Some northern European manuscripts contain naturalistic illuminated borders. Featuring flowers, leaves and insects, the images in these borders were often surrounded with shell gold rather than gold leaf.

Shell gold is gold that has been made into paint by grinding it by hand and adding a small amount of binder. It is perhaps the most expensive way of laying gold, each leaf of gold making a tiny amount of paint. The name ‘shell gold’ refers to the fact that the paint was traditionally kept in a shell.

This illumination features the flowers arranged beautifully for a wedding in the Cathedral last year inspired by these manuscript borders.