The Procession Scribe

One day a few of years ago, my wife, Shannon Odell, told me that she was planning to attend a museum conference in Austria and wanted to know if I’d like to tag along. This was a bit of a no brainer for me. Stuck in Vienna, Austria for 6 days with nothing to do but wander around the city? Sure, I’d love to come. 

One morning I left our hotel and walked south toward the main part of the city. I was heading for the Neuberg but with all the great architecture such as St Peters church, which you constantly are looking up at…… I got lost, which if you thing about it, is not such a bad thing. You might be lost, but you’re lost in Vienna! How cool is that! That’s when I ended up in front of the Albertina museum.

I had heard of this museum, but I really had not planned on visiting it. But on the spur of the moment, I decided to go up to the front door and see what exhibits they had. At the front door I found two posters

Now, I’m a big fan of Durer, and these other painters are not too shabby, so I paid my 12 euros and went inside. The Monet to Picasso exhibit was actually pretty good. They even had some of Picasso’s wood cuts. So far I’m pleased. I went down to the lower level expecting to find Durer’s wood engravings….what I found made my jaw drop.

The Triumphant Procession of Maximillian I

This was a scroll that the museum had begun restoring in 2009. The artwork and calligraphy were done on sheets of parchment that were between 44 and 46 centimeters in height (about 19 inches) and between 83 and 95 centimeters in length (about 38 inches). Originally the sheets were glued end to end to form a scroll that measured over 100 meters in length. That's over 300 feet! The original scroll had 109 sheets, but the first 43 sheets have been lost since the 17th century. The last 60 or so sheets went through a conservation process in which loose dirt and other material were vacumned off and then the parchment itself was cleaned with a soft latex sponge sponge. No water was allowed to touch the parchment. Many of the sheets were warped and in order to flatten them out they had Japanese paper strips glued to the sides and the sheets when into a humidity chamber where they were gradually  moistened and then taken out and dried under tension.

For display, the sheets were adhered to mounting boards. In this way they could be displayed in a continuous pictorial frieze. It was very impressive to see this long display of parchment sheets as it wound its way around the exhibit room. The content of those first sheets are known only from a copy of the scroll that was produced in the late 16th century a group of unknown artists. The contents have been described as part of a “memory” project, commissioned by the emperor to secure his place in the history books. It celebrates royal family life, ancestry, the emperor’s major military victories, as well as elements of courtly life: chivalry, jousting, music, and hunting.

Now the minuscule lettering was very nice, but the one thing that caught my eye were the capitals and in particular the minimal amount of fine flourishing that was associated with the majuscules.

I was so impressed with these capitals that when I got back to the States, I decided to try and reproduce the capitals from this scroll. I was able to find a few of the sheets online and began to build the capitals. I began by simply drawing stick letters.

And then began to develop work pages of the capitals using a broad nib pen.

I then came to the flourishes. The flourishes were very fine and minimal. The scribes of this period used quills to produce the letters as well as the flourishes. They simply turned the quill on it’s side to make the fine line. My metal nibs didn’t quite work as well. I decided to just use a pointed pen metal nib to produce the lines. In the end I came up with full alphabet of Fraktur capitals in the style of the Procession scribe.

This was quite a project. Even though it took a about a year of my free time, it was a true labor of love.  I was quite pleased with how the letterform came out and I have even used these capitals in an artist book that I was working on at the time.

If you are interested in seeing more of the scroll you can go to the BibliOdyseey web site. http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2010_09_26_archive.html