Award of the Tower’s Light

Awarded to Melisant Saint-Clair (modernly known as Melanie Schuessler Bond)

By the Barony of Cynnabar on 2017-12-16

It is beauty that Princes desire in their houses, gardens, and orchards. Pygmalion for beauty loved an image of ivory, and Alexander more esteemed the face of Venus, not yet finished, than the Table of the Nine Muses perfected. For as when the counterfeit of Ganymede was shown at a market, everyone would fain buy it, because Zeus had therein shown his greatest cunning, so when beauty appears, we all are drawn to it, for the Gods have in it expressed the art of their Deity.

In nothing do we come near the Gods so much as when we create beauty. Thus near to Them is Melisant Saint-Clair, whose work no tongue can set forth as it deserves. But in this We will imitate the old painters, who drawing the portraiture of Jupiter, were every hour mending it but dared never finish it: And being asked why they began that which they could not end, they answered, “In this, we show him to be Jupiter, whom everyone may begin to paint, but none can perfect.” In the like manner mean We to draw in part the praises of her whom We cannot thoroughly portray, and therefore We grant to her Our Award of the Tower’s Light, that all may know of Our esteem for her. Let none countermand Our words.
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Adapted from Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578) by John Lyly (c. 1553/1554 - 1606).

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