How to make illuminated manuscripts
Marquette Bible
Unknown
Franco-Flemish, about 1270
Tempera colors and gold leaf on parchment
Leaf: 18 1/2 x 12 1/8 in.
MS. LUDWIG I 8, VOL. 2, FOL. 126
The Making of A Medieval Book at the Getty Museum.
Having discovered Anne the calligrapher, we have put her to work on various manuscripts, including Jane Austen, Edith Wharton and Isak Dinesen excerpts.
Next: Illuminated manuscripts!
We’ve always wanted to produce hand-made books (but NOT anthropomorphic bibliopegy), and now we have a collaborator. Yes, mass production is much cheaper and less troublesome, but making books by hand is a craft. The cost of the finished book is beside the point: the pleasure is in the “trouble” taken.
Besides, efficient utilitarian factory production has not saved the print market. We might even argue that reducing book production to a simple machine process has diminished the value of the book as an object.
Granted, we just enjoy making a fuss over the things we love.
Note: We have no intention of reliving medieval times. No indoor plumbing, terrible sanitation, rampant disease, low life expectancy, bad food. For the dramas of the medieval kings, we have Shakespeare. Always been fascinated by the Plantagenets.
from Good Tickle Brain, a wonderful Shakespeare webcomic, via io9
Download the Illuminated Morte d’Arthur by Alfred Lord Tennyson at the Public Domain Review.
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