Charters are pre-printed award blanks
For most awards below the level of Patent in An Tir Charters are used. A Charter is a pre-printed design that is illuminated by individual scribes in order to make each one unique. Their Majesties solicit their Royal Scribe to work with the College of Scribes to create suitable Charter designs for use during Their reign.
Designers, Wordsmiths and Calligraphers create Master Designs. These Master Designs are collected by the Royal Scribe, photocopied onto special papers and distributed to the College of Scribes for decorative painting.
Master Designs are commonly created for An Tir’s Award of Arms, Sanguines Thorne, Griffe et de Lion, Goutte de Sang, Jambe de Lion, Hastae Leonis, Leo Minor, Lions Cub and other awards, favors or tokens as may be desired by Their Majesties.
Each master design includes illustration suitable for painting and descriptive calligraphy with blank spaces left for filling in the name of the recipient and the date of the award. The freshly illuminated documents are returned to the Royal Scribe who then assists Their Majesties in filling in final award particulars such as name, dates and perhaps a bit of further personalized detail.
The stunningly beautiful and highly valued results of this process are as varied as the scribes who paint them.
A single Charter design will be presented to many different award recipients during the reign, but each finished Charter will have been made beautifully distinctive through the talented efforts of An Tir’s scribal artisans.
The presentation of a Charter ends the Kingdoms obligation to provide a record of that award. If the recipient desires a more personal memento in the form of a scroll, then they are encouraged to enlist the aid of a scribe in creating the scroll.
- Resources for designing and painting charters may be found here
