SCA Pelican Award August 2015

A dear friend and "sis" was awarded her SCA Pelican award in August 2015.  I was honored to do a glass scroll for her.  The SCA Pelican award is the highest service award in the SCA.  The pelican is the only animal that will prick her breast and feed her blood to her young if they are hungary.

So I needed a pelican design.  I searched the internet and found this neat picture to base my glass on.  This scroll also needed her "Arms' which were unusual featuring a scorpion. Below is the sketch that I based my glass work on.  It should be noted that several of the photo's in this blog show her scorpion facing the wrong direction.  I had drawing it incorrectly at first. However a good friend noticed it and told me.  Thankfully I got it changed!  The finished piece at the end was done in the correct orientation.

I decided to work on the hardest part first...the pelican.   First I fused some red glass chips onto the glass. Then I used black tracing paint to do the outline.  I also used it to create the illusion of came work on the piece.

Then I used bistre brown to do shading

After the brown was fired in the kiln it came out like this:

Then I started work on the "Arms".  The pics below show the process that I used before I realized that I had done it in the wrong direction.  I forgot to take pictures of it when I redid it.

First I painted on the black trace lines

Then I departed from period technique and used a red fusable paint for the body,

I also decided to do the top part as a fusable piece also

The words for the scroll were done as a decal and then fused onto glass. Then a clear fusable glass was put over it to preserve it.

Below are the three pcs put against the sketch - note that the scorpion is now going in the right direction!

Time to start putting the pieces together

And to solder it together

Patina and frame it and finished!!!

SCA Laurel Glass Scroll for Cooking and Sewing

I was told that a good friend and mentor of mine was getting her SCA Laurel in cooking and sewing.  I have always admired and learned alot about cooking from her...so I wanted to do her scroll.

First I looked up medieval items that would apply to cooking and sewing and drew sketches of them.  Because her scroll would need to have her "Arms"  I drew them up also for my pattern and lastly I drew the Laurel leaves enclosing what would be the actual words on her scroll.

Below is the sketch which has been put down on the working board [plywood]and the edges of came have been placed to start the piece.

I wanted this piece to be colorful so I selected two  different colors of glass for the medieval items - sewing needle, pot, cooking implements and sissors

Because in period they would not have painted her "Arms" in the colors that she had and I could not do the very fine came work.  I decided to fuse the middle part of it.

However for the "counter ermine" part of her arms I did a very thin wash of the black tracing paint.  Then I used a dental tool and "scratched" away the black paint so that the white glass showed through...that was alot more work than I expected....

When I put them together....it came out like this:

I started putting it together

I did a decal for the words and fused it to the glass. Then I put clear fusable glass over it to protect the words.

Then I worked on the Laurel leaves around the words...and soldered it.

I cemented it and I put black patina on it and then framed the piece.  Unfortunately I can't seem to get this picture to be in the correct direction...Sorry....

Siege of Canterbury Court Baroncy SCA Scroll

In April of 2015 I found out that a very dear friend was getting his Court Baroncy in the SCA.   Now
he is also the "warlord" for the East Kingdom.  I volunteered to do a stained glass piece for his scroll.   I had always wanted to "replicate"  a window in Canterbury Cathedral called "The Siege of Canterbury".  Since he was a "warlord" if felt this would be very appropriate to base his scroll on this window. It shows warriors both defending and attacking the Cathedral

 I decided to take the middle out and put his "scroll" words there.  Below is the sketch that I did for the design. It was 13" in diameter...when I finished labeling all the pieces, I realized that it would have over 130 pcs of glass!  Quite a project.

I quickly realized that I needed to color in the pieces on the sketch in order to keep track of them.

Almost all of the 130 + pcs were both painted with black tracing paint and then shaded with bistre brown.

Now that I am actually doing the blog on this piece...I realized that I was so intense on making it that I took very few step by step pictures.  The one below shows it partially finished.  The "Crown"in the middle was tracking black paint shaded with the brown bistre.  Then the words were a decal fired onto glass...with a clear fusable glass fired over it.  You can see some of the tiny pcs that I worked with around the other part.

Below isa picture of the scroll soldered but not black pantina'd yet.

SCA Maunche for Music Painted and Fused Glasswork

One of my friends was getting his SCA Maunche in music.  I asked if I could do it as I thought it would be really neat to do a piece of glass featuring music.

I started out by needing photo's of his instruments.  I went over to his house and his wife got out his instruments and I took photos of them.

Then I needed a "piece of music".  I went to Treasures of a Lost Art by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. By the way, an incredible book!!! The challenge was to find something that looked nice and was doable as glass painted art.  On page 57 I found Two Martyr Saints in an Initial P.  See below:

 Although the letter P was beautiful, there was no way that it would lend itself to a period glass painting. So I redrew the P in the final sketch with a flower design.

The SCA maunche design I took from the SCA website.

And I mutual friend wrote the words for the scroll. The result is the sketch below.

NOTE:  The blocks with the "X" mean that I was just going to put in colored glass....

Now begins the work.  I figured that I would tackle the hardest part which was the music.  I redid this piece several times with the black tracing ink before I was happy with it.  Fortunately you can wash the paint off the glass and start over.  Finally I was satisfied and fired the glass in my kiln

Next I worked on his various instruments. Doing the black tracing paint, firing the pieces and then doing the Bistre brown for shading.

I was going to try to paint the Maunche symbol but it would not have looked good in black and brown.  Then I decided to do a fusing for the symbol.  Technically not period but I think that glass might have accidently fused on occasion! 

 I did not want a lot of blank space around the piece so I put a leafy design on several of the pieces.  The design is very similar to a German 13th century window replica that I had worked on several years ago.

Lastly I fused the words to a piece of glass and then put a fusable clear piece of glass over it.  And fused them together.  Not period, but practical!

Then I began to put the pieces together with leaded came...

Until it was completed. Then I soldered, cemented and used black pantina on it.

 Framed it and it was done! 

Anglican Glass Piece - SCA Maunche award

Hi:  I have been doing alot of Medieval style painting this year [2015] but have not been posting.  I am going to start by describing a piece that I did for a dear friend who got her Maunche award in Jan of 2015.  I will call this my Anglian glass piece.  The person who I was doing this for has a personna in the SCA of a 5th/6th century Anglian,  Of course there are no examples of glass work from this time so I did not have any "examples". What I decided to do is take some jewelry designs of the time and make them glass designs.  Since this was going to be a two part scroll...one part glass...one part regular illumination/calligraphy on paper it was very unique.

From Nigel Mills Saxon and Viking Artefacts book I took the design from a "S" shaped brooch.

Then I found a picture of Style I Animal, I am sorry but I did not write the source down. Then I combined both designs into one. See the "drawing" below.

Then came the color choices.  Based on some research that I have previously done I figured that I would go with yellow, blue, green for the three pcs on the outside and amber for the middle one.

I started with the inner circle by using Black tracing paint and doing the outline and firing it onto the glass

Although I know that it would not be "period"  I wanted more interest in the middle pc so I painted it with a light layer of Bistre brown paint and then brushed away the paint until the two "heads" had a form. I fired it onto the glass.

I felt the the outer circle could be a very stark primitive design so I painted the black tracing paint on them and fired the pcs in my kiln.  I had to do the larger areas twice as the paint did not take well the first time on these areas.  This paint is meant to be a tracing paint. It is not meant to be used to fill in large black areas.

Then I put them together with the amber circle in the middle and the other three pieces around the edge.  I soldered them together and cemented them.

Next I put black pantina on it to create contrast.



The piece was ready to be put together with the illumination/calligraphy.   I cut two pcs of plain glass that the paper could go between and set them into the frame with the stained glass piece.