Scribal (pronounced skry-ball, not scribble) Work Shop is a family owned business specializing in several products and services related to historic writing, art, calligraphy, and illumination; to which we add the modern fountain pen inks designed by Lucas Tucker, head of Scribal Work Shop. We started as a company in 2011 and debuted at the Scarborough Renaissance Festival in the spring of 2012.
The most modern of our products are our fountain pen inks, designed by a chemist, a calligrapher, parents, and grandparents. This diverse design team has created a unique set of priorities on our part in regards to the ink we make.
We no longer sell fountain pen ink in our shop, though we do still make it. The former ink line know as the "Cryptid" line has been reformulated for better behavior (the previous formulation was too dry) and is now being sold by the Anderson Pen Company as their private label ink, under different names. The same is true of the blue ink from our former Bunny line; it has been re-formulated and is now being sold by Anderson Pens as part of their private label line. If you are interested in these inks they are now with the Anderson Pen Company, re-named, but still made by Scribal Work Shop.
In our list of historic products we include inks, traditional quills, steel nib quills, turned wood pens, wood ink wells, historic pigments, wax tablets, original artwork, and prints of same original artwork. Everything we sell is hand made by us, from the inks to the artwork (though the artwork is definitely a one-man job). We follow medieval and renaissance period recipes and techniques when making our historic inks and pigments – in fact, we only use historic materials in our historic inks and pigments. We use techniques from the same time periods when preparing our quills, and when making our wax tablets (with the exception of the modern tools we use when doing the woodwork) – we even use historic pigments when coloring the beeswax in the wax tablets. Our steel nib quills and turned wood pens are the most modern of our historic offerings. The steel nib quills do not adhere to the same standards for historic accuracy as our other products since they are an entirely modern invention, however, the wood pens are historic, just not to the medieval and renaissance eras. Wood pens with steel nibs hail from the 1800s. Please note that our historic inks and paints are not always safe and non-toxic. As much as we love non-toxic products, historical accuracy is more important sometimes. We want our customers to be safe, however, so a full list of ingredients is available for every product upon request.
To all of this, we add the services of calligrapher and illuminator Lucas Tucker, the creator of the original artwork we currently offer. He specializes in historic calligraphy hands and illumination styles, and creates custom pieces on a regular basis. At this time Scribal Work Shop is not Lucas’ full time job, currently he teaches high school chemistry. As such, completion time for a custom piece during the school year is limited to the time he has on the weekends and in the evening to complete it, so if you want to commission a piece, please keep this time restriction in mind when ordering (e.g. allow a few more weeks during the school year for project completion than in the summer).
When it comes to safety and historical accuracy we follow one motto: "If we don't use it, we won't sell it."
Some call them pillars, some call them principles, some call it a mission....we call them obsessions:
Honesty, Education, Historical Accuracy, and Informed Safety.
Scribe and Chemist,