Clik here to view.
Medieval Super Models
This post is devoted to a particularly attractive and rare kind of medieval manuscript: the model book. A feast to the eye, the object is filled with drawings and paintings that were meant to show...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Drawing with Words
The pages of medieval books are generally filled with two things: words and decoration – and a lot of nothingness, the margins. The divide between the two is evident and clear. Words make up the text...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Books on a Diet
We’re all familiar with that most popular of New Year’s resolutions – and the one that is broken most frequently afterwards. While many oversized medieval books look like they enjoyed life to the max,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Helping Hands on the Medieval Page
We are taught not to point. Pointing with your finger is rude, even though it is often extremely convenient and efficient. Medieval readers do not seem to have been hindered by this convention: in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Medieval Letter-People
The human body is one of the most common objects encountered in art, whether in paintings, sculptures or other objects. Things have not changed much since medieval times, when artists loved to fill...
View ArticleMe, Myself, and I: The Story of Two Medieval Selfies
Selfies are by no means an exclusively modern phenomenon. As shown in a previous post on medieval selfies, some decorators made self-portraits in manuscripts, showing that the practice predates print –...
View ArticleBreaking Bad: The Incomplete History of the St Albans Bible
It reads like a horror story. In 1964, the New York rare book dealer Philip Duschnes (d. 1970) bought and subsequently broke a splendid medieval Bible produced in early-fourteenth-century Paris (Figure...
View Article
