Goose Quills & Italic Hand

Cutting the goose-quills ended up both more and less difficult than I expected. They're working fairly well (so far) with the thin 17th century ink I made back in May. The paper is a 98lb cotton/lignin drawing paper I found at Blick.

It's a start. It's also pirate weekend at Faire.

Next up, I need to hash out the hand. I was aiming for a combination of Elizabeth I's Italic hand, supplemented with the Italian capital letters from A Booke Containing Divers Hands (1550). The letter (1554) written by the future queen has almost an entire set of minuscules, but only six capitals. I selected these two styles, as they were the closest-to-my-desired-time-period complete models I could get ahold of, and the capital A in each bears a close resemblance (the other capitals aren't very different, but have some variations on their flourishes). Unfortunately, I keep trying to slope the letters like Victorian cursive and/or add serifs based on some half-remembered Carolingian minuscules I learned in elementary school, so there's a lot of room to improve.

Chirography Resources, 16th-18th Century

I need a good hand for 16th century writing, and thus started gathering this list of letter forms and copybooks available online:

Excerpts from A booke containing divers hands (1550-1602) including Italic and Secretary letter forms. [Columbia University Library has also digitized the title page.]

Incomplete alphabets derived from 16th-18th century sources (Italic, Secretary, and Chancery hands)

The Pens Excellency (1618) includes the forms for Secretary hand (pgs 13-14); Bastard-Secretary or Text (p.18); Roman (p.21); Italian (p.24); Court (p.28); Chancery (p.29); as well as the Greek (p.30) and Hebrew (p.31) alphabets.

The Pen-mans Recreation (1673)

The Paul's Scholar's Copy Book (1709)

Round Text. A new copy-book (1712)

Lace Designs and Handwriting Samples 1604-1616

Italian, 1616 with one plate from 1604.

Just saving this here for reference (and because two lace orders arrived yesterday, leaving me with Feelings about natural fiber versus synthetic laces, as well as the visual and tactile differences between 16th and 19th century lace styles).