Another set of designs for Alcuin's marque, made up after a lot of discussion with members of the Kushiel's Trilogy community on LJ, people who commented on Alcuin's designs and of course . Huge thanks and fluffy!hugs to all!

Anyway, one thing I've discovered while doing these designs is that a typical English birch tree looks different to a typical American birch tree. American birch trees seem to have most of the branches at the top, with a huge long trunk (like design 3), while English ones tend to have branches much lower down (like design 2).

So here I've tried to stylise things a bit more. The first one is pretty stylised, obviously, though the branch patterns look far too much like a menorah (thanks to ~AnnadinMoriel for the techie name). The actual knotwork bit was actually based on the flames in The Lamps of the Valar (I've got the original on my wall and walked past and noticed the flames). I like the knotworkiness of it a lot. The second I really like cos its a proper English birch and I do like the bottom bit best of the three. The third I like too. OK, I like them all LOL

One point raised on LJ was whether these kind of designs are designs that a master marquist would produce. I've thought a lot about this over the last few days, and come to the tentative conclusion that a mastery of marque - um - marquism? marquetry? *snerk* wouldn't necessarily produce complex designs. There is beauty in simplicity too, and from everything written about Master Tielhard, he seems to be particularly focussed on design and expression. My thoughts, anyway.