How the name of Chantry Westwell has passed me by I have no clue. She is the author of this brilliant book, Dragons, Heroes, Myths & Magic. Drawing on images from the BL she outlines stories that influenced medieval artists and storytellers. Totally brilliant, I commend it.

Sensible scribe missed out the join, but poor artists had to paint swirling lines right over it! Well done them!!

Amazing!

Love this! Fortunately I’m very rarely asked to do things for free now, but this is great to show how asking for cheap or free should or will have an impact on the result.

Treasured craftspeople with endangered skills.

Let’s use the government’s ratification of the UNESCO Convention on ICH to ensure that our heritage crafts are appreciated as much as in Japan - ours are just as important! Lisa Nandy MP Department for Culture, Media and Sport - this baton needs picking up to ensure a success.

You'll also be the first to know when our digitised manuscripts are available again. The most recent update can be found here: blogs.bl.uk/living-knowled… 2/2

As craftspeople, our work lifts up other craftspeople. And vice versa. This video shows two craft companies whose products are vital to each other: Ernest Wright and Pajotten.

Delighted go have our small team in the weaving workshop recognised with a nomination for the Heritage Crafts President's Award. Damask weaving is critically endangered but we're doing our best to preserve and reimagine the art!

Arts and crafts give greater life satisfaction than work, survey suggests. One for ⁦Stuart Walker⁩ theguardian.com/society/articl…

Most people are aware that stress levels usually decrease when they are involved with making of any kind, but it’s great that academic research has confirmed that. The challenge now is that children and young people need these opportunities in schools. Craft is GOOD!

I am here weeping with joy at the freedom and fluidity of the letter strokes in the second manuscript. What a triumph!

This is what crafts can do! They can require complete focus and are so totally absorbing that everything else such as stress and problems fade for a while. We need to give children and young people particularly that experience. Craft skills are life skills in so many ways.

The 2024 The King's Foundation Building Craft Programme, which aims to help preserve traditional building skills, is now underway here at Dumfries House. To find out more, visit kings-foundation.org/education/buil…

The Dutch are building 1,500 thatched homes each year using it as ‘a modern roofing material’. In the UK we’d have real problems doing that due to the paucity of apprentice places. The UK apprenticeship provision is not geared to traditional craft skills. Let’s change it!

As a scribe I really do applaud the tour-de-force in this manuscript of the justification of the lines without any obvious bunching or spacing out of letters.Look at those vertical endings on the right of the blocks of text - as sharp and crisp as can be. In text this is easy …

Spot the calligrapher and a book from my new ⁦British Library Publishing⁩ book ‘The Art of the Scribe’ (Feb 2025) on this poster of a fabulous new exhibition on Makers with photographs and organised by the great Roger Lee at Sevenoaks Library on until 14th September.

Join us at Craft Festival Wales at Cardigan Castle on 6 to 8 Sept where we’ll be hosting a Marquee of Heritage Crafts, including shoe maker Ruth Emily Davey, basketmakers Rosie Farey and Mandy Coates, marbler ROCWORX DESIGNS and sign painter Andrew Grundon. craftfestival.co.uk/Heritag.../Exh…

Well there’s orange rowan tree berries and there’s … MASSES of orange rowan tree berries!