philz

A little intro for folks for what I'm about on here: I'm a Catholic father of ten, homeschooling our family on a small homestead in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. My background is military; I tried out for the Navy SEALs in 2003, but was dropped from BUD/S with heatstroke. I switched to the Army and spent four years as a team leader in 3rd Ranger Battalion, deploying to Afghanistan four times. After leaving the Army, I lived nomadically in a tiny house on a trailer and worked close protection in Iraq and East Africa. In 2017 I left overseas work to teach at our children’s small private school and be more present with my growing family. To help make ends meet, I turned my longtime hobby of calligraphy, illumination, and bookbinding into Tamburn Bindery, which I’ve now run for eight years. Today I focus on classical and adventure-based education for our kids, help run a little forest school on our property, build woodland forts with them, and create artistic medieval-style books and illuminated editions. I have a variety of illumination courses and DIY book programs on my website, and I'm getting ready to launch my next publishing project in October: an illuminated manuscript edition of Gawain and the Green Knight. You can sign up to be notified when that goes live here: kickstarter.com/projects/tam… I recommend you get in early; a lot of folks missed out on the illuminated Beowulf last year, so make sure you don't miss out on this one!