Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford) @joumajnouna Twitter profile

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

Are we ready for a LONG thread about cornflowers and the oft-repeated claim that they are used to make blue ink? Buckle up because I've been going full alchemist again... 1/🧵

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 years

Studying the script in this manuscript. Someone was having a proper ball with those لا !

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

12 days

Do we have evidence of women scribes/calligraphers in medieval Islamic culture? Yes and sometimes it's "whoa there".

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

6 months

Speaking of omens and unsubtle allegory

BBC Breakfast

@BBCBreakfast

6 months

At least two horses on the loose in central London - one seemingly covered in blood The horses are reportedly from the Household Cavalry, which works at Buckingham Palace

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

2 years

Comparing inks! These traditional sources of tannin were prepared according to the same recipe: oak gall, myrobalan, knopper gall (this one isn’t traditional), pomegranate skin and sumac. Strokes were similar, thick at both ends and thin in the middle.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

6 months

That time I sold an artwork in London only to find out the buyer lived across the street from us in Beirut. I can still see it hanging in the wall from our balcony …

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

4 months

@camruined Capitalism. You think you’re getting a good deal then you get caught out when it’s too late to pull out. There is no other reason.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

2 years

A little demo of Qarmatian eastern Kufi in action. “Be creative!”

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

8 days

Today was my first opportunity to access items from @bodleianlibs special collections, which was as exciting & inspiring as expected, starting with this 1463 pocket almanac. I think it was intended to hang from a belt, and I wanted a good look at the binding, to recreate later.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

5 years

I made a strong salt solution for some purpose the other day and then forgot about it. It has dried out to this wonderful sight.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

8 days

Sod your AI, this is the most exciting info-generating bit of engineering I’ve ever seen, made of nothing but paper. When I’ve stopped squeeing inside and am done handling these items I’ll post more.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

2 years

The world's like a cross-over of disaster movies, so let's stick our heads into the beauty of Alhambra's ornamental calligraphy for a while. Here's a closer look at the words I shared recently, plus variants and other short inscriptions (only looking at the Kufi ones).

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

1 year

Completed: The 28 different Lam-Alif ligatures redrawn and painted for the Book of Abjad.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

4 years

The proof has arriiiiiiiived! And boy am I glad, because there’s a lot of image cleaning-up to do (these things only show up on paper!)

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

6 months

My dad went to a Catholic boarding school, in Lebanon, alongside Muslim and Jewish boys. Daily mass (in Latin!) was compulsory for all and nobody had any issue with that. They were there for a quality education and only had to participate, not believe. One of my fave anecdotes:

ExiledOne

@Exiled_B

6 months

The headmistress at my school gave Muslim girls a prayer room and would occasionally go and pray with them. It was a convent school the head mistress was also the Mother Superior. I thought that was incredibly progressive and inclusive. Her school her choice.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

5 years

I spent an exciting morning at the British Library yesterday, perusing 3 Qur'anic manuscripts to see how much could be said about the materials just from look & feel. Photography was only allowed for one of them (Or.6573) but it had plenty to offer. A thread of my investigation.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

5 years

@jk_rowling Lebanese mountains for you!

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

10 months

Gate of Sevilla cathedral. الملك لله البقاء لله

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

5 years

In the light of a misinformed tweet that sparked a discussion on materials used in early Qur'ans (), I thought I'd make a thread about such materials (inks and pigments), at least the ones I'm familiar with. This area is highly misunderstood,

Dr. Éléonore Cellard

@CellardEleonore

5 years

“Written with saffron water”??

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

2 years

I’ll be here all night, filming the foxes capering in the snow

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 years

Day 4 in Beirut. Someone went “The world is ending, eff it, I’m going to open my dream bookshop café while I still can.”

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

7 months

What I'm working on…🧵 •WAKE• Indigo on washi. 25x??cm With 31,500 killed you-know-where so far, I was struggling with number blindness. When numbers become so large they lose all meaning, how do you remain awake to the scale of the slaughter & the personhood of the victims?

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 years

Teaser of things to come

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

1 year

If you’re still following this account, just stop. They’re feeding you bullsh*t and their scraping practices are known by now. At the very least don’t spread the muck.

Bad Arabic and Hebrew Takes

@arabic_bad

1 year

Stop. Get some help.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 years

About that plague of locusts that was descending on Lebanon on top of everything else... Nature is stepping in with the biggest muster of storks imaginable. What a sight! Photos taken by Sanaa' Nazih Baalbaki in Braasheet, South Lebanon, see more here

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

4 years

@Joyce_Karam @alextohme The deer LIVE in Nara Park, tourists or no tourists. The herd has been there since the city was founded. And they’ve always walked about the city, that’s what it’s famous for. That’s a deer cracker btw. Video from 2010. Not exactly people-shy.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

4 years

A glimpse at what I'm writing about now. I love this stuff!

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 years

HEAVENS are medieval art techniques exciting. Practicing with raised gesso here.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

My first swatches, resulting from freshly-picked cornflowers. On the left, it was applied when still fairly watery, on the right from the dried pan. In both cases it's much bluer on the paper: this is largely due to reacting to the alkaline surface of the paper. 12/

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

5 years

This pinned tweet is a thread of threads: any I made that's worth bookmarking can be found here. A look at the Kufic script of some astrolabes: Visual analysis of materials in Or.6573:

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

1 year

The Book of Abjad kickstarter is now live! An artist book spotlighting the forgotten Arabic number system through geometry and the tactile experience of a handmade codex. If you or someone you know is interested in the Kufi script, numbers, old writing systems, rare books or- 1/2

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

5 months

A lot of people are afraid to go to Tripoli, which is pretty stupid as people are so friendly and there’s so much to see (and taste). From the Citadel (for which I’ll make another thread) it’s just a flight of stairs down into the old city…

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

4 months

The copyist ended this long margin note with the word "intaha" ("end of note") only to immediately add more notes... Relatable 🤦‍♀️

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 years

Oh dear he’s losing it

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

8 days

Just so people know, RandomGuyStringofNumbers here is dead wrong: It is NOT advisable to wear gloves to handle antique books, they do more harm than good. Conservators keep having to explain this but people do hang on to their pet myths for dear life.

Gloves or No Gloves? On the Proper Handling of Rare Books & Manuscripts - Portland State University...

The Spring 2015 issue of Portland State Magazine offers a cover story focusing on Texts of Time, the student-curated Library exhibit on a newly-acquired Medieval Book of Hours. We’ve heard questions...

library.pdx.edu

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

I made another small batch and separated it to add, respectively, chalk and soda. Results (without gum) in top row. They were encouraging enough that I made a lake by adding soda solution & gum, which made the striking blue in the pan and unlabelled swatch below. Impressive! 13/

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

2 years

Your behaviour is shameful @BaytAlFann . Every time someone takes you to task, you tell them "you'll do better in future and make sure to credit people". This is bullsh*t, you're not even trying. You haven't taken down a single stolen photo or plagiarised thread after the real 1/6

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

2 years

A highly accelerated look at how shell gold (gold paint) is made from gold leaves. A method as old as dirt requiring nothing but a smooth bowl, a little water and a finger or two. Although, medieval scribes had to beat the gold into sheets first...

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

4 years

My coffee table summarizes my entire life thus far in 2021.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 years

Dude…

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

2 years

New post just dropped: The Story of Kāf – one we don't learn in school, for sure!

The Story of Kāf

The forgotten metamorphosis of an Arabic letter

majnouna.substack.com

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

6 months

My mum, everyone 😂😂😂

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

11 months

Testing the ink made from the local acorns.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

Despite this, and this is a quick ad break before discussing texts, I'm going to add Centaurea cyanus to Wild Inks & Paints, which I happen to be revising right now to reprint at the end of July. You can pre-order here if this is your kind of thing: /29

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

6 months

I'll always remember Ramadan banners in Beirut that read "Blessed Ramadan to all Lebanese, particularly Muslims". The mindset that we must inhabit segregated spiritual territories makes absolutely no sense and I encounter it in the West much more than I ever did back home.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

4 years

Good morning, inks are in the shop! These are by-products of my making a book on medieval Islamic inks and having to test so many recipes...

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

(You may remember how I recently dried wallflower this way and it turned from green to bright red.) This incredible (and very not blue) colour only exists in the pan, though. The minute I pick it up with a wet brush, it turns purple again. 11/

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

A detailed account follows, but the short of it is: I only need to eat them a little bit. As I will show, yes it's possible to get a lovely blue from Centaurea cyanus, but only in circumstances so narrow, & for so short a time, that to all practical intents it ISN'T possible. 5/

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

You'll notice that the dye that is coming out is rather purple, due to the alum's acidity. The biochrome in cornflower is protocyanin, an anthocyanin which in this blossom is bound with a flavone (yellow) and other constituents, making for a complex copigmentation. 9/

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 years

Me having to explain Britain to my family at every step.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 years

Starting two days late but undeterred: an Advent Calendar of BL Or.6573 (aka Mahmoud)'s flamboyant lam-alifs. Day 1:

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

2 years

Bless the institutions that digitise manuscripts and make them available for download. Whatever appreciation you're receiving, it's not enough.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

The next step is inspissation (drying till left with a film of hyper-concentrated colour), and this is a bit of a tangent but it's too crazy not to share: I use a bain-marie to accelerate the drying, which here caused the purple to dry to an insane hot pink. 10/

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

10 months

A few shots of the Alcazar that aren’t totally focused on script. This will probably end up being another article.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

Now, it was actually in season and I started encountering the flower everywhere, so that thread weighed on my mind. Could the fresh petals actually yield a wholly different result? I decided to do more tests, in case it turned out I should eat my words. 4/

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

Just a month ago, this post by the lovely @VenetiaJane showed up in my TL ,and I responded to the effect that I had never managed to get anything out of Centaurea cyanus, nor did anyone repeating this claim ever produce a visual to support it. 2/

VenetiaJane's Garden

@VenetiaJane

4 months

Cornflower petals mixed with alum water produce a blue ink that can be used as watercolour paint. It is said these #wildflowers are the embodiment of the soul of Cyanus, a devotee of Flora who she transformed into a cornflower, Centaurea “cyanus”, after his death. #FolkloreSunday

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

I originally tested cornflower, among dozens of plants, while writing Wild Inks & Paints. I could only procure dried petals at the time. Most flowers give very good results when dried, but this one was so disappointing I dismissed it entirely. 3/

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

1 year

I contributed an article to The Edge’s ink issue and it was most beautifully laid out!

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

1 year

The Western world has gone MENTAL.

Nagihan Haliloğlu

@NHaliloglu

1 year

Delighted I tell you, delighted

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

2 years

Can type designers please normalise including characters like ṣ ṭ ḍ ḥ ẓ , some of us transcribe Arabic constantly and are really not impressed that we have a choice of like 5 boring fonts to do it in.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 years

Ready for another thread of verse markers, just for the eye candy? Note: Or.6573 is a fragment from a commentary, and the markers don't seem to be strictly quranic. I'm not the best qualified to discuss that. But let's start with a bunch of "tens" عشره

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

6 months

I am so going to kill this scribe.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

2 years

HEAR YE!! I’m SO excited to finally release my annotated translation of Tuhaf al-Khawass by the Andalusian al-Qalalusi, a 13th-century treatise of inkmaking, dyeing, pigment manufacture and many more techniques for scribes and craftsmen.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

The chalk lake is only slightly changed, but the soda lake is now a deep sea green (scroll up to post 13 to compare). I believe this is again the effect of water, because it took several days to dry in its pan and I did notice it was increasingly green as it dried. /26

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

2 months

It is done. RESILIENCE صمود Materials: Silk thread, hand-dyed with madder root, stitched on paper. 50x50 cm. (More in thread 👇)

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

2 months

One month!! I've alluded to it without properly announcing it, but from Oct 1st till Christmas I'll be Visiting Research Fellow in Creative Arts at Merton College in Oxford, researching and making a book arts-related project! Starting to pack some initial research & sketchbooks…

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

1 year

Trust an Arab to write an entire book to deny Arabic numerals originated in India and accuse the country of appropriating Arab heritage. What a pile of sh*t.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

6 months

In case anyone with a calligraphy interest is still following me, I’m teaching this style of Eastern Kufi on June 15-16 in London, to a small group of 5-6 people max. Full details and booking here

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

After straining through a coffee filter, a very yummy blue was collected. As always though, it was a bit more sobering once dry! I left this one dry on its own, which took a few days. 16/

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

7 months

There are not many artists who make me feel like I should just hang up my brushes 😭

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 years

Who's been enjoying the return of the spring colour palette? Here's me making a delicate blue from grape hyacinths (Muscari). It's very fugitive so this was mostly for the sake of marking the season, though I'm going to test how it fares as an illumination ink.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

When I got home and started work on the flowers, they were as fresh as if I had just picked them. I didn't realise it at the time but this would turn out to be essential. I went straight for the best method of extracting flower hues: braying with alum and only a little water. 8/

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

While I was quietly returning to my mortar-pestle, @VenetiaJane was doing the hard work of looking for written sources. After sharing my experiments I'll share her posts and my thoughts on those texts based on my practical results. 6/

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

Anyone want to cheer me on as I do some more work on this stuff? It's really overcast today and I'm comically unable to function without sunlight, so I've been dithering all afternoon 😝 About to attempt a sugar boost of tea and biscuits.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

4 months

So exciting to see my prints in the @britishlibrary ’s new case on the history of woodblock printing!! Thanks to @hilaryhamster for blowing my mind by pointing out they’re on show alongside a Gutenberg Bible 🤯😂 And the Book of the Moon is still around…

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

The lake was so promising I decided to make more with the rest of my flowers. Here you see it after extraction with alum, then atfer adding the soda, then a little later when the precipitation has become quite visible. 15/

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

And here are the results painted on paper. Not so impressive! I also dug up the last of my dried cornflower petals and put them through the same process; you can see that result at the far right. Not good! 21/

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

4 months

There are about 120 pages in this manuscript and after the first 20 this guy apparently ran out of red ink, left blank spaces to fill in later and then... didn't.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

I made my first harvest while out in Abergavenny. I kept the flowers in water and brought them back with their stems wrapped in wet paper towels. 7/

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 years

I haven’t even mentioned the other letters because WHERE DO I START, but just found this and glad I wasn’t drinking tea or anything

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 years

What a Western person means when they ask about my family: 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 What I, Lebanese, understand by "my family": 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦🧓👴👨‍👩‍👧‍👦👨‍👩‍👧‍👦🧑‍🦳👶🧒🧒👧🧓👴👨‍👩‍👦‍👦👨‍👩‍👧‍👦👨‍👩‍👦‍👦👩

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

4 years

ضاد اللغة for #ArabicLanguageDay Gallnut ink and cinnabar on paper. 800 times, for the numerological value of ض.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

Meanwhile, I came across a handful of flowers near home, & decided to make a lake again to verify I could reproduce my initial success. This sequence should look familiar by now. Notice once more the clean purple of this extraction vs. the redder purple of the wilted batch. /24

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

Two possible reasons for this deterioration: a. The flowers were visibly altered by the time I processed them, so it's the fact they weren't fresh that killed the dye. The protocyanin's quick breakdown may have let the flavone out, hence greenish and muddy yellow results. 22/

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

4 years

Work in progress in the so-called Qarmatian style (a one-off subset of Eastern Kufic); with the vocalisation completed, the elaborate decoration work can begin. The harakāt are in vermilion, tempered with egg yolk. Sukūn are in lapis lazuli, tempered with egg glair.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 years

It’s a good day to deconstruct a script.

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 years

My gosh, we're on! Check out the luscious trailer and details for my Manuscript Kufic course on @Domestika . It launches on the 27th, but sign-ups are open! #arabiccalligraphy

Online course - Arabic Calligraphy: Learn Kufic Script (Joumana Medlej)

Explore the ancient Arabic script style of Kufic by learning to write a short text using traditional artistic practices

www.domestika.org

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

I divided my batch in two, to precipitate half with chalk and half with soda. Here is the chalk lake, dried in the bain-marie, and the soda lake, before drying. Both look distinctly green in the gills... 20/

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

Given the amount of flowers, I used the decoction method (with alum) to extract the dye. It takes a practiced eye to see it, but the resulting hue has a lot more yellow in it, as if the flavone was no longer masked (compare with earlier pic). 19/

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

11 months

I made a thing… Inspired by all these dancing oaks on this land, and written with the earth they grow on. “Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness.” (Gibran Khalil Gibran)

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149

Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

(I need to break here for now to get some errands done, to be continued in a couple of hours! Do comment and RT...) 14/

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Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

Let's look again at the first-generation swatches: Oh dear. They have all acquired a greenish tinge since those original photos. Whether it's the effect of the soda content, or the paper surface, or simply the protocyanin's fragility, the sought-after blue is already gone. /28

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154

Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

2 years

I didn't enjoy squeezing 6+ hours of careful into 30 seconds, but here you go. The making of Everlasting, as it's now titled. #ArtistatWork

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143

Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

10 months

Sloooow work.

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143

Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

Before I could post that I'd been wrong, I was off to Devon for a week, where I found a whole meadow of wildflowers... On the one dry day, I collected a good amount of blossoms for further experiments. But it wasn't till 4-5 days later I was able to bring them home and start. 17/

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147

Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

By then, the petals had started to change dramatically. Many looked completely bleached. Mere days after picking, the biochrome seemed to already be breaking down. 18/

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147

Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

3 months

b. Due to the bigger quantity, I processed this batch with a lot more water, and both lakes remained wet much longer than my first batch. I already know that water is destructive to flower pigments, so it could be the culprit. c. Or a combination of both factors. 23/

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144

Joumana Medlej 🦋 (in Oxford)

@joumajnouna

4 years

I’m finishing the very last section in the book, a brief (ha) appendix on writing tools. And I thought I’d share this portable writing case.