Title: early-books-msg
Subject: Early books. Construction, size. Referances.
Author: Edited by Mark Harris
Last saved by: Mark S. Harris
Keywords: medieval, early, book, size, construction, materials, binding

early-books-msg - 11/25/16

Early books. Construction, size. References.

NOTE: See also the files: gold-leaf-msg, paper-msg, parchment-msg, quills-msg, calligraphy-msg, alphabets-msg, inks-msg, bookbinding-msg, scrpt-develop-art.

************************************************************************
NOTICE -

This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday.

This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org

I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter.

The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors.

Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s).

Thank you,
    Mark S. Harris                  AKA:  THLord Stefan li Rous
                                          Stefan at florilegium.org
************************************************************************

From: sniderm at mcmail2.cis.McMaster.CA (Mike Snider)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: SCA Fallacies
Date: 12 Apr 1995 12:37:32 -0400
Organization: McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

The question was raised "are there standard book sizes"?

In medieval bookbinding, the pages are actually a packet of pages 
achieved by multiple folding. Even very small books, there is one lovely 
book of prayers that is just 5cm across, would have needed a much larger 
"page" of parchment to fold into the "quire" or packet of pages. The 
folded quire was then sewn down during the binding process and the folds 
at top and bottom slit so the pages could be turned.

If this is a little hard to follow, try taking a piece of standard paper 
and fold it once in half. Now fold this in half. You now have a quire of 
four pages, or 8 if you count both sides of each. Some medieval quires 
had even more folds, so the larger the original sheet of parchment, the 
better off you would be, even for small books.

As for standard sizes, books seem to have run the entire scale. I hope 
this will help explain, however, why large sheets were needed even for a 
small finished product.

Elizabeth Cadfan

Date: Wed, 9 Jul 1997 08:23:00 +22300454 (EST)
From: karen at addl.purdue.edu (Karen Stegmeier)
To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: manuscript stuff

	I don't know if anyone else has already mentioned this or not
since I am not able to watch all the posting that closely, but
There is a wonderful supplier of period manuscript goods including
kits for making period inks, or period inks, vellum etc.
It is The Gabriel Guild.  I believe they are out of New York and somewhat
affiliated with the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  They are likely to be
at Pennsic.  I picked up a catalog last year when I bought some gold leaf
They have an Oak Gall Ink Recipe/kit that I am thinking about getting

-Isabeau Pferdebandiger

Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 19:38:10 -0500
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
Subject: RE: SC - Re: sources of sources.

> RuddR at aol.com writes:
> << "Mass market production" in the Middle Ages is not to be confused
>  with what we now understand by that term. >>
>
> I am not aware of any "commercial" type set-ups as are theorizing. The usual
> way a nobleman aquired books was to hire a calligrapher to copy a work from
> someone else's library, IIRC. At least this was the most common way of
> acquiring tomes during the Middle Ages. Of course, this was not the case after
> the printing press became established in Europe.
>
> IMO, there is no need to theorize a "commercial book source. Libraries
> were restricted to the wealthy and a collection of 10 works would have been a
> modest library. There is , however, evidence of an active
> calligrapher's/illuminator's type of service with famous people being paid
> decently to reproduce and/or create works. An example would be the Duc de
> Berry's Book of Hours.
>
> I agree with His Grace that there is no evidence that cooksbooks were produced
> commercially before 1450 C.E. The rarity of such manuscripts, along with the
> manner in which they were produced plus the social status of the houses extant
> copies originated from clearly point to special volumes created by specialized
> craftsmen.
>
> Ras

There was large scale commercial copying of texts in Northern Italy by the
13th Century.  At first, the copying was done primarily for the wealthier
families, but quickly moved down the social scale as cheap paper became
available.  The Travels of Marco Polo became very popular in the trade
oriented city-states.

The first commercial print shop known opened its doors in Ravenna in 1289 as
part of this publishing industry.  This industry quickly adopted moveable
block type and Gutenberg's standardized metal type when they became
available.

By the 16th Century, the printers of Northern Italy were supplying books to
much of Europe.

I know of no similar large scale copying industry elsewhere in Europe.  Most
secular scribes outside of Northern Italy seem to have made their living as
government clerks or secretaries to wealthy families.

Of the cookbooks, the only one I think may have been commercially copied is
Apicius, which was published about 1498, having been derived from two 9th
Century manuscripts which were apparently copied from a 4th Century
manuscript.

Bear

Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 02:53:11 -0700
From: Twcs <no1home at encompass.net>
To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Calligraphy Query

Melanie Wilson wrote:
> Secondly  as 13th C lady would one takes a book of hours around with one ?
> or a bible ie does anyone know if there were small versions that didn't
> require 2 chaps to carry them ? If so how big are they, how are they bound
> and what would be an example ? Most of the ones I have copies of are hugh.

I think this is a deeper question than it first appears.  To begin with, a 13th
Century lady would not be reading a book of hours.  For devotional purposes,
I believe a psalter would have been the book of choice.  To support this, I'm
going to quote myself, from a work in progress that hasn't reached a publishable
state yet.  Here goes:

  In the 13th century, many illuminated manuscripts were still produced in
monastic scriptoriums.  This isn't to say that members of the laity never
illuminated, because they did.  Secular art in the 13th century is not an oxymoron. The 13th century saw the beginnings of what would explode into the humanistic revolution called the renaissance.  There are any number of reasons why this is so.

In the wake of the first three crusades, proto-nations began to expand their
power beyond the limits defined by feudal agreements, while market economies
grew and eventually superseded the agricultural economy of feudalism.(60)
The growing middle class fueled the growth of the great medieval universities of
Paris, Oxford and Bologna.  Students and the well-to-do created a demand for
secular manuscripts.  The future market for books of hours had not yet arrived;
that fad will not erupt until after the Black Death.  In the mid to late 13th
century, the fad was for psalters and bestiaries instead.(61)  Many of these were professionally illuminated, for sale to the wealthy.  The existence of secular illumination workshops is exposed by tax rolls and other municipal  records of the time.(62)

The high gothic was an age of conspicuous consumption, and ownership of a
handwritten, handpainted book is what conspicuous consumption demanded.

60. Braudel, F., 1972, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the
    Age of Phillip II, Harper & Row, New York, pp. 325-327.
Evergates, T. 1993, Feudal Society of Medieval France: Documents from the
     County of Champagne, pp. 74-75.
61. Dupont, J., and Gnudi, C., 1979, Gothic Painting, Rizzoli International
     Publications Inc., New York, pp. 19-22.
62. Ibid., p. 37.

As to size, small will be it.  Books like the Grandes Heures of the Duc de Berry
were rare, because few people could afford to use one whole piece of vellum
per page like that.  The idea was to stretch the vellum or parchement as far as

it would go, because it wasn't cheap to begin with.  Also, the most affordable
vellums and parchments come from smaller animals, like squirrels, goats, and sheep.
All of these factors combined meant that most books were actually quite small up
until paper breaks into the european markets somewhere around the 16th century
(the date varies a great deal, depending on where you were in Europe).  Also, I
suspect that our 13th century lady would have had her personal psalter bound in
what it known as a girdle binding, which would have hung off her belt - somewhat
the same concept as little kid mittens connected by a yarn so they won't be
misplaced.  A book was quite a chunk of money - a girdle binding was protection

for one's investment.  (remember the Cadfeal mystery where a murder was
committed over a Book?!?)

A decent overview of the subject of book bindings (binding for personal use vs.
bindings in medieval libraries) is in Edith Diehl's _Book Binding_.  A nice
history of paper and other writing surfaces can be found in Dard Hunter's
_Papermaking_. Both are out as Dover Books.  The dissertation monster has blocked off access to my SCA books for the moment, so I regret can't get you isbn numbers tonight.

Twcs

Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 09:03:36 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jenne Heise <jenne at tulgey.browser.net>
To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Calligraphy Query

On Sat, 19 Sep 1998, Gunnora Hallakarva wrote:
> >I'm thinking perhaps she might go off in the garden to reflect on the Bible
> >with book, Possible ?

Books of Hours were indeed constructed for that very purpose.

> I believe that people carried "missals" but at this time of the night I
> can't recall what was in a missal.  I will have to look at the sources in
> the morning.  I"ve also seen reference to small editions of just the Psalms
> carried for religious devotions.

Psalteries (books of psalms) were also used for this purpose. Modern
missals, with the order of the Mass in them, would probably not have been
available, but I am not sure whether 'missals' of some sort (with readings
for the day, etc.)  might have been available.

> There are several good scholarly works on the printings and translations of
> early Bibles available out there.  The various Protestant translations were
> made widely available very early as reading the Bible for oneself was such
> an importent aspect of early Protestanism.  In places where Protestants
> were persecuted, I would expect to see Bibles made deliberately small for
> concealment if necessary.  Thus this would be another avenue of research to
> look at.

Non-protestants, however, would probably have stuck with books of hours,
possibly gospels, psalteries, and occasionally lives of famous saints,
such as Mary Mother of Jesus.

Jadwiga Zajaczkowa (Shire of Eisental; HERMS Cyclonus), mka Jennifer Heise
jenne at tulgey.browser.net

Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 21:28:31 -0700
From: Artor Hodgson <artor at efn.org>
To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Calligraphy Query

greetings-
 i know i'm getting my 2 cents worth in late.  the earliest book of
hours proper i found for my thesis was late 12th century and it was only
one and that is really early.  there were a few 13th century examples,
but a psalter is much more likely.
        a chemisette (chemise, girdle) binding, if you want to make one, is a
big square of fabric, much bigger than the book itself, with tassles,
knots, or beads at each corner.  the book is centered, so when you pick
up the corners it forms a little pouch.
        as a lady, you absolutely would carry your devotional book with you, at
least if you were going very far from home, as you would need it to
perform your various daily prayers.
in service to the dream

gwen (who hates the shift key:)

Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1998 08:38:42 -0500
From: "Helen Schultz (KHvS)" <meistern at netusa1.net>
To: <sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu>
Subject: Re: Calligraphy Query

> AS for the Girdle hanger/chemisette (chemise, girdle) binding device has
> anyone got a online pic ref for one or a picture they could send me please?
>
> Mel

Yes, Mel, go to the Labyrinth page at Georgetown University site... I think
it may have a link to one... but for the life of me I cannot remember which
one. I know I have seen a copy of a chemise binding at one of the sites off
this page.

http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/subjects/mss/mss.html

Meisterin Katarina Helene von Schoenborn, OL (for C&I)

Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 04:31:57 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Jack C. Thompson" <tcl at teleport.com>
To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Re: Islamic traveling pen cases/inkwells

>I am curious about Islamic calligraphy and scribal arts but haven't delved
>too deeply into research yet.

I don't know of any suppliers of pen cases, etc., but here are a couple
of books you might enjoy reading.

The first item is a translation of ibn Badis' manuscript from 1025 A.D.
and is about making ink & paper, and includes a later manuscript (1619 A.D.)
about bookbinding.

Martin Levey, "Mediaeval Arabic Bookmaking and its Relation to Early
Chemistry and Pharmacology" in: _Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society, New Series, Vol. 52, Part 4, 1962.

And then:

Mohamed A. Hussein, _Origins of the Book: from Papyrus to Codex_ 1970.

Good color plates of Arabic calligraphy and bookbinding.

I have another book with good examples of Arabic calligraphy in combination
with paper marbling, but can't find it right now.

Jack

Jack C. Thompson
Thompson Conservation Laboratory
503/735-3942  (voice/fax)
http://www.teleport.com/~tcl

From: Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise <jenne at fiedlerfamily.net>
Date: February 2, 2005 8:49:23 PM CST
To: My Work Mail <jahb at lehigh.edu>, Known World Librarians <SCA-Librarians at lists.gallowglass.org>, SCA Forum for Research in Medieval and Renaissance Re-enactment <SCA-UNIVERSITAS at LIST.UVM.EDU>, Arts and Sciences in the SCA <artssciences at lists.gallowglass.org>
Cc: Subject: [Sca-librarians] [tmr-l at wmich.edu:Crick/Walsham (eds), Uses of Script and Print (Erler)]

FYI, from:

From: The Medieval Review <tmr-l at wmich.edu>
Subject: TMR 05.01.36 Crick/Walsham (eds), Uses of Script and Print (Erler)

Crick, Julia and Alexandra Walsham, eds. "The Uses of Script and Print,
1300-1700". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. 298. 
$70.00 (hb). ISBN: 0-521-81063-9.

   Reviewed by Mary Erler
        Fordham University

Two earlier books cast their long shadows over this new volume. Michael 
Clanchy's "From Memory to Written Record, England 1066 to 1307", its second 
edition published a decade ago, is still immensely powerful, right down 
to the minutiae of its specific illustrations of various reading 
practices--still the ones revived and re-cited to prove this or that 
point, as we see often in this volume.  The introduction to "The Uses 
of Script and Print", while summarizing previous work on the 
transition between these modes, has its own position, as we might 
expect: that writing and printing have overlapping, as well as 
separate, histories--and indeed that position, which emphasizes the 
parallels rather than the disjunctions between the two worlds, 
represents the new orthodoxy.

In adopting this perspective the volume necessarily challenges its 
other great predecessor, Elizabeth Eisenstein's "The Printing Press 
as an Agent of Change" (1980), whose view, although nuanced and 
complex, emphasized the radical differences between a manuscript 
culture and a print one. Eisenstein's work now receives a more mixed 
response, though many elements are still cited deferentially and even 
the thesis is still invoked at various points in this volume.

The introduction's central point is that manuscript use continues vital 
long after the arrival of print. This is not a new observation: what is 
new is the analysis of why manuscripts endured and for whom they filled 
a need. This portion of the introduction is fascinating and important 
to discussion of the script/print divide. The introduction is not quite 
so successful in presenting a considered overview of the situation. For 
instance the editors note the way print "served to nourish and 
reinvigorate unwritten tradition," i.e. orality (17), but they later 
say "wisdom transmitted by word of mouth was increasingly dismissed as 
untrustworthy and vulgar" (21)--and these contrasting points of view 
are not adequately distinguished in terms of period, nor differentiated 
in terms of their authors. Likewise, although the point is early made 
that the print medium was not necessarily well-regarded (20), with 
examples from sixteenth-century Italy and the English Civil War, a page 
later we are told that "over time?printing did come to carry a kind of 
imprimatur," with an example from early nineteenth-century poet John 
Clare--a conclusion that seems somewhat facile and inadequately 
supported.

Like the introduction, Margaret Aston's epilogue offers an overview of 
the volume's themes, though her finale gives a richer and more personal 
response which finds particular stimulus in the subjects of talk, of 
sermons, and of community reading. Aston's summing-up of script and 
print's relation as demonstrating "a lasting permeability?throughout 
the period" seems right, but raises the question how far the period 
extends. Perhaps such interpenetration of script and print might obtain 
as late as the nineteenth century. Her phrase describing the 
situation--interaction rather than impact--will be recalled in pursuing 
further work.

The volume is extremely interested in the relation of forms of 
communication, manuscript and print, to forms of religion, traditional 
and reformed. Half of the twelve essays examine this large topic, both 
before and after the reformation. Before considering these essays, 
however, we might look at the book's first contribution, appropriately 
placed because so widely relevant to all the volume's concerns. This is 
Felicity Riddy's answer to the question "How was publication done 
before printing?" She summarizes what we know--not always enough for 
firm conclusions--and offers a stimulating re-thinking, suggesting we 
define publication in its Middle English sense as "making known" rather 
than "issuing for sale." Requiring a discursive instead of a spatial 
publicness, such publication stresses the importance of talk; indeed it 
defines publication as being talked about. Similarly fruitful is 
Riddy's thinking on the responsibilities of the book's patron. Though 
some medieval dedications seem to imply that this important figure had 
the burden of disseminating the text, Riddy instead sees the book as an 
element in gift-exchange, the author presenting the work in return for 
expected rewards and favors. This reading seems especially plausible in 
light of the frequency with which inscriptions identify personal gift 
books as presented in exchange for prayers. The book, in other words, 
was often a counter in various sorts of transfer.

All the essays having to do with religion, with one exception, focus on 
the print half of the script/print continuum. This exception is David 
d'Avray's reiteration of the argument found in his 2001 book, 
"Medieval Marriage Sermons", that substantive scribal changes to 
sermon texts argue against commercial scribes and for friars copying 
for themselves, and that the loss rate for medieval manuscripts, 
particularly sermons, was huge. James Clark's intriguing contribution 
traces the aborted beginnings of English Benedictine printing, and asks 
what might have happened if the Dissolution had not intervened in 1539. 
Though in the treatment of printing at St. Albans there are some 
discrepancies with the account given by STC, the essay is successful in 
drawing attention to this overlooked yet significant element in English 
printing history. Indeed, given another decade of life, monastic 
printing might have made its contribution to religious history as well. 
The 1536 confutation of John Frith printed at St. Albans, for instance, 
hints at such an outcome.

The rest of the essays treating religion and print are firmly 
post-Reformation. Alexandra Walsham provides a survey of dissenting 
books from the Lollards though the seventeenth century (the brevity of 
the Catholic list vs. the Protestant one is notable). The second half 
of her essay questions the classic linkage of Protestantism and print 
(a caveat found elsewhere in the book), suggesting that print was seen 
as useful in times of persecution or in the absence of a preacher, but 
was judged second-best to the oral delivery of the word.

If this essay stresses the importance of the oral over the printed 
word, Thomas Freeman's contribution, on the scribal culture of the 
Marian martyrs, emphasizes the importance of writing over print to 
controversialists on the other side of the fence, for instance in 
waging internecine doctrinal disputes or correcting texts before 
printing. Eisenstein's ideas about the stability of print, challenged 
elsewhere, are influential here and in the following essay, Ann 
Hughes', where Eisenstein's thesis on the power of print to forge 
"impersonal communities linked by ideology" is invoked to illustrate 
the intermingling of speech, manuscript and print around the 
seventeenth-century Presbyterian text "Gangraena". Scott 
Mandelbrote examines the relative weight given to manuscript and to 
print sources in establishing post-Reformation printed editions of the 
bible, concluding, surprisingly, that manuscript sources were not 
always preferred and in fact that "reverence for traditions embodied in 
print" to a large extent displaced the authority of manuscript. 
Mandelbrote's lucid essay shows how first one, then the other form of 
writing was dominant, concluding that, "almost paradoxically, 
manuscripts and their histories retained an ability to challenge and 
undermine, as well as to uphold, [scriptural] traditions that were 
supported by print" (153).

Among the remaining essays, those whose focus is not religious, perhaps 
the most widely useful is Anthony Musson's contribution on law and 
text. It asks about the effect of the movement from oral to written law 
in the late Middle Ages, and in doing so, gives a brief clear history 
of the evolution of legal practice and the development of legal texts. 
The interaction between oral and written forms of law is explored and 
the question of who had access to law is entertained. At every point 
Musson is synthesizing the work of numerous others to offer his 
magisterial overview, a piece of work that, with its frequent 
definition of terms, is bound to be illuminating to nonspecialists.

Equally memorable, though for its originality rather than its synthetic 
power, is Christopher Marsh's call for acknowledgement of ballads as 
song, and his demonstration of the evocative force of tunes, containing 
"a hidden code of meanings and associations" (176). A contribution that 
challenges, just slightly, Michael Clanchy's classifications is Andrew 
Butcher's thoughtful and delicate exploration of the work of town 
clerks as historians. Using anthropology and linguistics, Butcher sees 
these histories or administrative writings, usually viewed as part of 
the development of "practical literacy," as instead expressing the 
community to itself. Not personal, yet incorporating individuals, these 
town chronicles were the product of "fellow speakers engaged with one 
another and with a local speech community, even a speech/text 
community"--a term that describes, as well, Felicity Riddy's account of 
the readers and talkers around Julian of Norwich.

Jonathan Barry's analysis of forms of communication--script, print, 
speech--in Bristol from 1640 to 1714 is so firmly and intentionally 
subordinated to a presentation of the local context that produced these 
forms that what emerges is simply an essay on the city's history. Julia 
Crick's essay, a byproduct of her forthcoming edition of Anglo-Saxon 
charters, looks at the practice of seventeenth-century editors of these 
records, and hence at their attitudes toward the past revealed in their 
use of sources, but the evidence is tortuously involved and in the end, 
serves only to illustrate the relative interchangeability of manuscript 
and print sources.

"The Uses of Script and Print, 1300-1700" grew out of a conference 
held at the University of Exeter in April 2000. Unlike many collections 
of conference proceedings, this collection's success rate, through its 
individual essays, is high, and the introduction's framing of the 
issues in current scholarship, as well as its presentation of those 
issues in historical context, is valuable. Christopher Marsh calls the 
process "that grand, never-ending transition from a culture centered on 
orality and aurality?towards one centered more on literacy?"(172). This 
book constitutes a lively and judicious marker of where we are now in 
reflecting on the differences between writing and print, and at the 
same time does much to make that reflection both more full and more 
subtle.

Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 20:46:20 -0600
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] OT mail question
To: "Bill Fisher" <liamfisher at gmail.com>,	"Cooks within the SCA"
	<sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Gutenberg's claim to fame really isn't moveable type.  It's die cast metal
type with a standardized typeface.

Just to clarify, Gutenberg is often given credit for moveable type, but it
was in use a half century earlier in Korea.  Also, there is some debate as
to whether Laurens Janzoon Koster (Holland) or Parnfilo Castaldi (Italy)
were using moveable type before Gutenberg.

Bear

> Damn Gutenberg and his movable type!
>
> Cadoc

Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 05:54:25 -0600
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] moveable type
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

> Is there any indication in your reading of how Gutenberg learned of
> moveable type?
>
> Cordelia Tose

There is no evidence that Gutenberg's moveable type was anything other than
an independent invention.  There is no way to really tell where he got his
ideas, because very little is known of his life.

No matter how he got the idea, it was the making standardized type of die
cast metal that made the idea great.  When I first learned to set type in my
uncle's shop some 500 years after Gutenberg, we were using the same kind of
lead type with one exception, a groove along the bottom side so you could
tell at a glance if you were setting the type properly.

Bear

Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 23:36:41 -0500
From: ranvaig at columbus.rr.com
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] moveable type
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

According to a book that I read, Gutenberg's discovery was not
movable type as such, so much as his method using masters from which
the type was cast.  Type wears out, and you need many copies of each
letter.  His invention made printing practical, by letting him carve
each letter once, and cast copies as needed.

Ranvaig

Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 22:11:25 -0500
From: "Martin G. Diehl" <mdiehl at nac.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] moveable type
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Terry Decker wrote:
> ranvaig at columbus.rr.com wrote:
>>
>> According to a book that I read, Gutenberg's discovery
>> was not movable type as such, so much as his method
>> using masters from which the type was cast.
>
> Die cast type
>
>> Type wears out, and you need many copies of each
>> letter.  His invention made printing practical, by
>> letting him carve each letter once, and cast copies
>> as needed.
>>
>> Ranvaig
>
> Standardized type face.  Which, BTW, originally was
> script to give the feel of reading a manuscript.

I recall reading that Gutenberg's 'alphabet' had a rather
large number of 'letters'.  I had my buddy Google help me
wander around to get a better answer than a vague memory.

(I don't guarantee this to be correct)

	Gutenberg had to dealt with more than 300 letters,
	because the Gothic writing used a lot of ornamented
	strokes and also a great number of ligatures [that
	is the connection two nearby letters into one
	graphical sign].

> Bear

[snip]

Vincenzo

Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2005 07:43:05 -0600
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] moveable type
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

> Gutenberg had to dealt with more than 300 letters,
> because the Gothic writing used a lot of ornamented
> strokes and also a great number of ligatures [that
> is the connection two nearby letters into one
> graphical sign].
>
> Vincenzo

Obviously he was not the inventor of the California case.  300 letters
wouldn't fit.

Now that's an obscure reference.  In case you're interested in the
California job case, the tray that holds a font of type for a printer,
here's a site with a little of the history and yes, a reference to
Gutenberg's involvement with type cases:

http://www.apa-letterpress.org/Files/APA/TP/California%20Job%20Case.html

And if you drop your case, you pie your type.  Shake and no-bake cookery.
Been there.  Done that.  Embarassing.

Bear

Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2005 09:05:44 -0500
From: Johnna Holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] moveable type
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Back in 2000-2001, there were articles in the Times and other places about
researchers at Princeton regarding Gutenberg and the invention of
movable type. There's a lot more to it than the original articles suggested.
See the open2.net section for part of the more recent material.

See--
http://www.ala.org/al_onlineTemplate.cfm? 
Section=february2001&Template=/ContentManagement/ 
ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=5294
http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/History/gutenberg1.htm
http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/01/0212/
There was a BBC program on it but I don't recall it ever having aired in
the US--
What did Gutenberg Invent?
http://www.open2.net/renaissance2/doing/gutenberg.html
http://www.open2.net/renaissance2/email/messages/s.nelson_25_11.html

The history of printing, typography, and early printed books (as well as the bibliography of same) have lost  their appeal over the years as librarians and archivists have moved more into the  information sciences. Most new librarians these days never take a course in the history of the book; they take courses in the history of the internet...

Johnnae

Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 11:28:04 -0600 
From: Rikki Mitman <esmitman at ghg.net> 
To: "'sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu'" <sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu> 
Subject: FW: "The Making of a Renaissance Book" redivivus   

This is from the book arts list; I thought some here might be interested.  I'm not on any calligraphy or illumination lists; if you are, you might want to post it there, too.  

Mistress Teleri ferch Pawl  

-----Original Message-----  
Subject:	"The Making of a Renaissance Book" redivivus  

[This message is being sent to the Book-Arts-L, ExLibris, and SHARP lists]  

The Book Arts Press (BAP) is pleased to announce that copies of the classic "The Making of a Renaissance Book," are again available in videotape.

 "The Making of a Renaissance Book" is the best-known and most successful film ever made on a history-of-books-and-printing subject. Shot on location in Antwerp in 1969 at the Plantin-Moretus Museum, the 22-minute black-and-white 16mm film explains hand punch-cutting and copper matrix-making, type casting and dressing, composition and proof-correction, imposition, printing on the wooden common press, and much more.

The original film, produced and distributed by the American Friends  of the Plantin-Moretus Museum, was transferred (we believe in the 1980s) to videotape, but copies have not been available for a number of years. Through the kindness of the AFPMM and Roderick Stinehour, all rights to the work have now been transferred to the BAP.

We have made a new transfer from a clean copy of the original film; the resulting videotape has notably better audio than the earlier transfer, and cleaner and more stable video. (If you already have a copy of the old video transfer, however, you may not wish to replace it; the new transfer is better than the old one, but not dramatically so.)

VHS copies of "The Making of a Renaissance Book" are available from the Book Arts Press at the address given below for $50 plus postage. Unless otherwise specified, copies shipped will be NTSC (the North American standard), but we can provide PAL copies on demand.  

Terry Belanger  :  University Professor  :   University of Virginia Book Arts Press : 114 Alderman Library : Charlottesville, VA  22903 
Tel: 804/924-8851   FAX: 804/924-8824  email: belanger at virginia.edu 
              URL: http://www.virginia.edu/oldbooks/  

Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 11:27:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: Anna Troy <owly3 at yahoo.se>
Subject: [SCA-AS] Danish Girdle book
To: Arts and Sciences in the SCA <artssciences at lists.gallowglass.org>,
	scribes <scribes at castle.org>

For all you bookbinder out there here's a couple of
good photos of a 1490's girdle book.
http://www.kb.dk/elib/mss/treasures/bogbind/rostgaard_6.htm

Anna de Byxe

Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 15:40:47 +1100
From: Raymond Wickham <insidious565 at hotmail.com>
Subject: [Lochac] portal for the study of Cyrillic and Glagolitic
	manuscripts and early printed books
To: <lochac at lochac.sca.org>

FYI
http://www.obshtezhitie.net/

Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2012 07:40:05 -0400
From: Garth Groff <ggg9y at virginia.edu>
To: isenfir at virginia.edu, atlantia at atlantia.sca.org
Subject: [MR] BBC: Dirty Books From the Middle Ages

The BBC recently posted this interesting piece about "dirty books". No, 
they're not talking about THOSE dirty books, just how the accumulated 
grime on old books shows which pages were read most often. They are 
particularly talking about prayer books, which can tell us a lot about 
the devotional habits of their owners through a very cool bit of 
scientific investigation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-17797190

Lord Mungo Napier, Shire of Isenfir's Unofficial Librarian

From: Zebee Johnstone <zebeej at gmail.com>
Date: January 7, 2015 at 3:59:38 AM CST
To: "The Shambles: the SCA Lochac mailing list" <lochac at lochac.sca.org>
Subject: [Lochac] Online course about medieval books

Khan Academy
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/medieval-world/medieval-book

The production of a manuscript was a long, complex and expensive
process. It involved making parchment from animal skin, pricking and
ruling hundreds of pages, and writing down long texts by hand, one
letter at the time. When the binding was finally added, an object was
born that weighed several kilos and could cost as much as a car today.

This tutorial discusses how books were used in medieval times. After a
manuscript was produced it came into circulation in a monastery,
became part of a private library, or ended up in the hands of a
student. Readers' interactions with books left physical traces, such
as wear-and-tear, bookmarks, corrections and marginal notes. They
reflect how the book was handled, what was deemed important
information, and how that information was used.

<the end>

Edited by Mark S. Harris	early-books-msg	 of