Bronze Initial Letters
Step back in time as you explore the collection of ancient initial letters, brought to life in bronze.
Initial Letters remade from Bronze
What is an Initial Letter?
Slavic books were created by translating and transcribing texts from various sources like Byzantine, Latin, and Irish manuscripts. However, there were not any fixed rules for how these books should look. The first letter of a text, called the initial, was especially important. It was ornately decorated and helped to highlight key parts of the text, making it easier for readers to find important sections. These decorative initials also reflected the different styles and periods in which the books were written, adding artistic flair to the handwritten pages.
Initial Letters from Gospel of Dobreysho
What is the origin of the Initial Letters?
It all started after the adoption of Christianity in the 9th century with the aim of bringing Bulgaria into the bosom of Orthodoxy. From the 9th century to the 11th century On the Bulgarian lands, Glagolitic and Cyrillic languages function in parallel. Both alphabets use different samples from Byzantine manuscripts. From the beginning of the 12th c. and especially the 13th c. the teratological style, which is extremely interesting and whimsical, is found in Bulgarian ornamentation. The origin of its name comes from the Greek word teras - monster.
Bistra Tiutiunkova
Creator of the Bronze Initial Letters
Why and How were the Bronze Initials Created?
Out of pure curiosity and love of history, Bistra began to search and study the ornamental decoration of ancient manuscripts and thus modeled and cast dozens of initials. First, the process begins with the shaping of the initial letters, each carefully crafted from clay. They are shaped and refined until they reach the intended shape. Next, these precisely shaped clay models are cast in bronze.