This series is based on illustrations from the Aberdeen Bestiary - a 12th century manuscript describing current beliefs about Natural History. It was common from medieval times for enamellists to try and reproduce illustrations in their own medium. (We sometimes forget that originality in art work was not a value until quite recently in the history of human endeavour) I am quite interested by the stylisation in these drawings, which reduces the animal to a few simple lines, and yet captures the movement and form of them very well.

The illustrations of animals are often cheekily burlesque such as the prominent genitalia on this lion. The descriptions of the animals are fanciful at best and there are often serious descriptions of mythical animals like unicorns, manticores and griffons.

Here is part of the description of the lion: "The third characteristic of the lion is that when a lioness gives birth to her cubs, she produces them dead and watches over them for three days, until their father comes on the third day and breathes into their faces and restores them to life. Thus the Almighty Father awakened our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead on the third day; as Jacob says: 'He will fall asleep as a lion, and as a lion's whelp he will be revived' (see Genesis, 49:9)."

I have tried to approximate the colours on the manuscript pages, which were paints made from crushed gems. The Blue/Red/yellow theme was carried out in most of the illustrations. You can see the original manuscript here
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/

This piece is done in a technique called champleve, which involves etching the metal and inlaying the enamel. It takes 5 days to go through the process. It is counter-enamelled (enamelled on the back) and fired around 7 times.

The piece is 3" x 2.5" and the frame is 5" x 5"

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