Learning about the Melsonby Hoard at the Yorkshire Museum. The whole thing’s amazing, but what really caught my eye is the way copper vessels corroded way past verdigris to turn jnto copper carbonates —malachite and even azurite!
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Joumana
@majnouna@birdon.social
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Artist-scholar, specialised in early Arabic (Kufi) scripts & historical/natural materials. Interest in material culture & things real. Beirut émigré in Oxford. Earth lover, plastic-free. Contemplative. Whovian/Gallifrey…
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Joined June 07, 2026
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A Very Cool Thing: This #astrolabe is from Seville, made in 1224 AD (Oxford, HSM inv. 50934). On the "throne", at the top of the instrument (usually in astrolabes from the Islamic world), note the #geometry diagram: it shows the method for drawing the perpendicular bisector to a segment (with a fixed compass), used here to draw the astrolabe's meridian line.
The maker engraved it like an emblem, offering us a glimpse into their process…
I've been deleting the entire contents of my long-abandoned twitter account, but I'm reposting a few of those threads. Particularly of lovely things I found in #medieval #manuscripts at the Bodleian libraries.
Here's a bunch of bunnies making faces at monsters. 1/3
Replying to
@thevhswizard@retro.pizza Ah that's sad! I only ever buy it as raw crystals (to make pigments with) and that's harder to fake, but I can imagine it's a plague of fakery. The copper isn't corroding into stone, exactly, but into pure copper carbonate, which AM are – except they're usually found on/in a stone matrix. They can stay there for jewelry, but for painting with they need to be separated from the stone...
Edition done, I'm shattered! I think two of them are good, lol. But I learned lots so a third attempt should do it. What do you think, worth it? If I continued to make 10-12 good prints I'd put them in a nice mount and finish the dots with gold.
#printmaking
Here's something I've been working on, on and off, since summer. Like most techniques, #mokuhanga requires dedicated practice to achieve fluency & at the moment my skill lags far behind the vision I have for it. But I have to start somewhere. I'm trying another print run today, with fingers crossed.
#printmaking
A few days ago as I was having breakfast with the door to the garden open, a squirrel stepped into the kitchen carrying an enormous walnut. I said “No.” and he turned around to find some other place to stash it.
This is the only reason I wasn’t bewildered by the bins under the apple tree today.
This is a big #Umda update, a full chapter of translated ink recipes with notes. Each contrasted with its '64 word salad version.
https://majnouna.com/2026/09/23/umda4/
Password: 1nf0dumP
Half of these recipes end with "إنه غاية" and I very much regret not being able to render this as "it is the GOAT".
Taking a little break from comparing the order of recipes in different versions of the Umda to start comparing ink recipes and cleaning up/translating their best version. Never say I don't know how to have fun. #editing
Whew! Another Umda update, where I wade through weird scribal decisions and find a surprise cameo from a very different text.
https://majnouna.com/2026/09/21/umda3/
Password: Bedl4m1!1
Sunday mornings are the best time to put a phone on the windowsill and listen. This is the past 20 minutes ❤️ #birdlove