Making a Scriptorium, or, Writing with Quills Part Two
Posted by Kate Ozment
This post is part of a series covering workshops in a single course called Technologies of Writing. For an overview, see this post.
Working with quills is something we’ve discussed before on this blog. In 2019, I wrote a post about how to do a manuscript workshop in an Early Modern literature course, and in 2020, Cait did a workshop cutting and preparing her own quills. This time, I took a simple workshop a step further by creating a scriptorium. This required fudging timelines a little bit, as we were mixing medieval and Early Modern practices, but fun is sometimes more important than historical accuracy.
Our reading and prep for this lesson included chs. 4 and 5 of Joyce Kinkead’s A Writing Studies Primer, which cover paper and writing instruments. This lesson had two aspects to it:
Monday we had a 75-minute lecture and discussion focused on how different substrates like paper and parchment are made, what their properties are, and how writing instruments developed in tandem with these materials. I used YouTube videos to show how different papers and inks were made, covering parchment, mulberry paper, linen paper, oak gall ink, and Chinese ink sticks. While we talked about these objects, I had a few samples for them to handle:
Laid paper from 18th century books that I bought several years ago off E-bay. I got a set of 12 volumes of late 1700s reprints of the Spectator for about $150, and I use these to show what old books look like without being particularly worried about wear and tear. They are not fine quality, but they work. We looked at chain lines, which I’ll also use next week in the book forms lecture.
Parchment samples, made by a contemporary tanner, available here. These were a bit pricey, at $100 for four samples. I bought three different animals—calf, goat, and deer—and students were able to feel them and notice pigmentation, the difference between the hair side and the skin side, and the difference between different animals. This is not strictly necessary for this lesson and was a bit of a splurge, but I’ve wanted parchment samples for a while.
Wednesday we had the scriptorium. There were two goals: examine handwriting done with quills and learn to read it on a basic level, and learn to use the tools that developed with these alphabets, quills and ink on paper.
I went to class early and set up electric candles (fire marshal would not allow real flames) and put materials on each table. I then turned the lights off and had students entered the soft glow of their makeshift scriptorium for the day’s work. Light from the blackened smartboard at the front of the room and the window on the classroom door gave some extra light, and we made sure everyone could see and sit down carefully.
The following materials* were used for this workshop:
Black Iron Gall Ink: $13.50 for a 1 oz. bottle. The bottle is about two inches tall and has a good amount of ink in it. Three students shared a bottle, and I have six total. In future years when this ink runs out, I will likely try making my own using oak galls on the local trees.
Quills: $12 for 2 quills, or $6 apiece. These were the most expensive part of the purchase. I have 18 quills, which was $176 total when I bought them in 2018. You can also cut your own for much cheaper.
Paper: $16 for a pad of Strathmore 400 series watercolor paper at Michaels. You want good paper that holds ink for your students to practice with. You can also get mixed media paper and marker paper that is used for calligraphy.
Electric candles: $16.99 for a 24-pack, and I bought two packages. All of the craft stores in my area had these for 800% more expensive, so I went with Amazon. In future years, I will add a few big candles to the middle of each table for more light.
*The first three bullet points were purchased in 2018, and I have been using these since with no issues. I adjusted the prices here to current levels on the various shops.
In addition to these materials, I used copies of exercises from English Handwriting Online 1500-1700, hosted by Cambridge University. I have used these for years, and I love that they are listed by difficulty so I can work students up to more complex handwriting. Each student received a printout of an easy and medium paleography sample, along with The Secretarie Alphabete.
The class was split in two to manage materials better. Half started with paleography and half started with the quills and ink; at 35 minutes, they switched. The paleography exercises were collaborative, and students were together to decode the poems. They had to adjust to secretary hand and unstandardized spelling, which they got better at as time went on. For the quills, a few students had done calligraphy before and were a bit more adept at handling them. All reported that what was most difficult was the amount of pressure and care required to write with the quills, as they normally used mechanical pencils and ball-point pens. They also found it slowed down their writing quite a bit to have to pause and dip the quill so often and avoid wet splotches on their papers.
Reflection
After the workshop, students were asked to complete a short written reflection that asked the following questions:
This week we traced the development of writing substrates like paper and parchment, writing instruments like quills and pens, and ink and other pigments. Write a minimum of 200 words (you can write more) in answers to these questions. You can review any class notes or readings for this assignment.
What kind of writing instruments do you normally use for handwriting, if any?
How does writing with a quill or dip pen compare to these other instruments? What was challenging about it? Was anything easier?
Do you see a relationship between quills and secretary-style hand or more contemporary cursive handwriting? Consider the particularities of the quill with a ballpoint pen or graphite pencil.
Making It Cheaper
This is easily my most expensive workshop, and I’ve been thinking about how to not re-spend this money once the quills begin wearing out and I run out of ink. In the future, I intend to buy bulk feathers and practice cutting and preparing them myself. I do not anticipate having students do this work because I have a 25-to-1 ratio and do not want that many knives about with so little supervision. I also intend to gather oak galls this year and try making my own ink following video tutorials online. This would dramatically reduce the cost of this workshop, and if students get to help it would also help them learn.
Kate Ozment is assistant professor of English at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She has a book on Hroswitha Club forthcoming from Cambridge UP’s Elements series, and you can find her other work in Textual Cultures, Eighteenth-Century Studies, and Digital Humanities Quarterly. Contact her at: keozment (at) cpp (dot) edu.
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October 2022
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September 2022
- Sep 24, 2022 Making a Scriptorium, or, Writing with Quills Part Two
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