Acanthus Scrolls, Florentine Papers, and Decorated Tuckboxes

For the past couple of weeks, I have been fascinated by acanthus scroll designs. It started when I received some address labels that reminded me of the scroll-like design on a box of fancy stationery. I pulled the box out and started trying to imitate the design, without much success.

 

Stationery box with Florentine paper cover

 

There is a tangle pattern (ZentangleTM) called “Icanthis”. It gets its name from the acanthus leaf, which shows up in stylized form all over the place. The design on the stationery box was a kind of leaf-like scroll, but not very much like the Icanthis tangle. So I turned to the internet. “Acanthus leaf”, “foliage scrolls”, “acanthus scroll”, and so on. There were all sorts of interesting images.

One thing I found out is that the paper I so admired is probably made by Rossi, a company in Florence, Italy. Such beautiful designs and colors! And of course, there are the accents in powdered gold—I think I may have said before that I like shiny things?

I also found tutorials on making two somewhat different types of acanthus scroll. One is a webpage on "Acanthus Drawing" by “Maitresse Yvianne". I had a lot of fun trying out the design. I made a card and a tuckbox (photos below), but I didn’t add the turned-up leaf tips. I’ll have to try that another time. The other was a post in a blog called "The Calligraphy Pen". This style makes a nice border.

While working on these, I drew acanthus scroll type designs all over the place, trying to find the ones I liked best.

Acanthus scroll sketches

Eventually I decided to make some samples from the Yvianne tutorial, in part because it is a little easier. If you skip the turned-over leaf tips, you don’t even need pencil guidelines (though I used guidelines to get nice curves on the scroll.)

Pencil guidelines

Drawn in ink

Colored with colored pencil

I didn’t really like the way the pencil coloring turned out. Maybe I should have used different colors, or just colored it more simply. So I decided to use watercolor for the next one and make a tuckbox (see Make Your Own Tuckbox).

Pencil guidelines on cut-out tuckbox

Drawn in ink

Colored with watercolor.

The finished tuckbox.

Maybe I will use a gold gel pen on the next one and add some dots or squiggles. I like this design, but I left a lot of empty space. I think this style of scroll would look nice at the top of a letter, or maybe on a nameplate, but to turn it into decorative paper would require adding a lot of extra loops and flowers and details.

Of course, that could be fun, too.

Till next post.