To complete my presentation of the first of, well, I’m not sure how many manuscripts I’ll produce of my Atternen Juez Talen, aka in old English, The Eternal Jew’s Tale, here’s a presentation of some of the images I painted as decorative details. Enjoy!
Following up on my post of May 2, which showed images of the binding of an illuminated manuscript I recently produced, in this post you can view a slideshow of some of the illumination work (gold leaf decorations) in the book.
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In this, and 2 or 3 following posts, I’ll be presenting images of some notable details of an illuminated manuscript I produced of the opening scenes of a long narrative poem I recently completed, entitled The Atternen Juez Talen (The Eternal Jew’s Tale).
I began working on this manuscript over a year ago, using a pre-bound empty book that had been given to me as a gift by my wife Nancy some number of years ago. The paper appears to be a Nepalese tissue with minimal sizing (“size” is a technical term that means ‘surface sealant’; unsized paper will allow ink to feather, therefore making it unsuitable for most calligraphy). Thus, I had to size each sheet. I used a thinned acrylic medium as my size. If you’re curious about my decision to use acrylic, contact me.
The sizing process was complicated for 3 reasons:
1. wetting the sheets meant they would become buckled and wrinkled upon drying;
2. since sizing is glue of one sort or another, it meant that if I put the pages in a press to avoid buckling, they would stick together into a solid block; and
3. since the book was already bound, pressing each sheet individually would have been prohibitively time consuming.
I’ll spare you the details of my solution, but needless to say, for this 156 sheet book it required over 2 months to complete the sizing project. But the result was quite nice. The acrylic size made the sheets somewhat pearlescent and translucent, which I liked a lot. But it meant I could only write on one side of each sheet. So suddenly, my 312 page book (156 sheets, both sides) became a 156 page book. No worries. It kept me plenty busy for another 10 months.
The production process was rather straight forward. First I did the calligraphy, using India ink. Then, using water colors, I painted small portraits on pages where the right margin of the text was wide enough to allow a miniature. Then I illuminated all the section breaks with various versions of a sunburst. There were about 20 of these illuminations. After that, I did a number of full and half-page illustrations, again using water colors. Finally, I bound the book in blue leather. Since I used a chrome-based tanned leather, it wouldn’t take gold tooling, so I painted the title on the front and spine, using acrylic paint.
In this post I’ll present images of the binding, the title page, and the end papers.
Enjoy!
One of the great museums in Turkiye is the Turk ve Islam, featuring Turkish and Islamic arts. Below you can view a slideshow of some of my favorite exhibits, primarily manuscripts, plus some carpets. Enjoy.
Beginning the illustration and other decorative work on my Atternen Juez Talen manuscript, having completed the calligraphic work.
Here’s the title page with illustrations about 2/3 done:
Saadia and Batkol, the Atternen Ju and his wife
Some months ago I began a project to produce an illuminated manuscript of the poetry version of the Atternen Juez Talen. A prose, standard English version is being published in a weekly episodic format at the Times of Israel [https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/author/stephen-berer/], but the original poetry version remains largely inaccessible to the public. It seems the world is not yet ready for my visionary talen.
Therefore, I decided to produce an enduring and perhaps even elegant version as a stand-alone work of art. When completed, this illuminated manuscript will still only be about 1/3 to 1/4 of the whole poem, but I hope to illuminate the rest of the poem in further volumes. God Willing.
Below you can see page 103, which I penned today.
Calligraphic version, yet to be illuminated and illustrated
For the last 7 months I’ve been working on producing an amulet for my grandson, Jonah. It involved creating the design, laying the gold, painting the image, and calligraphing an inscription. The primary materials were calfskin parchment, gold leaf, acrylic paint, and ink. The whole project took 95 hours. Here’s a 3 minute video compiled from the photos I took as my work progressed. As you will see, progress was not always straightforward and satisfactory, but I’m very pleased with the results.
As Josh closes in on the last pages of the manuscript (and I fall further and further behind him with my work), I thought you might like to see a recent rough-out page he produced, to fine tune the spacing before committing to parchment. Here’s ten versions of it thru various ‘lenses’.
As I have explained in earlier posts, about half of the images I am producing for our Megillat Esther are derived from art and objects that were either produced during the Achaemenid empire, or that could have been found within the borders of that empire. Why this focus on the Achaemenid empire? Xerxes I was one of the Achaemenid emperors, and he is commonly associated with Achashverosh, the king in the Book of Esther! Thus, it is conceivable that Xerxes may have used some of the gold and silver objects I have illustrated for our manuscript, objects that we might imagine Achashverosh used during the party he threw at the beginning of the Esther story.
So, our megillah might stand as an art history lesson, as well!
The image below comes from a bas relief that was a rather long chariot ride from Susa (Shushan), where Achashverosh held court. It is part of the gate of Nimrud (near Erbil in modern Iraq), produced by the Assyrian emperor Ashurnasirpal, about 350 years before Xerxes. It shows women mourning after one of Ashurnasipal’s conquests. I chose it to represent the Jews of Achashverosh’s kingdom, after they learn of Haman’s plot to exterminate them.
The slideshow below shows the progression of the image as I painted it.
Here’s what a completed page will look like, except that the illuminations will be trimmed and pasted down.
My last post about the Megillat Esther that Josh and I are producing was back in December.
Here’s a slideshow to give you an update of our work as it has proceeded.
Work on the illuminated Megillat Esther continues.
I recently completed the 11th illumination, an image of an Achaemenid gold cup, probably dating from the time of Xerxes, the ruler who is often thought to be the Achashverosh of the Esther story. Thus, this cup may have actually been used in the revelry that opens the story!
Here’s a short slide show of the stages in producing this image. We see
1. the sketch, with gold ground laid
2. raking light on the gold ground as I prepare to burnish it to a glossy finish
3. close-up, showing the difference between the burnished snakes (uroboros) and the forehead
4. first layer of gold, unburnished
5. illumination completed, fully burnished
6. crystal background completed
The image is 3” x 2”.
