My Mystic Tulip book is now in hand! There are some tweaks I need to make to it, but overall I’m happy with how it turned out. It’s the first hardcover I’ve self-published.
Its 33 illustrations are a tribute to my home of York County in central PA and the Pennsylvania German artwork I grew up largely taking for granted.
My mother was (and still is) always creating magical ‘frakturs’ to give to people to document births, marriages,
and give house blessings (haus segen). They were written in calligraphy and embellished with stylized plant life, birds, hearts, and other symbols.
The name fraktur comes from Latin and means “fractured” or “broken script”…as its calligraphy’s ornamental flourishes break the continuous line of a word.
Mystic Tulip refers to a description of a common motif in the fraktur designs that came from the Ephrata Cloister, a group known for their fantastic fraktur work and other crafts.