A reindeer language, a Celtic festival, and a critically endangered art form

(If you think that's eclectic, you should see my Spotify playlists)

Hello all! I haven’t any art this week, just some updates:

1. I’m inventing a reindeer language for a ‘Speedlang’ (a ‘speedlang’ is a constructed/fictional language — like Tolkien’s Elvish — built to specific constraints within a deadline of roughly 2-3 weeks). You can read here about ‘Ca Ga Hung’, the language I invented for a different Speedlang in August last year. The current Speedlang challenge has been consuming all my time this week — outside of work and my Russian language studies, I’ve been thinking about nothing but reindeer and linguistics. Conlangers are a weird bunch, obsessing over sounds and sentence construction, and I’m proudly one of them.

2. I travelled with some of my family to the Australian Celtic Festival in Glen Innes NSW, and it was awesome. Despite the rain, we all managed to have a very good time. Murphy’s Pigs were in fine form, and there was a fantastic couple from the Isle of Man who played Manx, Celtic, and Estonian tunes — one of the fiddle pieces (“For Ewen”) was so beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes. If you like Celtic/Scottish folk, definitely check out their album, The Coast Road.
   Other cool things at the festival were jousting, a Rob Roy reenactment group, and a lady making wearable rings out of old coins.

3. Super excited to announce that my father very kindly made me a fore-edge painting press! A fore-edge painting is a watercolour painting on the edge of a book’s pages (see below). The art of fore-edge painting is growing popular among artists again thanks to social media, and these new works are incredible in their own right.

Custom Lord of the Rings fore-edge painting by MCIE Art. Source: https://youtu.be/nZwRWcm9ung?feature=shared

The beginnings of this idea go back to the 1500s, when Cesare Vecellio, a Venetian artist, developed a technique that allowed enhancing books by painting on their edges. Most of the painted images were portraits that appeared when the book was closed. A century later, the art of the “disappearing painting” was introduced by an English bookbinder, Samuel Mearne, practicing the same idea.

— https://www.britannicauctions.com/blog/fore-edge-painting/

A ‘disappearing’ or ‘vanishing’ fore-edge painting is the art of creating a painting that disappears under gilding. This quick video illustrates the concept better than words can:

Last year as my sister was watching Escape to the Country, the program presenter took a visit to Martin Frost, apparently the last professional ‘vanishing’ fore-edge painter in the world. The craft is considered critically endangered, which was enough to convince me that this is something I should at least try!

By fanning a book out and placing it in a painting press, a tiny exposed area of paper on each page is held steady so you can paint on it:

I purchased a stack of old books from the local op-shops, so that I can get some experience with how watercolour reacts to a variety of paper. I don’t have the tools, skills, or room to gild books here at home, but once I’m confident in my ability to create a decent fore-edge painting, I have a few pre-gilded books stored away that I can work with.

I hope that in the coming months I’ll get a chance to start on a fore-edge project; you’ll be sure to see any updates here at the Inky Corner.

xx The Inky Baroness