Pinna

At the end of Fall term I was lucky enough to have a tutorial on quill pen cutting with Alan Cole, the curator of the Museum of Writing at Senate House Library.  I really enjoy hands-on crafty things, and I went into it knowing absolutely nothing, so it was a very fun learning experience.  The process is deceptively simple—you can learn all the steps in half an hour, but it would take a lot of practice to completely master the art.  Below are some pictures of my results.  This week I’m getting more quills to practice on, and later I intend to post a more detailed description of the procedures involved, along with step-by-step photos.

Goose quills.  Primary flight feathers with barbs intact.

Here we see a comparison between correct and incorrect.  The pen in the foreground was cut by Alan and finalized with a mechanical quill cutter (a bit like nail clippers).  The sad pen in the background was, unfortunately, cut by myself.

Comparison of the backs.

Side-on view, this is the correct result of the two the cuts that create the pen shape.  I’m not even going to bother showing you mine.

Another angle.

An example using the nice pen.  You can see quite clearly the place where the ink begins to run out and the heavier areas that appear following dipping.  Imagine having to dip your pen every two to three words, alternating between too much ink and too little, at least until you became quite a good scribe.  (Oh, and it’s freezing cold and there’s very little light.  Yay the Middle Ages.)

Close-up.  Clearly, I am not an expert pen cutter or calligrapher.  I do quite like the double-line effect of the almost-dry pen, though.

Yes, the second line is written with my pen.  Not good.  I assume that part of the problem is the too-short channel for the ink.

Immediately after dipping the quill.

Same.

This was too pretty not to post.

Clearly a very good day.

Filed under cutting quill pens, early modern era, feathers, handmade, handwriting, history of writing, ink, middle ages, pens, pinna, quill pens, quills, writing | Comment (0)