About Us
Posted 1 year, 8 months ago at 2:03 pm. 12 comments
Welcome!
New Medieval Art is just what it implies; a new art medium applied to an original Medieval art! This blog has been designed as a way for artists and historians to come together and learn about existing medieval manuscripts.
About eleven years ago, I started an embroidery project on a 13th century manuscript which depicts Christian, Jewish, and Muslim musicians and instruments from the courts of Castile and Leon. This manuscript is called Las Cantigas de Santa Maria which translates, as I understand it, to mean: Songs for the Virgin Mother Mary. I started scanning images from this manuscript from books and web sites, in order to print them out on iron-on transfer sheets. I would iron the images on material, and then embroider over them. I did not want someone else to draw the pictures of the images for me to embroider over, because I wanted to capture as much as I could from the original artists. The patches are around 8 in. X 11 in and are done in the embroidery stitch known as Laid Work. (To learn more about Laid Work, go to the Art Panel of this blog).
Women Shopping
My vision was to capture what the artist saw from that period, and put it into another medium that could be hung on a wall. Getting the image out of the book and in a different artistic medium has been an exciting experience for me. Viewing these medieval images in colorful embroidery stitches has enlivened the art work for me. Many images that are found in medieval manuscripts today can only be experienced by viewing the manuscript itself, or perhaps viewed online via a library or museum which has digitized the manuscript. Some special collections may have a facsimile of the original manuscript, while other manuscripts are still forgotten, sitting on a shelf un-cataloged waiting to be rediscovered. Some web sites may contain a small fraction of the images from a manuscript, but do not show the entire manuscript. This image of Women Shopping I found in the book: Daily Life Depicted in the Cantigas de Santa Maria by John E. Keller and Annette Grant Cash.
Because of technology today, we have an opportunity to share our travels to other countries with each other, in which medieval manuscripts are found, or to share with each other our encounters of medieval manuscripts and their facsimiles. This will help each of us locate and learn about these treasures, and perhaps inspire some of us to create new art from the beautiful images. This blog is designed for those of us who wish to know where medieval manuscripts are located, where their facsimiles can be found, and to learn what artists are doing to re-capture the art of our past.
My hope is that this focus on medieval art will influence others to do similar artistic projects, and share their work with us here. It will be very interesting to see different art mediums such as: stained glass, tapestries, painting on canvas, wood carvings, or ceramic mosaics of the images from existing medieval manuscripts. This blog is meant to reach out to historians and artisans that have the same passion for medieval art, as well as to learn from each other the history that each manuscript represents.
If you do not have enough room to post your images or talk about your art or favorite manuscript here, consider registering here for your own blog. Or, post your web sites or blogs here for bloggers to read.
HINT: in order to comment on this blog, or to read other comments, you must register. (See login in area at the end of this page).
It costs nothing to join this blog but your time. I invite you to join this blog and help develop this educational community – Julie.
About Julie Carmen:
Julie is a graduate student in the School of Library and Information Management (SLIM) at Emporia State University, Emporia, Kansas. She is part of the Colorado Cohort of SLIM and takes her courses at the University of Colorado at Denver campus. This blog was part of her independent study, in which she focused on copyright laws pertaining to art work, guided history reading, and the study of educational outreach via social networking mechanisms such as blogs.
In addition to medieval history and embroidery work, her interests include: music, guitar, herbology, astronomy, and spending time with her husband, cats,and dogs.
I haven’t heard from any of you, but am hopeful that after the holidays, some of you will log in and write about what medieval manuscripts you know about or if you know any artisans that are creating art work from any manuscripts.
Happy New Year!
Julie Carmen
This response is from Anne Lane, who gave me permission to post this on the blog.
Dear Julie –
As somebody interested in new ways to look at Medieval art, you should be in touch with the calligraphic community, and especially be aware of Donald Jackson’s Saint John’s Bible. Check it out at http://www.saintjohnsbible.org/. If you Google calligraphy, calligraphy guild, and variations on the theme, you will find a wealth of information about people who are bringing the arts of calligraphy and illumination into the 21st century.
Have fun!
- Anne
Anne T. Lane
Collections Manager
704.568.1774 x110 phone
704.566.1817 fax
alane@charlottemuseum.org
The Charlotte Museum of History and Hezekiah Alexander Homesite
Where History Has a Home
3500 Shamrock Drive
Charlotte, NC 28215-3214
http://www.charlottemuseum.org
Julie – knowing your passion for this and how long you have dreamed of bringing such public outreach to fruition, I congratulate you on this stellar success! This is a wonderful contribution and a wonderful new step on your journey – you just keep goin’, girl! Deb
What an interesting project! Thanks for sharing.
Hello from another voice in Colorado (LaSalle).
Try this web site for sources of digital images:
http://toisondor.byu.edu/dscriptorium/
Try searching using the terms
Medieval cross stitch
or
Medieval embroidery
for kits and patterns
not exactly what you mean but fun any way.
My first needlepoint, done with a kit bought in Switzerland was a page from the
Cod. Pal. germ. 848
Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift (Codex Manesse)
Do you know that the entire Codex is online?
You have done beautiful work!
Barbara Hass, retired K-12 librarian, LaSalle,CO
Hello Barbara,
Thank you so much for this great reference to images. Can you see those images brightened by paint, fiber, glass?
I did not know that the Cantigas is totally online. Can you post it here?
Also, I would love to see your work, is there anyway you can post a photo of it?
Thanks for posting and I hope to hear from you again!
Julie
Hi there,
Here is the URL for the Codex Manesse.
http://diglit.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg848/
I’d be happy to post my JPG of the needlework but I don’t know how to do that.
I can’t “paste” it here. Please tell me what to do.
or send me your email address.
Barbara
Hello,
Here’s how to make a medieval book.
A kids activity but fun anyway.
http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1220_gothic/pdf/make_a_medieval_book.pdf
Barbara
Hello Barbara,
Thank you for this great link. I hope others will visit it as well.
Julie
Hi Barbara,
I will be happy to post the images of your needlework. My email address is carmen.julie@gmail.com
I look forward to seeing your work.
Julie
Greetings all,
I haven’t posted for a while, and I apologize. I was hoping more discussion would evolve around the nice links that have been posted here. I want to research those manuscripts and post information about them.
For those that may not know,I found the noted locations of the four codices from the Oxford Cantigas de Santa Maria Database and I quote:” Four contemporary manuscripts survive: To (the Toledo MS, now in the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid), T (the códice rico, in the Escorial Library, E (the códice de los músicos, also in the Escorial) and F (the Florence MS, in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence). They represent at least three different compilations or stages in the elaboration of the Cantigas Project: an early collection of 100 poems to which appendices were added (To); followed by a much expanded and highly ornamental collection of 400 (T+F) of which the second volume (F) was left in an incomplete and possibly disordered state; and a reference collection of 400 (E) with many imperfections and signs of hasty completion.” As the scholars here have said it better than I, I thought it was important to mention their database.
Now we know where to find these original manuscripts should any of us be traveling to Spain or Italy.
Please post about other medieval manuscripts, where they are found, or where their Facsimiles are found.
Until next time,
Julie
Julie,
I am so impressed with the way you are following your passion and dreams. The best of luck to you and congratulations on your upcoming graduation!!
Nancy