[Scriptoris] Colors and binder influence

[Elaine Crittenden]

Celestria,

You'll find lots of different colors for liveliness on pages. I have a page from a small Period book that uses green and purple to decorate a single letter, a capital beginning a sentence. Never saw that combination before. 

Most of the Period books use the colors of blue and red in the text area, besides the black lettering, of course. If the scribe added egg yolk to the red, it will have a red-orange cast, but if glair (clarified egg white) is used, the red isn't as orange. Typically, yolk is used as a binder for the "warm" colors; glair is used for the "cool" colors, including some greens.

Lete


-----Original Message-----
>From: Celestria leDragon <celestria.ledragon at gmail.com>
>Sent: Jan 12, 2009 10:26 PM
>To: "Scribes within Ansteorra - SCA, Inc." <scriptoris at lists.ansteorra.org>
>Subject: Re: [Scriptoris] (no subject)
>
>Greetings Lete Bithespring,
>
>I've been looking at different styles and periods of manuscripts and wasn't
>sure  why some had the red words. I couldn't figure out the pattern or
>purpose to it.
>
>Thanks!
>Celestria
>
>On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 9:16 PM, Elaine <eshc at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Celestria, greetings from Lete Bithespring.
>>
>> You didn't mention the era. If it was post-Gutenberg,the printers used red
>> to liven up the page, unless they didn't want to make a second run, which
>> required "registration" to keep things aligned, and in which case, someone
>> hand-colored the red into blank areas left specifically for color to be
>> added.
>>
>> There were even clients who brought a publication back to their printer
>> because the red stripes between between the lines of text were not there,
>> not being needed to help a scribe keep his handwritten lettering straight.
>> Astute printers put the lines back in or just published them at the first
>> outset until patrons could get used to the idea of not having the red lines
>> on a page.
>>
>> If it was before Gutenberg, there was a hierarchy of lettered hands with
>> text block changes and a difference in sizes to begin new thought lines,
>> much like a chapter heading. Decorated/colored small uncials could also
>> indicators of punctuation between sentences.
>>
>> Concerning blues on a manuscript or broadsheet, you could order 2, 4 or 8
>> florin blue. Things were spelled out in excruciating detail when contracting
>> for hand-scribed/published work.
>>
>> Is some of this what was being asked?
>>
>> HL Lete Bithespring
>>
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