Contemporary Illumination for the Calligrapher and Artist

TONI WATTS is an internationally-recognised illuminator, and one of the few artists still using traditional manuscript gilding skills. She creates new work using age-old techniques and hand-prepared, natural materials. These include mineral and earth pigments, plant pigments from her garden, traditional handcrafted inks, vellum, 24-carat gold leaf and gemstones such as sapphires and emeralds. She specialises in manuscript illumination, but also draws with metalpoint and paints in egg tempera. Toni has had a diverse career – she worked for over twenty years as a doctor while pursuing a career as an award-winning wildlife artist. She then gained a master’s degree in art history, which sparked an interest in medieval manuscripts and the trade in pigments. This led to a year (2015-16) as artist-in-residence at Lincoln Cathedral, where she had the opportunity both to study its collection of manuscripts and create a new body of work. She now runs national and international workshops on manuscript illumination.

If you are already a practitioner in the field and want to take your work to the very highest level, this is a book that will occupy you for a long time. The illustrations are copious, well-chosen and excellently reproduced on top quality paper. The binding is hardback and the pages are sewn rather than glued so that the book lies flat when open, meaning that you can refer to it while you are working. A premium worker will always buy the best tools, regardless of cost, but the cover price doesn’t seem that great in context.