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I was working with an item today that just utterly flabbergasted a part of me (the other was deeply frustrated with the catalogue record AS SOMEONE APPARENTLY THOUGHT IT WAS PRINTED ON SILK, coming back to that in a minute) … but ANYWAYS … said item is a replica of a medieval manuscript prayer book THAT IS ENTIRELY WOVEN out of grey and black silk … WOVEN … text, images, intricate grey scale, WOVEN … NOT PRINTED …

And it’s flabbergasting because it’s from 1888, Jacquard machine, IT USED PUNCH CARDS to weave these intricate pages … something like 400 weft per near square inch … IT looks like a page of textured paper, but it’s not, it’s entirely SILK … F*CK …

Anyways …

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Guess the letter. From a 17th-century German book on the art of writing. A great range of different styles are represented seemingly increasing in complexity, and also illegibility, as the book goes on: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-proper-art-of-writing-1655

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Today, a look at the #parchment in LJS 24, a collection of medical texts written for use by Dominicans in France in the mid-13th century. Some uncut edges remain, a reminder that parchment is made by stretching calf, goat, or sheepskin over frames

Online:

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Today's #FragmentFriday is LJS 185, 4 paper leaves from a Coptic psalter written in both Arabic and Coptic. Written for the monastery of Saint Anthony on the Red Sea in Egypt, in the 1700s or 1800s.

Online:

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The manuscripts in our collection can be written on a variety of materials; most common are paper and parchment. But what is parchment? In today's #ManuscriptBasics, curator Dot Porter will tell all about it! If you have a question, ask, and maybe we'll make a video to answer!

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Compiling the posts for #drollerydonnerstag, we notice that in Ms. Codex 724, drolleries only appear on pages that have illuminated initials, and all pages with illuminated initials have drolleries. Did the scribe reward themselves for a job well done? Examples here are from folios 52v, 81v, and 83v, but this is consistent through the book.

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Signal boosting these eight (8!!!) videos from the British Library on the making of medieval manuscripts.

1. Scribes and Manuscript Production after the Norman Conquest

2. Making Manuscripts: Quills

3. Making Manuscripts: Oak Gall Ink

4. Making Manuscripts: Vellum

5. Making Manuscripts: The Page

6. Making Manuscripts: Pigments

7. Making Manuscripts: Paint

8. Making Manuscripts: Making Miniatures

We generally don’t approve of the use of vellum as a general term for animal skin prepared as a writing support (we’d call it parchment) but no matter - if you’re interested in how manuscripts are made, take a look!

(The ninth video is The Role of Law in Governing Medieval England which isn’t about making manuscripts but rather using them - so there are a couple of cool manuscripts in there too)

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Inhabited initial letter ‘B’ by an unknown illuminator ( Italian, 1153).

The J. Paul Getty Museum  OgFFLEpD7Ia7lA at Google Cultural Institute via Wikimedia

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Next up in our #SIMSseries for Ms. Codex 1566, the 14th century book of hours from Metz, France: a brief look inside, at the calendar, and then a miniature of the Virgin and Child, nursing - typical of use of Metz - at the opening of Matins. Online: bit.ly/3wktwWw

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Form of… manuscript leaf! Shape of… envelope! Today’s #FragmentFriday is Ms. Coll 591, folder 47, a leaf containing Alcuin’s instruction manual for the Christian catechism of pagan Saxons, folded into an envelope. France, 9th c. Online record: https://franklin.library.upenn.edu/catalog/FRANKLIN_9977256075103681

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Next in our #SIMSseries on LJS 26, an astrological and mathematical manuscript: How do scribes deal with a hole in the parchment? This 13th century scribe outlined the hole in red on one side, and simply wrote around it.

Online record: bit.ly/3FnU5ht

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Is it a dragon, or is it a seahorse?

Whatever it is, it’s hanging out at the bottom of the Tree of Jesse on f. 3v of Ms. Codex 724, a 13th century French Bible #drollerydonnerstag #medieval #manuscript #bible #french #13thc #dragon #itsadragon #illustration #bookhistory #bookstagram #librariesofinstagram https://instagr.am/p/CcVaYF5s0Da/

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Today’s #ManuscriptOfTheDay is LJS 101, a 9th-century copy of Boethius’s Latin translation of Aristotle’s De interpretatione, with the shorter of two commentaries that Boethius wrote on that work. Replacement leaves added in the 11th century. #medieval #manuscript #philosophy #boethius #aristotle #9thc #11thc #carolingian #illustration #illumination #initial #bookhistory #bookstagram #librariesofinstagram https://instagr.am/p/CcIjUP2sxJ0/

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Today’s #ManuscriptOfTheDay is Ms. Codex 729, two unbound quires from a work dealing with canon law. On 1r is an historiated initial of the author Guillaume de Mandagot teaching, with drollery of rabbit playing bagpipes. France, 14th c. #medieval #manuscript #fragment #drollery #rabbit #bunny #bagpipes #initial #illumination #law #canonlaw #fragment #bookstagram #bookhistory #librariesofinstagram https://instagr.am/p/CbBAFCYFfF8/

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Today’s #ManuscriptOfTheDay is Ms. Codex 196, a collection of three devotional works in metrical verse, written in English ca. 1400 #medieval #manuscript #devotion #poetry #english #england #13thc https://instagr.am/p/COt-Tfpp4EX/

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This 14th century Italian manuscript of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae features a historiated initial, decorative border, and a (very amusing) grotesque on its first page. Also pictured is the verso of the front flyleaf which has scribbled notes and names in Latin and Italian, as well as some doodles. 

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Out and in

Book of hours, Flanders c. 1485

Kraków, MNK 3025 I, p. 469-470