Scribe Tools Page

The images below are my photographs from museums. I have a lot more material than this, but most of my records are on video because I can make same-time verbal notes and shoot them under better lighting in the round. These objects are on my tapes, so if you really have questions, I can look up details like how the pieces are joined in the calligraphy stand or what the tooling looks like on the leather pen case. The referances for time and place are more complete there as well. Please don't ask unless you seriously want to know since it means digging it out of archive. However, if you do really want to know, I would be happy to get for you what I have.

Gothic calligraphy stand with ink pot and metal pen. Museum of London, Replica.

The Following are requested drawings of how the pieces fit together to make the calligraphy stand and a scribe's chair. These rough sketches were made while reviewing vidio tape. The camera caught them in the round, but the measurements are guesses. Sorry there is not much to go on, but this should be enough for a person familiar with medieval furniture to reproduce a copy.

The chair has a board with two struts which slip into a retaining cup and a slot on each side. It is not clear whether the actual writing board is one with the two struts, or if it is loose and just lays there. The later would be convinient when the scribe wants to get up, while the former would provide stability. I do not want to presume that the sculptor's careful alignment necessarily means it is attatched, but I have a hunch it may well have been.

There is also an odd disk behind the retaining cup. I do not think it looked like a pivot on the sculpture because it did not seem to be joined to the struts, but in several manuscript illuminations it really does seem to be a pivot which would lift the struts and tray up. The other designs are carved in high relief.

Left: Mid. 11th c. London. Walrus Ivory pen case from the British Museum.

Right: Gothic calligraphy tools from the Museum of London, including leather pen case and cap (missing cords which link them), a quill, a wax tablet, and two styluses, possibly of Ivory with metal tips.

Roman period wax tablet, metal and ivory styluses, and ink wells from the Museum of London.

Sketch plan for making such a painter's tray. Proposed dimensions are 6 inches wide, 8 inches long, and a slope of 20 degrees. I have found that a steeper slope lets the brushes slip into the bottom. The tray should be glazed, but I think a very slight grit in the glaze used on the tray's slope would help keep brushes from sliding. The glaze will also make it easy to clean. If a slippery glaze is used, it might be better to drop the slope down to 8 degrees.

The above illustrations are of the rarely seen solvent tray for medieval painters. Each of these illustrations depicts a panel painter in action. Although because of time I have not been out to do specific library research on this yet, I have gone through my very large medieval home library and found no illuminators at work with trays like this. The panel painters were probably using tempera, since the tray would be unneccesary for oil painting.

At first I was surprised not to find the tray with illuminators because there were quite a few examples of sribes at work. But with closer observartion I realized that the scribes were almost all writing. They were usually pictures of the Evangelists or other authors. I noticed that on the rare occasion that illuminators were depicted at work, I could not see any water containers at all. No trays, jugs, or anything other than grinding stone, and shells or small cups with color in them. As a practiing illuminator I find it very odd that one would not have water imediately available for the brush to drip water into the shells of color. One needs it handy. Therefore my personal supposition is that the depiction is typical medieval simplicity without the need to show all of the tools. Such depiction would be adding unnecessary details to clutter the composition, and that is not typically medieval. It would be consistant to only show details which indicate the scene, and color shells would be enough for that.

Also, there were several panel painters who had only a palette and shells/cups out. The sample above from a 1402 French manuscript of DE CLARIS MULIERBUS shows our tray (probably of water) while in the same manuscript another illustration of a woman at an easel/table shows color shells, a hand held palette, and some brushes resting across a bar on the table which keeps the hairs off the table. I think that may support my supposition, but it is possible that the second illustration may be of an oil painter. However, I note that there is not even a container of turpentine anywhere near this second painter.