The recipient of this award had a Chinese persona so, for inspiration, I chose this covered jar from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province. Not trusting myself at all with the unstructured foliage, I decided to go with a minimalist approach which I achieved, but at the expense of the top border, which is covering the failed first design attempt. I like all of the illumination in the scroll except for that part, though it may be my memory poisoning that well. Sadly, there are also two spelling errors in the text and paper is NOT forgiving. I would have had to do the scroll over completely.

Materials: 9″x12″ Bristol cut to 9″x11″, ruler, pencil, eraser, Ames lettering guide, cartridge ink fountain pen, Winsor and Newton gouache, gold paint