how egg yolk tempera would react to the parchment, but also to
do a compare and contrast with glair.


 The white lions are painted with bone ash with using glair for the binder.
Glair would have been used in period to illuminate the pages of a book
because glair is flexible. Once dry, glair would not crack and chip like egg
yolk tempera. In period lead white would have been used for this task, at
this time I do not have the equipment to safely process white lead pigment
for painting. Bone ash white is a period pigment, but it does not have the
same brilliance and luster as lead white.


 All of the egg matter used in this project came from country chickens, that
a coworker raises on his property. The chickens free range during the day,
and are fed little food outside of what they can find for themselves.
Cennini states that the best egg to use for tempera painting comes from a
country chicken3 <#sdfootnote3sym>. A few items that I noticed between the
eggs from the country chickens and eggs that are purchased in a supermarket
are; The yolk of the country egg is much thicker, also dries much faster
than it's supermarket counter part. Simply adding one or two more drops of
water and vinegar to the mixture overcomes this problem. In the processing
of the egg white into glair, it took more time for the white of the egg to
foam, and was much thinner. The finished product was in my opinion far
better then supermarket eggs. Further more the glair made from the country
eggs required less straining to remove the unwanted materials. In both the
egg yolk tempera and the glair from the country eggs, the colors are much
bolder and brighter.


 The paper I chose to do this project on is Southworth brand fine parchment
paper. It is twenty four pound weight paper that is both acid and lignin
free.


 * Bibliography:*


 McCrae, John. "Poetic Form: Rondeau- Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios &
More." Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2011.
<*http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5789*>.


 "Poetry Form - The Rondeau." Wireless, Fiber, Broadband, VPS, Colo,
Workspace in Santa Cruz | Cruzio Internet. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2011. <*
http://www.baymoon.com/~ariadne/form/rondeau.htm*>.


 "Rondeau." Arizona State University. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2011. <*
http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios*>


 Cennini, Cennino D, and Daniel V. Thompson. The Craftsman's Handbook ( Il
libro dell'Arte ). New York: Dover, 1960. ISBN # 0-486-20054-X


 Clarke, Mark. The Art of All Colours: Mediaeval Recipe Books for Painters
and Illuminators. London: Archetype, 2001. ISBN # 1-873132-72-7


 *Further Reading:*


 Alberti, Leon Battista, and Martin Kemp. On Painting / Leon Battista
Alberti; translated by Cecil Grayson, with an introduction and notes by
Martin Kemp . London: Penguin, 1991. ISBN # 978-0-14-043331-9


 "Ansteorra Rapier Rules." SCA Kingdom of Ansteorra Rapier Marshalate. SCA
Kingdom of Ansteorra Rapier Marshalate, n. d. Web. 7 Sept. 2011. <rapier.
ansteorra. org/images/rules/ansteorrarapierrules. pdf.


 "Arms and Armor in Renaissance Europe Thematic Essay Heilbrunn Timeline of
Art History The Metropolitan Museum of Art." The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York: metmuseum. org. N. p., n. d. Web. 6 Sept. 2011. <http://www.
metmuseum. org/toah/hd/rarm/hd_rarm. htm.


 Atalay, Bülent, and Keith Wamsley. *Leonardo's universe: the Renaissance
world of Leonardo da Vinci*. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2008.
ISBN # 978-1-4262-0285-8


 Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A
Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. Oxford Oxfordshire: Oxford
University Press, 1988. Print.


 Beers, Lemoine . "*Les Expériences en Couleur de Lemoine de Gascoigne*."
Les couleurs de ma vie.

N.p., n.d. Web. 7 June 2011. <
www.lemoinebeers.org/resources/couleur%20001.pdf>


 "British Museum - Examination of a Medieval parade shield." British Museum
- Welcome to the British Museum. N. p., n. d. Web. 6 Sept. 2011. <http://www.
britishmuseum.
org/explore/highlights/article_index/e/examination_of_a_parade_shield. aspx.



 Bucklow, Spike. *The Alchemy of Paint: Art, Science, and Secrets from the
Middle Ages*. London: Marion Boyars, 2009. ISBN # 978-0-7145-3172-4


 Charles, Victoria. *Renaissance Art*. London: Grange Books, 2007. ISBN #
978-1-84013-890-0


 Clarke, Mark. The Art of All Colours: Mediaeval Recipe Books for Painters
and Illuminators. London: Archetype, 2001. ISBN # 1-873132-72-7


 Hamel, Christopher. The British Library Guide to Manuscript Illumination:
History and Techniques. London: British Library, 2001. ISBN # 0-7123-4613-9


 Hawthorne, John G., and Cyril Stanley Smith. On Divers Arts: The Foremost
Medieval Treatise on Painting, Glassmaking, and Metalwork. New York: Dover
Publications, 1979. ISBN # 0-486-23784-2


 Norman, Diana. *Painting in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena (1260-1555)
*. New Haven: Yale

University Press, 2003. ISBN # 978-0-300-09933-1


 Thompson, Daniel V.. The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting:
with a foreword. by Bernard Berenson.. New York, NY: Dover, 1956. ISBN #
0-486-20327-1


 Thompson, Daniel V.. The Practice of Tempera Painting: Materials and
Methods. New York: Dover Publications, 1962. ISBN # 0-486-20343-3


 Vytlacil, Vaclav. Egg Tempera Painting, Tempera Underpainting, Oil Emulsion
Painting - A Manual Of Techinque. New York: Oxford University Press, 1935.
ISBN# 978-1-44376-680-7

1 <#sdfootnote1anc>
http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/formsofverse/reports2000/page6.html

2 <#sdfootnote2anc>http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5789

3 <#sdfootnote3anc>The Craftsman's Handbook ( Il libro dell'Arte ) page 55



Later
L.D. Beers loco.cerveza at gmail.com
**********************************************************************************************************
"for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the
western stars, until I die."  --Tennyson
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