The Pen is Mightier

Since I have been made a Laurel I have been looking for a period Indian depiction of a laurel wreath.  Almost everything depicted in SCA regalia looks more Greek or Roman to my eyes.  I didn’t know if there was a depiction of anything more Mughal I could find. Spoiler: I did not find such an image.  The Persian and Mughal artists were very enchanted with flora of their regions, depicting them on the borders of miniatures and in their garden scenes. But their images were naturalistic, and I could not find a depiction of either bay leaves, laurel leaves, or any leaves twisted into the shape of a chaplet. I was getting ready to chuck the idea out the window when I stumbled upon an interesting note while I was doing research for another project.  The Purananuru, an anthology of 400 poems written between the 1st and 3rd century CE, describes the wars, cattle raids, Kings, bards and battles of the Tamil people during the Sangam era . (1)  Rather like the Victorian lan...

There was much delight when the King's Bard's scroll was read into court for Juliana Bird at K&Q Bardic yesterday. I gather the King was delighted that I wrote about his "gleaming beard". I will try to dig up an image of the final scroll Rowan made. It is astonishing. Context:  Winner scrolls are weird. You don't know what the persona of the winner will be so you can't custom tailor the look & feel of it to them. Therefore it either needs to be medieval non specific... or about the crown who is giving it out.  In the East, for the King's Bard scroll sometimes it is also about the lineage of the Bards who came before you. Rowan really wanted the chance to do something non western in her scroll, had her eye on Mughal mineatures. So I, as outgoing King's Bard, obliged her with the words I crafted. Text: Scroll text below: I gave Rowan options for some words. Those options are in parentheses. I am not sure which ones she picked: Poet Me...