I don’t just create invitations! I can take care of all of your wedding calligraphy needs: invitations, RSVP cards, maps and directions, envelope addressing, thank you cards, guest scrolls, programs, party favors, place cards, menu cards, and whatever else you might need.

If you’re planning a medieval wedding, don’t hesitate to contact me! I am one of the few designers of medieval wedding invitations in the United States (I am located in Seattle, Washington). I would love to help make your fantasy a reality!

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The invitation itself is a 5×7 card with an Irish blessing on the outside, and the details of the wedding on the inside (in the images, I have blurred the wedding date). There is also an RSVP postcard, and a map to the wedding location.

The invitations are in a Celtic theme: the script is Insular Minuscule, and the initial “C”s are based on letters in the Book of Kells. The map is inspired by the Lord of the Rings, complete with a dragon in the river and a troll guarding the toll-bridge.

Chelinda and Chris were wonderful to work with: easy-going, fun, and enthusiastic. Their wedding should be a blast for them and their guests. I wish them a lifetime of happy marriage: they deserve it!

Pangur Ban, overseeing my calligraphy

It is delightfully appropriate that Pangur Ban should watch me doing calligraphy today: I am writing in Insular Minuscule (well, my slightly modernized, post-office friendly version thereof), the script in which I found his name. The name Pangur Ban comes from an eighth century Irish manuscript, the Reichenau Primer. The monk who wrote this little collection of texts added a poem at the bottom of one page about his cat, Pangur Ban, which starts:

I and Pangur Bán, my cat
‘Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight
Hunting words I sit all night.
[follow this link to read the whole poem]

It’s wonderful to know that this eighth-century scribe, whose style I try to imitate, also had a pet cat who amused him as he wrote. Sometimes my cats get in the way of calligraphy, but today I think my little Pangur Ban knows that my writing is important to his identity, and he’s making sure I do it right.

May love and laughter light your days,
and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours,
wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world
with joy that long endures.
May all life’s passing seasons
bring the best to you and yours.

This Irish blessing is perfect for the holidays, but also works well any time of year. It is written in the Insular Minuscule script, a script used only in Ireland and the British Isles in the early Middle Ages. The capital “M” and colorful designs in the empty spaces of the text are typical of decorations found in early medieval Irish manuscripts.

This text is written on archival white card stock–it would look beautiful framed, but the paper is thick enough that you could hang this directly on your wall. It measures 8″ x 8″.

If you are interested in this item, you can contact me, or buy it through Etsy or 1000Markets.

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These Latin words of hope and inspiration were carved over the doorframe of famous psychologist Carl Jung’s house and on his gravestone.

The text is reproduced as if it were from a medieval Irish illuminated manuscript. The Latin text is written in Uncial, a script reserved for important Latin texts. Over each Latin word is written its English translation, in a script known as Insular Miniscule which was used only in the British Isles in the 6th-9th centuries. Many early medieval manuscripts made in Britain employ this method of writing the vernacular translation over the Latin text: the most famous example is the virtuosic Lindisfarne Gospels. The initial “V” is based on a capital “V” found in the Book of Kells.

This text is written on white card stock–it would look beautiful framed, but the paper is thick enough that you could hang this directly on your wall. It measures 6″ x 9″.

If you are interested in this item, you can contact me directly, or purchase it through Etsy or 1000 Markets.

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This is one of the many versions of the Wiccan Rede, which sums up the ethics of the Wiccan religion. It is written in the Insular Minuscule script, a script used only in Ireland and the British Isles in the early Middle Ages. The initial letter “B” is based on early medieval Celtic art, and there is a Celtic knot along the left side of the text.

This text is written on archival white card stock–it would look beautiful framed, but the paper is thick enough that you could hang this directly on your wall. It measures 8″ x 8″.

If you are interested in this item, you can contact me directly, or purchase it through Etsy or 1000 Markets.

The pictures are of the unfinished work in progress.

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I stove to be as absolutely authentic as possible in creating this reproduction. I spent weeks studying and practicing the Anglicana script of the original scribe to get my handwriting as close to his as possible. The reproduction is on calfskin vellum. I was going to use iron gall ink, but the ink of the original manuscript is quite brown, so I used walnut ink instead because that made it easier for me to match the color. The paint is gouache. I used 22-karat gold leaf and gesso based on a medieval formula. I even reproduced some of the imperfections of the original: the top of the page has been cropped, cutting off some of the decorative border, and there are smudges in a few places.

This was a really exciting project! I had to learn a lot, but it is all stuff that I had been looking for an opportunity to learn anyway – writing on parchment, using gold leaf. I feel very intimately acquainted with the scribes and artists who created the original Ellesmere Chaucer: it was a joy to study their work and to appreciate their skill. I hope I can create more manuscript reproductions in the future!

The photo gallery shows every step of the process. I also recorded some videos of the work:

You can still buy iron gall ink today. It is very interesting stuff to work with. It is a very thin liquid (at least the stuff I am using is). When you first write with it, it is a very pale grey, almost clear. This makes it a challenge to use until you get used to it: when I write with it, I find myself pressing very hard with the nib because I feel like I’m not actually making much contact with the paper, or dipping my nib in the ink more frequently then I need to. But within an instant of contact with the air, the ink begins to darken. You can watch it get darker and darker over the first few seconds that it is on the page. It gets quite dark quite quickly, but if you come back in 24 hours and look at it again, you will see that it has gotten even darker. It darkens to a satisfying deep black color.

In the picture below, you can see the text darkening as it ages:

Iron Gall ink darkening as it ages

Iron gall ink is definitely a challenge to work with at first, but the results are well worth it, especially on parchment!

This script is definitely easier to write than Gothic, and has a nice flow to it. It does come out looking a little sloppy, but that’s part of the point of the script: it is meant to be written quickly. In fact, it was a challenge to learn the script because I needed to write very slowly to learn it, but a lot of the letter forms can only be written quickly, or they come out looking wrong.

Here is a small medieval example of Anglicana:

Anglicana Script

More can be found here. You can also browse images of the Ellesmere Chaucer, which I used extensively when I was learning the script.