#GROOVE SCRIBE PROFESSIONAL#

(Don’t sharpen a quill as shown in this painting or you will cut your thumb-carve away, not toward your finger. If it is a feather quill, it needs to be re-dipped every few words and re-sharpened every few lines.

A vertical slit is added to channel the ink in small doses from the inner curve of the quill. Even the curve of the feather is chosen for right- or left-handedness. The tip is cut at a slight angle to accommodate the right or left hand. The width of the tip is related to the width of the stroke.

#GROOVE SCRIBE PROFESSIONAL#

Artists and modern users have a romantic attachment to the feathery parts, but professional quill-makers and scribes usually removed them. To create a quill, you harvest the feathers, scrape away the soft tissues, and age the feathers to “harden” them (in later years this was accelerated by heating). A scribe needs many quills to complete a long project. It is a protein material that wears down. You have to hold the pen at a certain angle, use exactly the right pressure, and pull the tip away from the topside for the ink to dispense evenly. When you press on the tip to spread the groove, gravity tugs the droplet and ink runs downward. Usually goose quills were used, but other feathers were sometimes good for fine lines.Īdhesion holds the ink within the curve of the quill. Some sharpened the quill more frequently than others, which improves consistency. Some sharpened the quill to a finer point, which creates a different kind of line and overall look. There are other differences… some scribes pressed harder, and some pressed harder on the downstroke than the cross-stroke (for artistic effects). A faster, lighter stroke dispenses less ink. Medieval scribes wrote using a quill or stylus. Usually when I look at VMS text, I am trying to unravel the meaning (assuming there is one) or puzzle out some of the ambiguous shapes, but a while ago I noticed something about the pen strokes that reminded me of the text on folio 116v… The Speed of the Quill

Groove scribe