Court Baronage- Couple’s Award

Daylight View

This particular scroll was a combination of traditional inserted into a non-traditional format. It was also a collaboration with others to offer this award to our Baron and Baroness as they stepped down and were given court baronages.

LAYERS, depths of devotion, effort, meaning….working from back to front:

Windmasters’ Kittyhawk, with a map of the Cantons superimposed on his body, as the heart and soul of the Barony.

Gouache colors…

Waves…based on beadwork by Baroness Isabeau de Valle that was to go on their court coronets; I created 3 layers of these waves to honor Atlantia.

Within the waves, are two black hammerhead sharks (part of the Baron’s arms), and posed between them the award, a baronial crown, of gesso with white and yellow gold leaf and gouache for the stones. These hammerheads were also used on their coronets which were made by Goodwife Michel Almond de Champagne.

The inscription, penned over an inked sea orm from Magnus’ Carta Marina of 1539.

The exemplar.

Dogwood flower

Repaired damage

Making sure it fit

The Baroness’s favorite flower is the dogwood, and it made a beautiful frame for the shadow box in addition to personalizing it for her. Aside from a bit of a water CATastrophy, the framing went well!

The biggest challenge was to make sure everything fit within the flower frame, that enough of the Kittyhawk was visible, the script was visible and the sharks were prominently displayed. Next came the layers…all well and good to create them, but they had to be separated.

Measurement check for layers.

I mounted each layer to foam board, separating some more than others with spacers. Then the entire shadow box was illuminated with LED lights that were battery operated. The switches were attached to the bottom of the frame to enable the viewer to turn them on/off and change out the batteries.

Shadow box depths lit from within