The Lindisfarne Project
Sometime in 2005, when I was part way through the 00 Nouveau inlays, I decided to approach another master luthier about collaborating on another large project. Kevin Ryan was a logical choice as I had done many inlays for him over the years, and I have great respect for his ability to consistently make superior guitars.
When I think of themes for these forays into the unknown I take into account the type of guitar I’ll be altering, the personality of the luthier building the instrument, and what kind of artwork that will hopefully still have appeal and investment potential hundreds of years from now. I could, if I wished, assemble some inlays reflective of life in our world as it is today, but if it was representative of, say, Madonna, in 2307 it would maintain little or no appeal (unless of course, if she turns out to be the Second Coming or the Antichrist, and then the guitar might fetch some stratospheric price). Anyway, Kevin and I talked about it and he was leaning toward a Celtic knot theme, which I wasn’t all that keen on, after taking it to the limit in the 90’s with the Fender Celtic Telecaster.
However…
While looking for some simpler knots for position markers on another guitar, I came across something called the Lindisfarne Gospels. To quote our friends across the pond, I was totally gobsmacked. About eighty years prior to the Book of Kells, Eadfrith, the Bishop of Lindisfarne managed to design and execute one of the most beautiful illuminated manuscripts I’ve ever seen. As with other literature at the time, it was religious in orientation, comprising the first four books of the New Testament. I knew Kevin would be pleased.
Keeping in mind that he had his Bishoply duties, like eight religious services a day to preside over, keeping the acolytes in hand, visiting the sick, performing weddings and funerals, blacksmithing, gardening, kowtowing to whatever edict the Pope sent out, and enduring Viking raids, Eadfrith managed to write and illuminate 256 pages over (scholars believe - nobody’s sure) twenty years.
Oh, and it took place between 710 and 730 CE apparently - no magnification, and sunlight or oil lamps to work with.
So naturally I thought, well if he could do it, surely I can replicate one of the pages on the back of a guitar. That remains to be seen.
I got started by purchasing a disk with the three images I was interested in from the British Library (they own the LG), and had the Incipit page from the book of Matthew enlarged at a copy shop to about 2 x2.5 feet in size. Then, after mounting it on some foam core board with spray adhesive, I taped a large piece of tracing paper over it and got to work. A couple weeks later, when I had a reasonably clear copy, and a sinking feeling in my stomach, I realized what I was in for.
Even at the poster size there were still a couple sections I would have had a difficult time doing as an inlay. How did Eadfrith pull this off? The more I looked at it, the more resolved I became to put myself in his headspace and just focus on one piece at a time. A second tracing that cleaned up residual flaws in the first one became the master drawing for the back inlay. I had it reduced to 45% of its size and made about 30 copies. The resulting image will fit on the back of a Ryan Nightengale model, and is about 30% larger than the original.
Kevin is searching high and low for some holly to make the back and sides of the guitar from, and is encountering some difficulty, as holly usually doesn’t come in widths able to construct a two piece back, or lengths clear of knots, so we’ll see how this plays out. If he manages to come up with it though, the guitar will be a virginal white, imitating the manuscript vellum to a degree, with black binding and blue paua purfling on the top, sides and back and under the fingerboard and around the peghead. The lower left bout bevel will be inlaid with knot and/or animal scenes from the text, and the bridge will be ivory with no inlays.
For the fingerboard I chose some patterns from what is known as the canon tables, which are a kind of index that cross references similar passages from the four books. The indices are separated by columns of red, with either knot patterns or herons chewing on each other, so I adapted that and used both on the fingerboard.
In an attempt to keep close to the original colors, I utilized a hardwood called “pink ivory” from South Africa for the red shades, 18k gold for the knots, and black abalone hearts for the interior of the herons’ bodies. There’s also plenty of gold, black and white mother of pearl and red and green abalone, and silver for the claws. Obviously the inlay palette is considerably different from the inks Eadfrith was using, but I’m more interested in paying homage to him than maintaining historical accuracy.
The peghead will have an inlay of the miniature painting of Matthew that Eadfrith did 1300 years ago.
Once I got started it became hard to stop, and I managed to complete most of the simple lettering as well as some decorative sections. I decided to cut all knotwork one piece at a time instead of cutting the perimeter of one whole knot, piercing the interior negative spaces, and engraving the over-and-under lines after leveling.
Now I have several large jobs sitting on my bench, so I have to put this off for awhile (since no one’s paying me to do it at this point), but Kevin and I think we may have it finished by late 2008 or early 2009.
More to come…