The House of Savoy

Superb illuminated paintings distinguish this visual regional history as an album of outstanding quality, to my eye. Please do yourself a favour by clicking through directly to the very large versions of these parchment page images so you can better inspect the manuscript illustrator's exquisite and detailed work. Produced in ~1580, this is quite a late example of such high calibre illumination work, and it was likely a special commission by a member of the royal household in the variable Italian-French-Swiss territory of Savoy.

"The House of Savoy was formed in the early 11th century in the historical Savoy region. Through gradual expansion, it grew from ruling a small county in that region to eventually rule—through its branch Savoy-Carignano—the Kingdom of Italy from 1861 until the end of World War II. The House of Savoy ruled unified Italy for 85 years with Victor Emmanuel II [..&c..] as monarchs. The last monarch ruled for a few weeks before being overthrown by a Constitutional Referendum, and a new republic was then proclaimed. [..]

The House of Savoy emerged, along with the free communes of Switzerland, in what is now called Switzerland. The name derives from the historical region Savoy in what is now France and Italy. Over time the house expanded from that region to rule almost all of the Italian Peninsula. Yet their growth and survival over the centuries was not based on spectacular conquests, but on gradual territorial expansion through marriage and methodical and highly manipulative political acquisitions." [source]

The manuscript features the armorial bearings^ of (at least) the House of Savoy and the Habsburg Empire, assorted Dukes, Counts, Marchionesses and Countesses at their investitures, battles and in funereal or marriage portraits; and formal Roman and Greek architectural decoration is mixed in with the stylised grotesques, trophies, arms and strapwork motifs favoured during the Renaissance. The colouring is just gorgeous and adds enormously to the ink and ink-wash foundation. The only written text is in the name plates and scene descriptions (+/- mottoes) in Latin accompanying nearly all the illustrations.








































































'The Album of the House of Savoy (W. 464)' is owned and hosted by the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore within 'The Digital Walters' assemblage of manuscripts: one of the best sites of its kind on the internet.

The images above were slightly cropped (the illustrations take up nearly the whole of every page) and I don't recall adjusting any of the colour/balance qualities at all. I uploaded very large jpeg images, but the reason The Digital Walters deserves praise is, in addition to sharing all the manuscript images under an attribution share-alike 3.0 CC license, they also supply a range of .jpg and .tiff file sizes, unlike most repositories. So an even LARGER and very high resolution version of each page image can be found on their website.

Re: House of Savoy - I'm not a fan of any of the sites I looked at, in terms of an historical overview, but in addition to Wikipedia, there are: Chivalric Orders, New Advent & Regalis that you may find useful.

Previously: Illuminated.

Bird Album

This ink-wash and watercolour album of birds was produced in Japan in the 19th century.

It bears a 'working title' hinting that it contains Dutch migratory birds, carries an Ex Libris stamp identifying it as belonging at some time to the Katsurakawa^ family (2nd fig. below), and is owned and hosted by the State Library of Berlin. I see everything from eagle, pheasants, parrot species and hawk, to rhinoceros hornbill, egret, pelicans and many other species that escape my fairly ignorant abilities. Is Holland on all of their migratory flight paths? Seems unlikely, so I opted for the fail-proof, vanilla post title of 'Bird Album'.





































































































The 110+ page anonymous sketch album from the 19th century is called オランダ持ち渡り鳥類図帖 (仮題) 3巻 (online translation: 'Netherlands have migratory birds such as Figure Pledge (tentative) Volume 3') is available online via the State Library of Berlin website. [SBB Digital Collection homepage]

These delicate drawings are often outlined in ink and ink-wash and filled in with watercolour to a variable extent. Some of the illustrations are un(der)finished and I wonder if this isn't something of a practice or copy album with published book designs appropriated for Japanese natural scenes. It's all speculation of course. In general the birds are displayed quite realistically and are readily identifiable. I wonder, too, whether in those sketches where non-nondescript backgrounds are seen, if those birds were unfamiliar to the aritist(s).

The images above have all been moderately background cleaned and the colour saturation slightly boosted.

Thanks to @pop_ & @tatsushi_eto & @GingaStation.

ADDIT. Gallery page from *Birds in the Art of Japan* - the website associated with a current exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (until the end of July 2013).

Zanerian Alphabets

The original penwork alphabet designs below are from 

the Zaner-Bloser Penmanship Collection, donated to the 

Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Memorial Library at  

the University of Scranton, Pennsylvania in 2010.

"The Weinberg Memorial Library houses the Zaner-Bloser Penmanship Collection, which is one of the most extensive collections of American ornamental penmanship from the late 19th and early 20th centuries." [..]

The company was founded in 1888 by Charles P. Zaner as the Zanerian School of Penmanship. Elmer W. Bloser purchased a share of the company in 1891 and in 1895 the school changed its name to the Zaner-Bloser Company. Zaner-Bloser Inc. [..]

Originally, the school prepared students for careers as penmen. Penmen often worked in business, preparing ledgers, writing correspondence and creating documents before the invention of the typewriter. Zaner-Bloser also taught students to become teachers of penmanship, illustrators and engravers, as well as engrossers, who employ the type of ornamental writing used for diplomas and certificates. During the 20th century Zaner-Bloser concentrated on the education market providing manuals, teaching aids, and other materials for elementary schools. [source]

'The company began publishing its own penmanship manuals. As the company history states: "In 1904, Zaner-Bloser published The Zaner Method of Arm Movement, a landmark text that taught the simplified style of writing learned by students at the Zanerian to children in elementary schools all over the United States. This book also applied the findings of psychologists who had discovered that young children completed manual tasks more easily if allowed to use the large arm movements that were natural to them at their early stage of motor skills development." ' [source]

Medieval Ornament alphabet

Modernised Broad Pen Medieval and Church Text alphabet

Old English alphabet

Ornamental Egyptian alphabet

Ornamented Semi-Script alphabet

Ornate Roman alphabet

Broad-pen Roman alphabet

Round Letter alphabet

Semi-Round Letters alphabet

Aesthetic Text alphabet

Block Ornament alphabet

Italian Square Top alphabet

Light Line Block Marking or Skeleton alphabet

Single Line Centre or Sickles alphabet

Applied Lettering of Proportion Modification

The Zaner-Bloser Penmanship Collection at the (Jesuit) University of Scranton. 

More specifically, the images above were selected from the 1900 and 1910 editions of 'The New Zanerian Alphabets'. So far, only a small amount of the Weinberg Memorial Library collection has been posted online. The image files available on the site are very large (~6000px or more on the long side) but image focus is a significant issue. I reduced the image sizes by about two thirds for display here.

Previous related posts on BibliOdyssey -- (the 'general' tag of) calligraphy.