Errors are Period and Often Fixable…or not!

Putting out the page that shows the progression of Exemplars and unfinished Exemplars made me think about errors. everyone does them and I think that they happen more often than we care to admit. We fully can blame our Patron Demon, Titavillus, but despite our most concerted efforts, errors happen…misspelled words, missing words, ink or paint drips and splashes…but most can be fixed, amended or even pointed out with a “blatant” correction.

Yay! I’m done…oh shoooot…..Baron of Caer Mear?!

Hmm, the recipient loves her birds…sneaky cockatoo grabbed the “y”. Typical bird!

Fixed, with a period acceptable technique!

A period appropriate fix. I missed writing the “y” for the word barony. The recipient has a passion for birds and bird rescue. So I painted in a very naughty cockatoo stealing the letter from the word.

I would like to say here that some civilizations feel that nothing can be perfect except that which is made by their deity /divine beings. Examples abound in ceramic painting of plates, cups as well as weaving of rugs, etc. Even in religious texts, errors are often struck through, pointed at or circled rather than erased. Messy for sure, but also an indication that the scribe was merely human.

Sometimes you can correct the error with creative work. Here, I widened the single “L” to either side of the original, allowed the ink to dry, then gently scraped away the center to create the two “L”’s that were in her name. Letter height is approximately 4mm.

The “before”

Cat-astrophe!

Scraping away the gouache

Repairs underway…

More repairs…

Repaired scroll section

Finished piece, with the repaired section front and center (and now safely under glass!).

Sometimes an error is not your fault and you have some “help” . We have 4 cats, two of which were kittens at the time. They came over to see what I was doing and knocked my rinse water over. Cat assistants are so VERY period!

Here you will find many errors, including paw prints across sacred texts. At least mine wasn’t urine…..

Cat urine….

“An (sic) here’s another purrpetrator. The Historisches Archiv in Cologne, Germany houses a manuscript with an interesting history. According to the blog MedievalFragments, “a Deventer scribe, writing around 1420, found his manuscript ruined by a urine stain left there by a cat the night before. He was forced to leave the rest of the page empty, drew a picture of a cat and cursed the creature with the following words:”

Hic non defectus est, sed cattus minxit desuper nocte quadam. Confundatur pessimus cattus qui minxit super librum istum in nocte Daventrie, et consimiliter omnes alii propter illum. Et cavendum valde ne permittantur libri aperti per noctem ubi cattie venire possunt. Here is nothing missing, but a cat urinated on this during a certain night. Cursed be the pesty cat that urinated over this book during the night in Deventer and because of it many others [other cats] too. And beware well not to leave open books at night where cats can come. What I would sincerely love to know is whether, almost 600 years later, the urine smell has left the page. Cat owners, you’ll know what I mean.

Most every scroll will have an “oops”, and every scribe has made errors. If one were to tell you otherwise , it would be a blatant falsehood. The learning is in the sharing, knowing that even the best among us can – and do – make mistakes, and that they share the knowledge with up-and-coming scribes makes us all better. Errors suck, but they are not egregious…they’re just a part of the game.