Sara Charles Profile picture
Apr 6, 2021 16 tweets 9 min read Read on X
Time to smash some lapis! #teachingmanuscripts ImageImage
Make sure your pestle is wearing a pretty skirt when grinding the smaller chunks, otherwise you’ll lose some lapis ImageImage
Separating the impurities before grinding any finer 😩 Image
Hurrah - time to make a potion! ImageImage
Which is hard when you have kittens constantly scaling your legs #medievalstuffwithcats Image
Add the blue stuff to the yellow stuff ImageImageImage
Plasticine time! ImageImage
Ta-da! A very expensive crayon! Which will harden over the next few days. Then I'll do more stuff to see if I end up with any pigment that's any good.

Totally get why lapis was such an expensive pigment - it's a nightmare 🙄 #teachingmanuscripts #lapislazuli #medievalcolours Image
Lapis update! Time to extract the pigment . I let the wax crayon soften in warm water for ten minutes, then moved it onto another bowl of warm water with some potassium carbonate (left) #lapislazuli Image
Then (wearing gloves because potassium carbonate is not kind to hands) I massaged the wax to release the pigment into the water. This is based on Cennino Cennini's fifteenth century recipe. The impurities should stay in the wax
It took nearly two hours and lots of water changes - but eventually most of the pigment had come out #Lapislazuli Image
Lots of rinsing and draining (and lots of forgetting the order of the bowls) Image
I've got four grades, which are drying out. I'll probably rinse them again and pick out any further impurities, then grind to a fine powder. If this was a commercial venture, I would charge eleventy million pounds per gram, because it is such an absolute pain in the arse to make ImageImage
I always forget to finish my threads 😳. Here is the final result, mixed with gum arabic and water Image

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More from @sarajcharles

Oct 12, 2022
Inspired by Christopher de Hamel and in the interests of furthering manuscript research, I decided to see what parchment does indeed taste like #teachingmanuscripts
I'm not allowed to use a real medieval manuscript, so I used a small strip of goat parchment that I made myself A small piece of parchment A goatskin stretched on a p...
I chewed. The texture was rubbery. The taste was uninspiring. I got a very, very tiny olfactory tingle in the back of the throat, like when you eat goats cheese but on a much lesser scale
Read 5 tweets
Aug 14, 2022
Making a medieval paintbrush. It's quite easy! #teachingmanuscripts #medievalstuffwithcats Brother Rufillus seated on a bench, holding a paintbrush in
Like everything to do with medieval manuscript production, you have to make or source it yourself - no trips to local art stores for ready-made supplies. So how did they make paintbrushes? Animal hair (as today) was considered the best type of brush Woman seated at an easel painting the Virgin Mary and child.
Theophilus in his twelfth-century treatise, On Diverse Arts, mentions that paintbrushes can be made from the tail of a martin, badger, squirrel, or cat or from the mane of a donkey (bk 2, ch. 17).
Hmmm - I do have plenty of cats ... this is just a small sample Three cats sitting in a shaded garden. One is a ragdoll, two
Read 19 tweets
Mar 29, 2022
Let's make some medieval lye (la lye, lye la lye la lye la lye 🎵). Lye is also known as potash or lixivium. It's a strong alkali and the basic ingredient of soap. Yes, the medievals washed! #teachingmanuscripts #medievalpigments Morgan Collection, MS M.638...
Lye is completely natural and once again nature is completely AMAZING. A big lovely tree sucks up all the nutrients from the soil through its roots (including potassium). Big lovely tree gets cut down and used for firewood 🙁 Royal ms 10 E IV, fol. 100v...
The wood all burns away and leaves nothing but ashes. BUT - the ashes contain lots of alkali-rich things like potassium and calcium carbonate. You know what's good for getting things clean? Alkali-rich things! (The word alkali comes from the Arabic al-qaly, which means ashes) BL, Harley MS 4751, fol. 45...
Read 16 tweets
May 10, 2021
I want some alum-tawed thongs for a bookbinding project. Does a search on the internet help? It does not (unless I want a whole animal skin for £££). But I DO have a sheep skin that I salted from last year. So I’m going to make my own #teachingmanuscripts Image
I cut off some strips from the bottom of the skin and give it a bit of a haircut Image
I need to rinse all the salt out first in water. I got this skin last October and salted it straight away. It’s been stored all winter in an airtight container, and it looks pretty good 👍 Image
Read 21 tweets
Jun 5, 2020
Tyrian (or imperial) purple was by far the most superior colour in the ancient and medieval world, but is very expensive. Mohammed Ghassen Nouira makes Tyrian purple using traditional Phoenician methods, with fantastic results. I hope to work with him soon facebook.com/Pourpre-de-Car…
Orchil purple, obtained from lichens, was a cheaper alternative, and probably used in the Book of Kells. However, it is hard to source and ecologically unwise to do so. Isabella Whitworth has done a lot of work on dyeing textiles with orchil isabellawhitworth.com/2013/09/17/tal…
Read 17 tweets
Jan 19, 2020
It’s time for more #medievalstuffwithcats! I made this zodiac illumination. If you want to know a bit more about the process, read on… ImageImage
The zodiac roundels come from the calendar in British Library, Royal MS 1 D X bl.uk/manuscripts/Vi… (note that some of the roundels are not exactly round) ImageImage
I decided to do this illumination because I want to start working on larger pieces of parchment. I used 8” x 10” (a bit smaller than A4). This feels like a decent size for a folio, although if we were working in a scriptorium this would be double the size and folded in the centre Image
Read 23 tweets

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