Silly piece

I did this last year for my own amusement. I tried to make it in a 14th century manuscript style. Looking at it now that some time has passed I can see that the border is far too regular, and controlled. If you look at 14th century manuscripts you will see that they are far more uneven, and free, and spontaneous - and all the better for it, in my opinion. Mine is dangerously close to a Victorian copy - ugh! The Victorians, who were great copiers of mediaeval manuscript pages, always seemed to artificially tame their designs down, they obviously viewed the irregularities as imperfections. They had become accustomed to seeing the "perfection" of typefaces, and they expected everything to line up accurately, and right-angles to be 90 degrees, which they seldom are in the Real Thing. Admittedly, some of the distortion we see in ancient manuscripts these days is due to the inevitable shrinkage of the vellum over the years, but even so, I imagine that the majority of illuminators relied upon their judgement by eye, rather than using mechanical instruments. It is these very "imperfections" which give life to the manuscripts. Next time I will try and be brave enough to go for it, as they did, and fly without the reassurance of the safety-net (tracing).