It all started when I received an e-mail from the Office Manager of Nobel Limited Company (an international communications firm) while I was away at Pennsic XXXI.  So, when I returned, I replied to their request for someone to do Cyrillic calligraphy for them.  First, I asked if it was to be Russian or Greek, and found it was to be Russian.  Then I found out they had no idea as to the actual Russian they wanted, and I would have to research it.  I later found out they were doing this same type of thing in 5 different languages.

     This person I was corresponding with said that they wanted the word "PASSION" (meaning the passion and desire to excel) translated into the Russian Cyrillic and their company name transliterated into Russian.  So, I put out a plea on the SCA Scribe's List for help with the translations.  I was really lucky to get several responses, and after much discussion with a couple of them, we hit on the correct letter forms.

     The original "plan" was to make the piece 8" x 10" in decorated space.  So, since they didn't say which way the piece would lay, I opted for the width being the larger size.  I found a  really nice 12th century Byzantine page (since the Russians clung to the Byzantine art form well into the 18th century) to use as the backdrop for the word Passion, and sent the company a preliminary drawing.  They responded favorably, but asked me to wait a bit, as they wanted to talk to their company Feng Shui person about size.  When they finally got back to me at the end of September (their original in-place date was supposed to be the first of October), they changed the size to 15" x 24" (which I misread and made mine only 12" wide), with the width being the smaller number.  This put a real challenge in my way, as the piece I'd planned was only 8" tall by 10" wide.  But, I rose to this challenge and came up with what I felt was a good design.  I found another Byzantine page, this time from the 13th century, that complimented the original one to go as a filler in the middle, and then just enlarged the original one to accommodate the company name.

     Below are some digital photos I took along the process, as well as some comments about the project.  I finally finished this piece on November 7, 2002, and mailed it off to the company on the 8th.

This was the final draft after getting the size change.  I used graph paper to make sure I had everything even.  The company wanted the piece done on vellum, so I did it on a piece of lambskin I had purchased at Pennsic a few years ago (from The Gabriel Guild).  This was a bit of a challenge for me, as I had never worked on such a large piece of vellum before, and it had been rolled up for such a long time, I had difficulty making it lay flat as I worked on it.  I tried to use Saral Paper to transfer the design to the vellum, but it didn't work well, and I ended up darkening in all my outlines on the final draft with pen and then tracing them onto the vellum using my light box.  I had to do it in stages, as my light box isn't overly large in size.  (Click here to see the tracing process.)

This is an enlargement of the page I found in one of my books on Byzantine illumination ("Byzantium, Treasures of Byzanine Art and Culture," edited by David Buckton, page 163, St. Mark page of the Codex Ebnerianus, 1125-1150 AD).  The original looked like it was flat gilded and the design painted over the top of it.  Since I was not experienced in flat gilding, I opted to raised gilding and leaving the parts to be painted un-gilded.  I sort of regret this now, as I had many problems with evenness of the gilding base.  For the gilding base, I used an acrylic gesso mixture, mostly because I didn't trust the more period gesso tablets I had on hand for some reason I cannot recall at this time.  

This is a blow-up and cut copy of the Byzantine piece I used for the center section of this piece.  It matched fairly closely with the style of the page I was using for the other two sections ("Byzantium, Treasures of Byzanine Art and Culture," edited by David Buckton, page 194, St. Matthew page of a gospel book, 1285 AD).  Both of these originals also fit the company's color theme, predominantly black and red.  I did use a bit more blue in the center section than was in the original, but it just "looked" right my way.

This is the bottom section with one coat of the gilding base on it, and two coats on the calligraphy.  I ended up putting three coats on the calligraphy (which here is the name of the company transliterated into Russian).  This entire section was 12" wide and about 10" tall.  The border was about 2.5" wide, so this was a real challenge to get that gilding base down smoothly.  I had never thought I could scrape or sand acrylic gesso, but found that I could do this to a small extent on places that ended up with ripples.  I am sure I made this project much more difficult than it needed to be, but I had started on it this way and had to continue with it.  It took me nearly 20 hours to put down the gilding base on the entire piece.  

At this point, as you can see, I had gilded about 3/4 of the piece.  I was not happy with how the gold was going down, as I was either not moistening the base enough (and the gold just brushed away in splotches), or I got it too moist (and the gold "sunk" into the base). To my eye, there were still uneven places in the gilding, but I was looking at it with really good jeweler's glasses, so could see EVERY little inconsistency. I started out with loose leaf gold and ended up with another full book of patent leaf (as I'd used up all my loose on the top section -- a full book).  I had originally thought I could do this project in 30 hours -- boy, was I wrong.  I also thought I could do it with one book of leaf, again, I was wrong.  I think this photo was taken at about the 50-hour point.