Fable Fruits Design

This semester at MICA, I am taking a class called Making Medieval Books, where we study medieval manuscripts. After viewing countless manuscripts, I was inspired to apply a medieval lens to my product design assignment for Junior Illustration. I wanted the brand name, logo, and illustrated details to evoke the feeling of the Middle Ages.

I considered several names, such as "Earthly Delights," "Blessed Fruit," "Holy Mother Jams," and "Red Letter Jam," but ultimately decided on "Fable Fruits" because who doesn't love alliteration? The flavors I selected were inspired by my favorite macarons that we created while working at Bakery Lorraine in San Antonio, TX.

I want to conclude this post with an excerpt from Chapter XVII of "Showing Due Propriety in the Custody of Books" by Richard de Bury. Born in 1287, he was a priest who had numerous grievances about how the youth of his time treated books. I find his hyperbolic tone incredibly amusing.

"You may happen to see some headstrong youth lazily lounging over his studies, and when the winter's frost is sharp, his nose running from the nipping cold drips down, nor does he think of wiping it with his pocket-handkerchief until he has bedewed the book before him with the ugly moisture. Would that he had before him no book, but a cobbler's apron! His nails are stuffed with fetid filth as black as jet, with which he marks any passage that pleases him. He distributes a multitude of straws, which he inserts to stick out in different places, so that the halm may remind him of what his memory cannot retain. These straws, because the book has no stomach to digest them, and no one takes them out, first distend the book from its wonted closing, and at length, being carelessly abandoned to oblivion, go to decay. He does not fear to eat fruit or cheese over an open book, or carelessly to carry a cup to and from his mouth; and because he has no wallet at hand he drops into books the fragments that are left. Continually chattering, he is never weary of disputing with his companions, and while he alleges a crowd of senseless arguments, he wets the book lying half open in his lap with sputtering showers. Aye, and then hastily folding his arms he leans forward on the book, and by a brief spell of study invites a prolonged nap; and then, by way of mending the wrinkles, he folds back the margin of the leaves, to the no small injury of the book. Now the rain is over and gone, and the flowers have appeared in our land. Then the scholar we are speaking of, a neglecter rather than an inspecter of books, will stuff his volume with violets, and primroses, with roses and quatrefoil. Then he will use his wet and perspiring hands to turn over the volumes; then he will thump the white vellum with gloves covered with all kinds of dust, and with his finger clad in long-used leather will hunt line by line through the page; then at the sting of the biting flea the sacred book is flung aside, and is hardly shut for another month, until it is so full of the dust that has found its way within, that it resists the effort to close it." - Richard de Bury