I'm Eagle, and I am currently going through a calligraphy hyper-fixation stage, primarily in a celtic-ish hand. You can see my work under the "calligraphy practice" tag.
What this means for you is that if you've ever wanted your favorite phrase or sentence to appear in celtic-ish calligraphy, you've come to the right place!
The askbox is open for calligraphy requests. Previous asks are under the "you ask and Eagle writes" tag. Please only one request per ask, you may submit multiple asks.
NEW! If you would like to hold one of these cards in your hands, that is now an option! You can purchase previously completed cards or commission a custom card and get it shipped to you at https://ko-fi.com/eaglewrites/commissions
If you'd like to just leave me a tip, that would also be awesome! https://ko-fi.com/eaglewrites
Will write: profanity, other items that may be unsuitable for immature audiences
Will not write: derogatory terms, anything discriminatory (except discriminating against Nazis), or anything else that makes me wonder if you are, in fact, someone I'd be better off punching than befriending.
The Spring 2026 issue of Manuscript Studies (vol. 11.1) is now available in Open Access!
We are pleased to announce the latest issue of Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies. The journal is published semi-annually by SIMS and the University of Pennsylvania Press. All content from this and from previous issues is available for reading and download, completely free of charge, via the Project Muse platform. Follow the link to access the full issue:
The Spring 2026 issue features the following Articles, Annotations, and Reviews:
Articles:
Indic-Siamese Bitexts and Ayutthaya Scribal Culture: Exposition and Exegesis in Three Kham Luang Manuscripts
Tossaphon Sripum, Trent Walker
Through an analysis of the intricate layouts, scripts, and color-coding of three bilingual Thai Buddhist manuscripts, this study reveals how these distinct scribal choices were deployed strategically to distinguish exposition from exegesis and to map the structure of court poetry in visual terms.
āThese Lots Never Deceiveā: Compiling and Reading the Latin Manuscripts of the Sortes sanctorum
Bruno Schalekamp
By exploring the intricate compilation and reception history of the popular late-antique dice divination text known as the Sortes sanctorum (ālots of the saintsā), this article details how the work could serve as a useful pastoral and secular tool for navigating fraught decisions in everyday life.
Of Catalogs, Cupboards, and Chemists: Revising the Handlist of the Ordinal of Alchemy
Lisa H. Cooper
This paper untangles a century of bibliographic misunderstandings and cataloging oversights that have obscured the material history of Thomas Nortonās 1477 Middle English poem, the Ordinal of Alchemy. It includes a newly revised handlist of forty-eight known witnesses of the text.
Ā
Adventures in the Animal Archive: New Techniques for the Genetic Analysis of Parchment Manuscripts
Timothy L. Stinson, Melissa K. R. Scheible, Rachael Thomas, Nicholas E. Wagner, Matthew Breen, Benjamin J. Callahan, Kelly Meiklejohn
This piece summarizes an interdisciplinary study that deployed a new and entirely non-destructive brush procedure to extract animal DNA from ninety-one historical manuscripts held at Duke University. The project report shows how parchment can serve as a repository of biological data concerning medieval agricultural history, livestock economies, and trade routes.
Annotations:
Medieval Manuscripts in Marshās Library: An Unintended Collection in Dublinās First Public Library
Laura Cleaver, Danielle Magnusson, Isabel Tookey
By examining the correspondence and acquisition records of Dublin's oldest public library, this article reveals how personal motivations, unexpected opportunities, and historical coincidences led to the accidental preservation of a small but valuable collection of twenty-three medieval codices.
Reviews:
Tributes to Elly Miller: Opening Manuscripts ed. by Stella Panayotova, Lucy Freeman Sandler and Tamar Miller Wang (review)
Anne Rudloff Stanton
Producing Buddhist Sutras in Ninth-Century Tibet: The Sutra of Limitless Life and Its Dunhuang Copies Kept at the British Library by Brandon Dotson and Lewis Doney (review)
George A. Keyworth
Experimental Histories: Interpolation and the Medieval British Past by Hannah Weaver (review)
Raluca L. Radulescu
Making Books in Fifteenth-Century Cambridge: William Dyngleyās Patristic Project by Ann Eljenholm Nichols (review)
Mimi Ensley
Florentine Humanistic Manuscripts: Revised and Enlarged List from Albinia C. de la Mare, New Research (1985) by Giovanna Murano (review)
Francesco Marco Aresu
The Codex Borbonicus Veintena Imagery: Visualizing History, Time, and Ritual in Aztec Solar-Year Festivals by Catherine R. DiCesare (review)
Lori Boornazian Diel
The Ottoman Scientific Heritage by Ekmeleddin Ä°hsanoÄlu (review)
Hello! Raven the scribe here with some updates! Mom has been able to file for her green card renewal, although she still hasn't been able to secure a new job. That unfortunately means all rent and bills must be covered by me, and I fear a florist's wages aren't enough for everything. My younger brother has been able to settle down and stabilize with his medication since coming out of the hospital, although his condition makes it difficult to get anyone to hire him, and his current job doesn't give him many hours. All the major events and problems we've had recently means that we still owe over $1,000 in rent for February, and more still will be needed for upcoming bills. At this point, any and all help is truly appreciated! Thank you all!
Hello! Raven the scribe here is having a bit of a tough time. Between mom having heā¦ Nayeli Leal needs your support for Support Raven's Fam
Unfortunately, I got rough news still. We owe $816.46 for April rent still, and my mother's car insurance is due in a few days, which is about $250 that she definitely doesn't have right now. Losing the car insurance would mean losing our only mode of transportation. Any and all help is really appreciated right now.
Today's my birthday and I'd like to share a new comic with you, it's called Marginalia. It's a love letter to all the weirdness of medieval manuscripts, and you can read it by unfolding a single sheet of paper!
Risograph print editions are also available in my shop.
My online store has gotten a big influx of orders in the past week because of it. Please be patient with extended processing times while I fulfill all of them--rest assured that all your weird little medieval freaks are making their way to you!
How to make learning math fun? Try framing your arithmetical tables with ornamental borders! In this 16th c. handbook of commercial arithmetic, written in Lombardy, the charts include addition, subtraction, and four different methods of multiplication. The charts are followed by statements of problems and their solutions. (UPenn Ms. Codex Ms. Codex 468)
š:
Access '[Handbook of commercial arithmetic].' through the Penn Libraries catalog.
Hello! Raven the scribe here with some updates! Mom has been able to file for her green card renewal, although she still hasn't been able to secure a new job. That unfortunately means all rent and bills must be covered by me, and I fear a florist's wages aren't enough for everything. My younger brother has been able to settle down and stabilize with his medication since coming out of the hospital, although his condition makes it difficult to get anyone to hire him, and his current job doesn't give him many hours. All the major events and problems we've had recently means that we still owe over $1,000 in rent for February, and more still will be needed for upcoming bills. At this point, any and all help is truly appreciated! Thank you all!
Hello! Raven the scribe here is having a bit of a tough time. Between mom having heā¦ Nayeli Leal needs your support for Support Raven's Fam
this is a highly controversial opinion, I have no doubt King Arthur was bisexual but I think he was one of the few people in Camelot not interested in fucking Lancelot. he wanted to retain him as an employee but it did not cross his mind that Lancelot was fucking his wife because Lancelot is such a weird little twerp that he did not perceive him as a sexual being. my interpretation.
So true. The Galehaut/Lancelot relationship was like a dynastic marriage to resolve the conflict between two imperial powers. I like to imagine Galehaut was like āI have decided to abandon my plans of capturing [what is now] all of southern England and surrender to you despite my military advantage, all for the love of my achingly beautiful and spectacular new male wife, Lancelot du Lac.ā and Arthur was like āOkay. Weird. Not homophobic or anything but Lancelot? Youāre in love with Lancelot?ā
Co-signed. Thatās some real shit you said. Also, unlike Arthur, he was willing to yield and share his lover for everyoneās benefit. And then he died for love. A real freak. One of the best freaks in 13th century French literature.
I started a mental sentence with, āwell, when we diagram the Arthurian polycule-ā
And then realised that would be such a good title for a paper. āDiagramming the Arthurian Polycule: Mapping the Dynamics of the Round Kitchen Tableā
It comes with a certificate of authenticity, which comes with a certificate of authenticity, which comes with a...
Document Forgery [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[A panel depicts a diploma that has decorations on the corners and sides, but the corners have more. There is a lot of illegible text above, amid, and below the big text.]
[Two lines of illegible text] East State University
[Two lines of illegible text, a box with illegible text, and another line of illegible text] Doctor of Philosophy in Document Forgery
[A line of illegible text, with a logo/official seal below it in the center. To the upper left, upper right, lower left, and lower right of the seal are what appear to be signatures, with a line of bold illegible text and a line of small illegible text beneath each signature line.]
[Caption beneath the panel:] If you put one of these up in your office, and no one notices, you've earned it.
one question i occasionally get but i'm reluctant to add it to the pinned FAQ (its SO long already) is how do i deal with smudging the ink when I'm really far into a piece, and there are one of two ways to go (third if you count a water rinsing spill in which case the whole thing has to be remade over but in my whole career its only happened like 3 times)
leave it completely alone. Sometimes the smudges are quite small, and many of folks who seek me out to commission value the human made-ness of a piece, especially a physical piece of art. They see it as like, fingerprints on a hand-thrown pot and would be disappointed if I chose to get rid of them. This is always why I ask patrons of custom art if they want me to do something about it, which leads to option 2 -
invisible underpatch! this is a thing that I learned back when I was a teenager and obsessed with drawing my own manga and learning manga making techniques, although it comes in clutch all the time now
First, get a cutting mat out and slide a blank page of the paper you were working on underneath the art you've made a mistake on.
Then using a sharp craft/xacto knife, cut out the mistake so that you cut both the error and the bottom blank paper in the same size
Flip the art around, take the blank chip of paper and fit it into the hole. Then you're gonna roll on some whiteout along the edges to help close up any gaps. Secure the patch and whiteout with some clear tape
Flip it back around and you're good to go!
You can still see the edges of where the patch was cut in if you're looking for it, but a 2cm patch on an 8.5x11 piece viewed from a wall? No way you could tell
today I used the phrase "breasting boobily" in casual real life conversation and everyone was shocked asking how I came up with that and I had to explain it. ive been at the devil's sacrament so long that I forgot he wasn't god
