November 2023 Meeting

 Meeting Minutes 14 Nov 23

Bleached Letters- Cecelia Harris

19 were in attendance

 

Welcome & Announcements:

**We were encouraged to start our Christmas cards (30) if we haven’t already.

**There was a terrific turn out for the Family Fall Crawl sponsored by the Pioneer Museum at the Evergreen Cemetery.  Several members lettered bookmarks, which was a huge hit!

**The DC Guild has announced their Annual Graceful Envelope contest.  The theme for 2024 is ‘Mapping the World’s Cities’.  All are encouraged to participate. The deadline to submit is 24 March 2024.

**Candy asked for suggestions for next year’s demos. Lynn F’s decorated letter got rave reviews. Julie Wilder and Peter Thornton were mentioned for future workshops. Lonnie agreed to do brush lettering in Jan.

**We will do another envelope exchange with members who want to participate.  Slips of paper were passed out and partners were drawn.  We will ask that they be brought to show at our Jan meeting.

**Karen Mc informed us that Creative Impressions is open in a warehouse in town.  She brought 3 catalogues full of paper embellishments etc to look through. 

 

 

Show & Share:

**TJ brought a page of French Roundhand practice work.

**Cecelia brought 3 pages of bold/funky lettering she did in Brody on-line class. She’s also taken classes from Mike Gold and Yves Leterme.

**Kimmi had 3 pages from the class as well, one she colored black in and around the letters.

**Kristi L brought 2 fine pieces of French Roundhand decorated with leaves.  

**Members who participated in the envelope exchange

 

Evening Presentation:

**First of all, Cecelia let us know ‘old’ bleach won’t work well to bleach colored papers. She brought small containers of fresh bleach for each of us.  She passed around a number of examples for us to get an idea of how the bleach reacts with different kinds of papers, and let us loose to make marks or letters and experiment with the colored card stock and wide nibbed/cola/coit pens we brought with us.  It was a freeing, and less than messy exercise!  Thank you, Cecelia!   

Envelope collection!




Cecelia's Show and Share..... 

  Deb's samples...green paper dyed with Bister ink

Kimmi's Show & Share...

TJ's French Roundhand practice work

Kristi's French Roundhand

Bleach Bash!!

October 2023 Meeting

 Meeting Minutes 10 OCT 2023

French Roundhand- Cyndi Haworth

12 were in attendance

 

 

Welcome & Announcements:

**Kristi Lyons filled in as VP for Candy who was out sick.

**Karen Eiles shared a full-color brochure from the St. John’s Bible exhibition in September at St Michael’s Episcopal Church.  Each of the 7 books (Pentateuch, Historical Books, Wisdom Books, Psalms, The Prophets, Gospels & Acts, Letters & Revelation) were one of 299 copies of the Heritage Edition.  Each copy had been hand-embellished with original artwork and was presented with a prayer and song.     

**We were encouraged to bring the envelopes we agreed to exchange with one another to the meeting next month. 

**Jim Witford offered another marbling workshop at Nell’s.  Several attended and they all thought it was a great way to spend the day.  Thank you, Jim! (He has three 6’ and two 8’ particle board tables to give away. He is willing to deliver them, too!)

**The Pioneer Museum is hosting a fall themed historical event at the Evergreen Cemetery on Sat Oct 21 from 3:30-5 pm.  Sherry Weaver and Nell Houser were looking for volunteers willing to letter bookmarks on the premises.

**Lynn Friedberg gave a report on what her old guild in Pittsburgh had been doing recently.  They don’t meet regularly, but are involved with playdays doing jelly plates and participating in round-robins with a more skilled member at each table to help and encourage the newer members. They recently hosted a 6-week Pointed Black Letter class on line, and offered a Copperplate bootcamp with Nina Tran. They’ve also explored walnut ink using parallel and folded pens.

**The Christmas Party will be hosted by Kristi Lyons this year. Start working on your cards!

 

Show & Share:

**Anne Dye brought 2 lovely lettered pieces, one in Italic, one in Roman Caps

**Cheryl Carey brought multiple sheets of paper she marbled

**Kristi Lyons brought 2 watercolor background pieces on Stonehenge paper

**Tom Heaney had several sheets of his Copperplate quotes

 

Evening Presentation:

**Cyndi had handouts for the French Roundhand she presented to us.  She used a Mitchell #3 and had guide sheets for us to use.  She discovered it just by admiring the forms on-line.  French Roundhand is an upright very round letter form with 45-degree connectors.  She only had time to demonstrate the minuscules, but did show us a few capitals.  It was a very new hand for most of us, lifting the pen to make each letter in several strokes to make each appear as though they were made more seamlessly.  Nice work, Cyndi! 

Cheryl Carey

Tom Heaney

Tom Heaney

Anne Dye

Anne Dye

Kristi Lyons

Kristi Lyons

June 2023 Meeting

 Meeting Minutes 13 Jun 2023

Neuland with the A0 nib-Tammi Jo Klajnbart

12 present

 

 

Welcome & Announcements:

**Jim’s marbling workshop was a success with 6 people participating.  Several brought papers they made to show and share

**This year’s International Conference was canceled last year.  Next year’s event is slated for June 22-29, 2024 in Davenport, IA.

 

Show & Share:

**Tom has kept up with his quote a day, 164 of them to this point, and has filled 66 pages in his notebook!

**Sherry brought some pretty pink and black marbled paper and made a book mark to show the paper can be lettered on.

**Candy covered a ready-made journal to create a marbled Junk Journal.

**Cecelia brough several examples of pieces she’s been working on in Brody’s on-line classes, one on collage and the other on the Magic of Kozo, using Japanese rice paper.  

 

Evening Presentation:

**TJ gave a short history on Neuland, reminded folks how to hold the pen for maximum success, and had 3 handouts of examples as well as Randy Hasson’s exemplar.  She made her way through the entire alphabet explaining how to flip the pen over to flare the edges, fill in anything we’d like to clean up.  There is a certain rhythm that eventually comes with making these fun and chunky letters!

May 2023 Meeting

Meeting Minutes 9 May 2023

Recorded by Candy Entingh

 

Linda and Rich Page attended our 5/9/2023 Summit Scribes meeting as docents of the first of their seven (7) folios of Donald Jackson’s Saint John’s Bible, Heritage Edition. The folio is on tour and when all 7 of the folios are obtained, they will be permanently housed and on display at Saint Michael’s Episcopal Church here in Colorado Springs, CO.

 

A 45-minute video was shown to us to start off our meeting. This film was produced by the BBC and followed Donald Jackson’s beginnings with the project in 1998 at his home in Wales, all the way through to the completed folios being presented to the Benedictine monks at Saint John’s University in Minnesota, USA. To create a Bible that would capture the beauty and tradition of centuries of liturgy and carry it into the future—that was the vision that united a calligrapher in Wales with this group of Benedictine monks in Minnesota. The Saint John’s Bible is the first completely handwritten and illuminated Bible to be commissioned by a Benedictine abbey since the invention of the printing press. The project was headed by Donald Jackson, and work on the manuscript took place in both Wales and Minnesota. I was in awe that in the preliminary stages of choosing the calfskin vellum hides, that even a tiny flaw in the very edge of the skin kept it from being selected. There were 6 calligraphers chosen from among many, only these were able to copy the unique hand of script that Jackson had created for this project. All calligraphy was written using hand cut goose quills. Only 6 artists working on the illustrations for the Bible. It took 2 years to finish just the layout, and 11 years to finish. Interestingly, facing pages were both done by the same calligrapher so that the writing would be the same on both pages keeping the symmetry of writing the same to the viewer.

 

The Saint John’s Bible Heritage Program is an international initiative for individuals and institutions to explore the artistic and spiritual beauty of The Saint John’s Bible with fine art limited editions created under the direction of Donald Jackson. The folio is printed on 100% cotton paper the same thickness and feel as the original calfskin used in the Bible. The gold has been added by embossing. As if you are viewing the shadow of an illumination from the back on the original, so has the shadow been printed on the back of the page that is illuminated on the folio. Such attention to detail.

 

Linda and Rich Page will be receiving all 7 folios soon and when they do, we will set up another time to view them all!