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News & Events > Calderhead Essays
> A Visit to the Scriptorium A Visit to the Scriptorium
February 24, 2000, on a train heading westward across England. I looked out the window. The landscape was bare, brown, and grey in the soft winter daylight. We passed villages with ancient church towers. Electric pylons marched across the countryside. At one point the train stopped right next to a huge industrial site. Great concrete cooling towers loomed over us. A few miles on, in the distance I could make out a prehistoric chalk carving in the side of a hill: a huge white horse. The people next to me on the train were talking about university admissions. "Will we have enough PhD candidates this year? The finances look dodgy." I was on my way to Wales to visit Donald Jackson’s scriptorium. The train ride provided a clue of what I would find: something completely modern with roots in something very old indeed. Mabel, who is married to Donald, picked me up at the station. We trundled my bags into the back of her old, beat-up Volvo, and headed off to the Hendre. "It’s been quite a week!" Mabel said, and then laughed. Four calligraphers had arrived and begun the work of writing pages for the Bible. Only two of them were still there; the other two had decided this project wasn’t for them. As we drove on, Mabel told me about the ups and downs of managing a household full of people. The Saint John’s Bible is the collaborative effort of a whole team. Olivia assists with the office work. Sally is Donald’s calligraphy assistant. There is the team of scribes, a computer consultant, and a whole cast of characters in addition: the gardener, the cleaning lady, and various members of Donald’s extended family. Mabel helps keep this team together by managing the household and logistics. She does it with a lot of humor and patience.
When I walked into the schoolroom, you could hear a pin drop. Two scribes were writing at their desks. Over their shoulders, I could just glimpse fine columns of beautiful writing, even and clear and black against the soft, off-white vellum. Donald and I walked over to the shed, where Sally was preparing a vellum skin. It’s messy work. The skins have to be sanded with several grades of sandpaper, and the dust gets everywhere. As Sally, in her work gloves and mask, huffed and puffed over a large calfskin, Donald’s brother, who is a furniture maker, was jury-rigging a fan device to catch the flying dust. We stopped the fan.
I spent two days at the Hendre. What I saw there was something very special. Donald is creating a small community of people to work together and produce a work of great craftsmanship. They’re using all the resources available to make something which is grounded in the ancient tradition of calligraphy, yet which is also entirely up-to-date. There’s nothing at all nostalgic about it--it’s hard work, with production schedules, computers, visiting television crews, and tight deadlines. And yet, it’s also a place where they’re rediscovering the techniques of the medieval scriptorium, a place of quills, vellum, rare vermillion, and hundred year old sticks of ink. What better setting could there be to create a twenty-first century, living Bible? |
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Copyright © 2005 Saint John's University
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By The Reverend Christopher Calderhead
The
car pulled in to the Hendre Hall. It is an extraordinary place. Donald and
Mabel live in a converted village hall, a rambling half-timbered building,
beautiful against the hills which surround it. Across the small road, the
‘schoolroom’, a converted mechanic’s shed, has been renovated
to make a fine scriptorium. It is full of natural light, with a row of desks
for the scribal team. In the back are a kitchen and the space where Sally
works. Across from the schoolroom, a large black corrugated iron shed serves
as a storage area. In one corner of the shed, I spied a small electric griddle,
filled with sand: a place to cure quills. In another shed the vellum skins
are prepared for writing.
"What do you
call this process?" I asked. "It’s called ‘scrotching,’"
came the answer, and they all laughed. ‘Scrotching’ will not
be found in any dictionary, but it is a perfect word to describe the scratchy,
sweaty job.