May Meeting Program

May Meeting Programme - White Vine Letters

What a wonderful program we had in May. Lucy Hylkema showed us how to decorate White Vine Letters which were used in the Fifteenth Century. These decorative initials embellished many kinds of manuscripts. Lucy provided exemplars of the letters S and T with various patterns of vines and guided us through the steps of decorating them. The letter stood out by being painted black. We isolated each vine by starting at the root and colouring each with different coloured pencil crayons in order to make them stand out and identify how they intersected. Since the vines were to remain white in the final product, Lucy used this method to help us train our eyes to identify how each vine grew and twisted around the others. The next step was to fill in the spaces behind the vines. Lucy said that the same colours, red, green and blue were always used with these initials. Red was the predominant colour in the background and blue was used around the outside or coastline as well as within. More elaborate letters had flowers growing from the vines. These consisted of wave-like shapes growing out of each other with bumpy scrolls along the outside edge. Lucy did a great job of guiding us step-by-step in decorating these complex initials. Thank you, Lucy. - Linda Yaychuk