Extraordinary lecture that will give you an hour+ of pure joy. Highly recommended.

Using bibliographical format to fill your boxes: 2°, 4°, 8°, two 12°s. #Bibliography #BookHistory 📚💙

Good times ahead.

Testing 1,2,3: this original cover for a schoolbook (Cicero and other classical school texts) is completely filled with pen trials. The name Hainz/Haintz appears a lot, perhaps student’s name? (Munich, BSB, Clm 18941, 15th c, digitized here: tinyurl.com/5n8furud, see pic 143)

🎉✨The Destruction of Medieval Manuscripts in England ✨ Absolutely delighted to announce that my second book has just been released (and it's open access; free to download at the link below!). academic.oup.com/book/59790?f...

Just came across this web resource: 76 digitized handwriting manuals 1600-1800 - mostly with models for handwriting exercises (bibliotheques-specialisees.paris.fr/search/N-503...). A bored child learning to write doodled in one of them (source: bibliotheques-specialisees.paris.fr/ark:/73873/p...).

Encountered during morning walk in Stanley Park. Love the scene, shoe not mine.

Binding Waste Bonus! #NewberryLibrary #Shelfie #Print #Manuscript #Recycling

This spectacular Bible was created by a scribe in Mainz in 1452-53, while elsewhere in the city Gutenberg was creating the printed equivalent that would put the scribe out of business. The digitization is of equal high quality: www.loc.gov/item/52002226/. #medievalsky

Just saw this on #TodayILearned and that led me to @erikkwakkel.bsky.social ! #OldBooks www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/01/this...

Started to work on something new, a manuscript lost in the 1870 fire that destroyed the Public and University Library in Strasbourg. The pile in the foreground I imagine holds the remains of the codex I am writing about, how sad (Musée hist. de Strasbourg, R.20694), more exhibit: buff.ly/srNXVZy.

Give yourself a free present. Here’s a OA download for your paleography fix.

Alert: great opportunity if you are interested in doing a PhD around early book. Salaried (!) Marie Curie Doctoral Research position advertised by the U of Bristol within the exciting “Remediating the Early Book: Pasts and Futures” project (@rebpaf.bsky.social). uk.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=c...

There's an interesting new blogpost by Ellie Jackson at the BL: blogs.bl.uk/digitisedman... #fragmentology #mssprovenance

Rehearsal for Handel’s Messiah, tomorrow in the beautiful Orpheum in Vancouver. We sound good and I feel you should all come.

Picard management tip: Share the credit. Take the blame.

Peaceful coexistence: Ox (in watermark) sharing the page with several "book worms" (beetle larvae), who left those oddly-shaped channels. Berlin, SBPK Magdeb. 89, 15th c https://buff.ly/49xfsft

All I want for Christmas is a red medieval binding with an original title label (fenestra) and brass-enforced corners... Marburg UB Ms. 37

This book on astronomy has a great deal of student notes bound in with the text. These small inserts did not usually make it, but here they are, in abundance! More on these tiny class notes ("schedula") in this blog post: https://buff.ly/2rFt0Vl. Tübingen UB Mc 64, 15th c https://buff.ly/41tCodx

I’ve gotten into this odd but useful routine of writing a page or two and then read it back on my phone. The small screen creates the distance I need to see if what I wrote made sense. More text in a single view helps with that.

Delighted to announce that my second book, The Destruction of Medieval Manuscripts in England, is coming out with Oxford University Press in April Details here: global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Fully-funded PhD scholarship opportunity on project on ‘The hidden voices of early printed books (c. 1450-1750)’ at the University of Manchester. Supervised by me and my wonderful colleague Tabitha Tuckett in collaboration with Chetham’s Library. Please share! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

This is an interesting volume, which includes actual medieval letters - not copied onto new pages, but physically bound into the volume. Some have clear traces of having been folded, with seal and recipient name still in place (see pics). Tübingen UB Mc 63 https://buff.ly/3ZNa6tp

Writing a book on advertisements sheets of lay scribes operating writing businesses in late medieval cities. They took momentum away from Church. BUT. Now I suddenly have a sheet tied to a monastic house. Pardon? Those folks shouldn’t be into commerce! This needs serious creativity. Coffee time.

Got ya! Just identified the origins of a bookbinding I'm working on via 1931 pub with rubbings from German bindings: the Benedictine Abbey of Tergernsee! The attested date of the in-house (!) blindstamp (1503) matches the date of the volume (Augustine: Froben, 1506). Good end of a good day.

I don't like math either, but there is no need to splash ink all over it! Tübingen UB Mc 64

Ivory panels with two evangelists writing, pen and inkwell in hand. Binding looks odd with 11th-century ivory cuttings in much later (18th/19th-century) leather board. Berlin, SBPK, theol. lat.fol. 2. https://buff.ly/49sovhH

Do you have a leaf of this manuscript in your collection that we might not know about? DM me!

Daily dose of #runes: A star object among medieval rune-sticks found in Norway is this one from Tønsberg. The four sides of the stick bear various messages, from “Eilif the Worthy owns me” to “They are shacking up together, Clumsy-Kåre and Vilhjalm’s wife”. #runology

This list of Sumerian words, like a very ancient dictionary, dates to ~2300 BCE from the ancient city of Ebla. Remarkably, one of the words listed is sha-zu, which means “midwife” (“one who knows the inside”). A midwife in a 4,300-year-old clay tablet cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts/24...

This rather tired-looking medieval book clearly shows how some of the quires have detached from the binding. They have given up. Also, you wouldn't say, but the object is the size of a deck of cards. Gotha Chart. B 938, 15th century https://buff.ly/4gsKibd

After a morning of digging through digitized manuscripts I struck gold: a small advertisement slip for the sales of printed books (still 15th c), pasted inside a manuscript (!) sold second-hand. Print and manuscript culture are one big blend in first generation of print. Clearly.

This one is fun for all you early music lovers: a twelfth-century page with a LOT of neumes (early musical notation). For monks who liked a musical challenge? Wolfenbüttel HAB Cod Guelf 496c Helmst. https://buff.ly/3OPvnfB #medievalsky

For when you need a distraction, get energized with this c. 1500 modelbook for medieval handwriting styles. Many modelbooks are composite/unbound, making it easier to have many pages open at once, for teaching purposes. Beinecke MS439 https://buff.ly/41tmksq

I continue to be impressed with UBC’s interlibrary loan system, especially providing copies of obscure paleographical publications with such high speed. As a European-educated scholar the service is rather new to me, but wow what a difference it makes!

The Catalog of Distinctive Type, a visual catalog of distinctive and damaged printing type originating in books published in England from 1660 to 1700

#FensterFreitag #WindowFriday Two windows, Elburg, The Netherlands, 17th century.

Wow: “Fund will create a repository for the professional papers of medievalists”, managed by “an endowed position in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts. The Penn Libraries expects to invite applications for this new position soon.”

📣FUNDED PHD OPPORTUNITY 📣 Recruiting for a PhD student, working in collaboration with the British Jesuit Archives, @michaelwdurrant.bsky.social, @laurajcleaver.bsky.social, & @lucyvinten.bsky.social. Application deadline: 31 January 2025 👇 Find out more here 👇 ies.sas.ac.uk/news/funded-...

On the program for today: printing and last-time reading of chapter 2 + introduction, before sending to my research assistant - who will check style, notes, biblio (bless her!). With that the book is about 50% done.

Vancouver is all Swifted up. 6.40 am: selfie time.

Woodpecker pie, porcupine roast, and 83 ways to eat an ox – this month's REBPAF blog by Melissa Bastian (Vienna) looks at a curious sixteenth-century cookbook and the insights it can offer us into food and its relationship with print during this period: rebpaf.wordpress.com/2024/10/04/h...

We have brand new 'APPRENTICE' and 'MASTER' workflows over on the @materialwills.bsky.social @zooniverse.bsky.social site! Practice your palaeography or dive straight in with some more difficult handwriting 📜✍️ www.zooniverse.org/projects/hjs...

I saw these two inserted leaves today and look how their painted main side is bleeding through to their backs. Such contrast. Also, the 2 bad sides are facing each other and I wonder if the idea was to turn 2 leaves at once, so you’d miss that backstage mess. The Hague KB, 76 F 13, 12th c

Saw some really lovely penwork decoration today. Dutch flourishing from 15th century has distinct regional features, this style is from Haarlem. More importantly, the happiness just jumps off the page! The Hague, KB, 1900 A 406

This is a hilarious read for #academicsky folks, recognizable esp for North American academics. My fav passage: “I have served as department chair for the past three years, an honor I was proud to take on, since it was my fault I didn’t find a hiding spot fast enough when we saw the dean coming”

On the program for today, special collections at the Royal Library, The Hague. Getting ready for a whirlwind - being shown all medieval acquisitions since I left holland in 2018. Is there a special warming-up exercise for this?

I’m staying at a hotel situated in a former practice area of the student theatre society I was a member of back in the day. I’m having breakfast right where I practised for Chekhov’s Sea Gull, it’s a truly odd experience.

Last item in this upside-down thread on exhibited medieval books. Click on item to travel down. It all turned out messier than I had hoped. Will try a simple hashtag next time. (5) Export product: manuscript made in Bruges for the English market.

I’m showing items of a pop-up exhibit. This is an upside-down thread: clicking on post will show the next - and suck you further into the rabbit hole. (4) high-end decoration from famous Dutch illuminator Johan Spierinck, who signed and dated his miniatures.