The History of the Kingdom of The West
Scrolls

Concepts for the layout

Photo and Contribution
by Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

Can You Say "Serendipity"?

"As spring turned to summer in A.S. XXXVIII (June, 2003) Master Lorenzo di Nebbia Argentea happened to drop by my sunshade for a chat. Mistress Aldith Angharad St. George and I were taking refuge from the Cynaguan heat at the time and we began speaking, as Laurels often will, of various artsy things. Aldith had recently acquired some acid-free black paper and was extolling its virtues. With Master Lorenzo looking on, I idly speculated as to what I could do with black paper, mentioning that it would be a real kick to try to reproduce the jewel like tones one sees in a beautifully illuminated Russian lacquer box. Ah, but if I were to do a "lacquer box" scroll, who could I do it for? Not for myself, and none of my acquaintances of the time had a Russian or Slavic persona. At this point, Lorenzo straightened up in his chair and became intent. I glanced at him. "You don't have a Russian persona," I said sternly, suppressing a smile. Now, you wouldn't think that a tall, dignified, gray-haired and elegant gentleman such as Lorenzo could pull off the "begging puppy" look, but he must have been inspired. "You know, I speak Russian," he said diffidently, "and, um," -- here he looked from me to Aldith and back again with the big puppy eyes -- "I always, well, kinda woulda liked a scroll from you or Aldith." Aldith and I exchanged looks. "Your Laurel scroll has been done already," Aldith said. Lorenzo, sensing imminent victory, replied quickly, "I don't have my Pelican scroll yet!" I burst out laughing and said, "Okay, Lorenzo -- if I ever get around to playing with black paper, I'll do you a Russian lacquer box style scroll." And so it was that Lorenzo, being at the Right Place at the Right Time, scored Big Time.

"Above are some concepts for the composition of the scroll. I played around with both vertical and horizontal formats, one or two figures, and no figure at all. I liked the horizontal format but it had a problem -- the charge on Lorenzo's shield had a lion-headed merman which was facing dexter (facing left when you're standing in front of the shield, as opposed to standing behind it). It's a niggle, but I didn't want the shield on the left side of the composition with the mutant merman staring off the edge of the scroll into space. I decided to swap the two figures and reverse the female's pose, so she's offering her casket to the male figure. It was Aldith who looked it over and after being told the tale of the Malachite Casket, made a beautiful suggestion to rework the female figure so she's facing away from the male figure, but caught in the act of turning towards him. Her weight is just shifting from one foot to the other -- her robe is in motion, as are the dangling pearl chains at the edge of her headdress and her veil is flared slightly. This not only gave great animation to the composition, it also gave greater emphasis to the meaning of the folk tale, which is that the gifts in the casket are never given lightly nor proffered freely for the taking. It was very satisfying on several levels. To the right of the conceptual sketches was a later attempt at using a late period lettering style for Lorenzo's name to offset it from the main text. This was discarded and the decision made to letter his name on its own line and use gold rather than silver to give it added emphasis." -- Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

The West Kingdom History Website was created by and is maintained by Hirsch von Henford (mka Ken Mayer).