Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Life of Letters, a podcast exploring the history and future of calligraphy, handwriting, type design, and all things lettering.
Join me, Laura Edralin, a London based calligrapher, as I connect with artists, historians, stationery experts and more from around the world to uncover the stories behind the letters and the journeys of those who bring them to life.
In today's episode, I'm delighted to be speaking with Catherine Yvard. Catherine is curator at the National Art Library based at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She is an expert in late medieval manuscript illumination and Gothic ivory sculpture and has most recently been investigating the VA's collection of manuscript cuttings for the exhibition Fragmented Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Cuttings - what a mouthful!
[00:00:55] Speaker B: I know, I know, sorry.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: It's great. It says what it is. That's what we need.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Hopefully it will make more sense once I've explained a little bit about it.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Absolutely. Well, listen, thank you. A huge welcome to you and thank you for joining me on the podcast.
I was actually lucky enough to pop along to the V and A and meet you in person this week and there's so much to unpack and cover in this episode. But can we start at the place of the collections you look after? So what is the National Art Library?
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Yeah, so the National Art Library is an integral part of the Victoria and Albert Museum and it is a public library. So it's open to anyone to join and consult our collections, citing collections that really are wide ranging. So we have an amazing collection of fine book bindings, but also like book bindings that represent like different techniques and they're not necessarily high end, but they just represent how you made a book at different times and places and the art of illustration as well. But also like early books involved actually writing them out. And so we have collections of manuscripts, so handwritten books and hand illuminated, so hand illustrated.
And then this continues into the modern period. There are like, there is a big revival of manuscript illumination in the 19th century, so really extensive collections of these more modern manuscripts.
We have also examples like of early printing and again, that is like a component of bookmaking and charts like the making of the books and the design of the book over time.
But yeah, so it's quite a wide ranging collection and we have such collections of like alphabets, for instance, from different periods, manuals also of calligraphy. And the collections have always been meant to inspire practitioners and so this is kind of the ethos of the va. So the Victoria and Albert Museum, from its foundation, really, and the reading rooms, as you saw them date from the 1880s.
So the library moved from one place of the museum to a new place because the collections were growing so much and we needed to accommodate them.
And so now when you come and register with the library, you can actually just study in those 19th century spaces. And I think it's really inspiring, as well as having amazing things to look at, you also are in historic rooms. Yeah, it's.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: It's incredible. It's a beautiful, beautiful building. Just go for the architecture. But then if you want to get into everything, stay for the books. Stay for the books. Exactly.
It's. It's an incredible space and a huge resource, which I think I certainly feel like I've. I've. This is relatively new to me, given that I'm living in London.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: But it's a. It's a fantastic space that people can access and I think it's brilliant that the collections are just constant, constantly growing. I mean, you can feel the history in the room, can't you, when you're in there? And it's just incredible in terms of your role as a curator. So in my head, I presume that it's all about kind of finding similar artifacts or curating collections of things that kind of sit together. But in this case, it's your kind of area of specialism is kind of manuscripts and putting them together so that people can explore, study, see them. Is that along the right lines?
[00:05:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's quite wide because obviously the spectrum of artifacts that we have in the collection is really wide. And so thankfully I have some colleagues who have complementing knowledge. And so because it ranges from the Middle Ages, so like our earliest book would be about 11th century, so 1025 to 1050, and it's a gospel book. And then to the present day. And our collections, as you say, are growing. So we acquire still today to represent bookmaking at its best in the present day and age.
So it is really wide and the job is very diverse. So my main aim is to make the collections better known through. So it can be through organized visits in the library. So I would also publish on the collections, on aspects of the collections, whether it is in blog posts or creating new content for the VA website, or like, sometimes it can be videos. And then we also lend to exhibitions around the country, but also internationally because we have over 200 of our books on display throughout the museum. It means that there is also an element of, like, we need to take care of these collections, both in storage, but also on display and of course on display. They're more vulnerable because they are more exposed to the light. And so we try and mitigate this by turning pages by doing what we call rotations, which means that we will swap a book for another, and then it means that we have to change the label and, you know.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: It always is more convoluted and more complicated than you might think originally.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: Absolutely. I love it. It's a real insight into the kind of the detailed tasks of what you will do. So can you tell us a bit about the manuscripts that you've studied and curated? What do the collections consist of? And what ways do you feel they can kind of be of interest to calligraphers or people just interested in typography or making books?
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So in terms of manuscripts, so we have a whole side of our collections which is documentary manuscripts, but the. In terms of decorated manuscripts and manuscripts that will have. Yeah, illumination that is like decoration, that is using not only pigments and, you know, but like colors, but also gold.
The strength of our collection is actually in the 15th century, but that is reflecting also the fact that by that point, the manuscript production has got much larger.
More people have access to books and there's more texts as well available and that need to be copied. And so there is a kind of exponential production of manuscripts throughout the Middle Ages. And the earlier examples are rarer, and that makes sense because fewer people use books in the earlier period.
And the Middle Ages is a period that spans many, many centuries. You know, it's usually defined from the 500s, like the kind of end of the Roman Empire, and then all the way to the 1500s. And so it's. It's a very, very long period.
And what I'm more knowledgeable about is really that later period. So, like the 15th century and early 16th century, when you have a production of manuscripts that overlaps with a production of printed books, because from the mid 15th century in Western Europe begin to be printed with movable type, which is really a revolution in terms of how books are made. And so these manuscripts have very different aesthetics depending on where they have been made.
And the museum didn't start collecting the books really in earnest. Some were bought in the late 19th century, and some fantastic ones that will have decorated letters and what is called historiated letters. It means that they have their letters that enclose little things, scenes or characters, figures that relate to the text that they are introducing.
And so it's like little paintings inside the letters.
And they're absolutely amazing.
And so we have quite a good selection of Those and then in the early 20th century we acquired much more because we benefited from a gift and a bequest of collections from collectors, British collectors.
And so our collections grew from there.
And you can find, I mean we can share links after the session, but you can find quite a lot of images of these manuscripts online and so you can get a sense of what they look like.
And then when I, and then, you know, if we want to kind of follow on that spectrum of illuminated manuscripts.
You do have a resurgence of illuminated manuscripts in the 19th century with the revival of manuscript illumination as a hobby in the later 19th century. You really have, it's part of that Gothic revival and you know, the, the interest in, in anything medieval grows and, and becomes more democratized if you, if you like in the, in the later 19th century. And it's reflected in journals for instance that, and manuals, loads of manuals are create, are, are published in, in the UK to give recipes and advice on how to put together your, how to apply your silver, how to apply your gold, how to mix your pigments so that to make your paints in order to create your very own illuminated letters.
It's often not the full, I mean there are also like guides on calligraphy, but often people who are more interested in the letter forms are going to be going one way and then people who are more interested in the pictorial side of the letters then are kind of focusing on that because they're quite distinct like skills. And even in the medieval period you can have certain manuscripts, especially in the early period which are illustrated or that have the ornaments done by the scribe. But it's more, as you go on and the illumination becomes much more elaborate then you have a specialization in that illumination.
So the scribes are distinct individuals. Like they're not going to touch anything to do with the decorated letter. So they will write out the text first on the pre prepared page. It will have been ruled for them to write on, but they will leave the space for the empty space for the illuminator to then come in and do the more pictorial. Yeah. Letter.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: Gosh, probably better that way around.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: You don't want to ruin, you know, get halfway through the calligraphy and think, oh, I've spelled something wrong that the painter's gonna have to come and you know, recreate the illuminated letter.
So from the sort of pages that I've seen that you've shared with me and that I've seen at the, at the museum and in the library, I, I, I have in my head these sort of large capital letters. At the beginning or the top of a page before kind of the rest of the body of the text comes down the page. But I've also seen moments where there's sort of capitals letters just sort of brought out slightly. So is that still the sort of illumination process?
[00:14:21] Speaker B: Yeah, you have to think about. So these books are made by hand from, from scratch, and then they're written on parchment. So it's, it's animal skin, it's usually calf, but it can be goats as well. That goat is quite common in, in Italy, for instance. It depends what you have.
You know what you have.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Which animals are around.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. And.
And, yeah, and so the, the leaves are going to be ruled so that the, the text can be. Can be written by the scrib team of scribes.
And they can be, you know, the, the leaves can be shared out between different scribes to speed up the process. And you can see sometimes from one section to another, a change in hand. And that's quite common.
And from the outset, because it will be known what text is going on, these.
They will know what the divisions are in the text. And so whether it is the Bible or whether it is a prayer book. Because these early manuscripts tend to be. The vast majority is of a really. With a religious content, Catholic, Christian content.
There are non. You know, there are secular manuscripts, but they come in a little bit later. Or you have also like classical texts that are being copied throughout the period. And so, so you do have, like works by Seneca or Pliny remain in, you know, they, they are copied over the period. And that's, that's how we still, we know these texts, because they were, they have survived to this day.
And in manuscripts, you don't have, you don't have typically page numbers or leaf numbers, like folio numbers, what we call foliage numbers, which are just on the, on the front of each page, rather than having a leaf is.
If it's foliated, it will say like, this is leaf one, and then next leaf will be leaf two.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: And the leaf is a double page, front and back. Yeah.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: So there will be one rectangle, recto and one verso.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: And then the next one will be two. Two recto and two verso. Whereas if it's paginated, it's page one, page two, page three, page four.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: Got you.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: And you don't have that in. In manuscripts. So your way of navigating in the book is usually just based on the decoration because, you know, you can if it has, like, if it's illuminated with what is called miniatures, like little paintings.
Then it will have scenes and it will kind of tell you where you are. There are also to direct you rubrics. So they're like writing in a different color, usually in red, which is kind of ornamental.
And it picks it out and kind of brings it to your attention and it tells you that this is where the previous sections ends and where the next section begins and it announces what is coming next. And then usually you will have a more ornate initial at the beginning of this text. And so depending on the types of text, there are kind of traditions of picking out certain sections, giving more prominence to particular sections. And then if they are more important, then they get a bigger initial. So that's how it works.
So there is a hierarchy in the decoration, and the larger ones signal like, this is important, this is an important section. And then the smaller ones are maybe the paragraphs. And of course, it will depend on how deep the pockets were of the people who were paying for the manuscripts. Oh, yeah, of course. Because the commissioners would have also say depending on. Yeah.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: How much money and how long it's going to take.
[00:18:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And it all depends on the function of the book. Because if it's a book that has a kind of ostentatious function, if it's used in the liturgy in church, it's a way of like, you know, giving, claiming the status of this particular, say, monastic community, or, you know, if there's a lot of gold. And often, like, those ones even have like, amazing bindings. And so, even closed, they are so imposing and so awe inspiring that.
Yeah. And. And when you're talking about, like, really, like large initials, so obviously the size of the initials will also depend relatively on the size of the book. And so when you have a really large book, such as a choir book, which was meant to be sung from in church, and you would have like, full sets of them in the churches because, like, they needed to cover the whole liturgical year, like, so all the offices, the Masses, you know, so these are designed to be. They have music in them and they are designed to be. To be sung from, from, like, by a group of people. So they need to be big and they need to have the music big as well, because they need to see. To see this at a distance, you know, when they're standing in the choir.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: And so.
So there is. You always have to keep in mind the function of the book when you're looking at it, because it's.
Prayer books tend to be much smaller because it. It reflects like a personal Devotional practice. And so you hold them in your hands and. And they're just. They're tiny usually, or like they're, you know, just kind of pocket size. But. Yeah, but the. But the choir books can be 50 centimeters high. And.
And so they're. They're absolutely. They take two people to carry, especially when they have.
When they have metal fittings. And the metal fittings also had a function because, like, you would put the book on the lectern, on the wooden lectern in the. In the church, and the metal fittings would have, like, little projections along the edges so that the leather would not. And also along the front and back so that the leather would not rub against the wooden lectern so it would protect the corners and the surface.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: They thought of everything.
[00:21:14] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they did.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: And there was something you told me when I came to see you, because I said, oh, everybody's got their books out and they've got these special cushions that kind of hold certain books, and obviously a lot of them are quite fragile. And I was thinking, nobody's wearing white gloves.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: I know. And then I went, no, no white gloves.
Because there is an expectation, really, like, from the wider public that one should handle old books or manuscripts with gloves on. And it really is not the way forward.
It's basically, it's. It's. I mean, you. You do need gloves if you. If you're. The books that you're handling have some metal parts, like, so clasps, like these little metal fittings that were designed to keep the book closed are usually made of metal or corner pieces that decorate the binding, or sometimes the binding is entirely made of metal. And in. In which case you do need gloves, but we don't use cotton gloves because they just.
They accumulate the dust, really. And. And they're very hard to keep. To keep clean.
And.
And so we. We use. We use some. Some more like surgical gloves, which are used only like, once and then. And then disposed off. Yeah. I mean, we try to get them recycle.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: But, yeah, and the reason why we don't choose gloves for paper or parchment is that it makes you clumsy.
And really, there's nothing better than clean hands. So what we do is that we have little wipes that are available at our special collections desk, and people can use them to clean their hands before accessing something that really needs special attention.
But, yeah, it's.
[00:23:16] Speaker A: It's myth busting. I love it.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: And actually that comes on really nicely to kind of talking about the tools and the materials, because as you mentioned, this is, this is kind of pre printing press. Right. So they were writing what with what looks like a kind of broad edge pen.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: You would know better than me.
But yes, they had quills. Yeah, they had, they were using feather feathers and then for the illumination they were using different types of brushes. Sometimes extremely thin, like you know, the single hair. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they would have been using also magnifying glasses, you know, because in some cases it's, it's so minute that you, you would, you would need something to magnify the ear. So that would be kind of lens or glasses also. I can't remember when they're invented. But you, you do have glasses in the medieval, medieval period. So you see, you see little figures.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: So it's not just that our eyesight has got really, really bad because to be able to create that, that level of detail. Yeah, incredible. And so the paper you've mentioned in terms of animal skin, parchment.
[00:24:37] Speaker B: So it's not paper. So paper. Paper.
[00:24:40] Speaker A: I say paper.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: Yeah, you say paper. So, so paper is not parchment. Parchment is, is automatically it's animal skin.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: Paper is made initially from rags and, and, and then, and then from wood and but that's, that's kind of later.
So, but the, but the parchment throughout the period, like into the, into the early 16th century and even in the modern period actually you still use parchment because you, I think you get quite good results with illumination and gold on parchment. And maybe also there's an element of doing it in the same way as they were doing it in the medieval period because there is this sense of emulating the kind of monastic practice.
So. And yeah, a lot of the people who make manuscripts in the, in the late 19th century, then also there is, there is a religious element. Often you kind of. So yeah, so the parchment is, can be calf skin or goat skin or more rarely like other types of skin. But, but yeah, it's, it's mainly goat and calf and it's prepared in such a way that you, you have to, to let the, the skin soak in, in a lime kind of solution that, that makes the flesh and the. Sorry for any, anyone vegetarian or to, to get the flesh and the hair kind of to, to detach from the skin and so it's left to steep in this, in this lime solution for, for a bit and then, and then it's stretched on a frame and scraped and stretched and scraped and until it gets this really smooth and sometimes often translucent, translucent texture. And you can see, I mean we can provide links to some videos that we did. But you can see like my fingers, you know, through, like if you're holding it against the light. And depending on the quality of the parchment, it can be extremely thin. Like in the 13th century, you have production of.
Of Bibles that contain the whole. The whole text of the Bible in one volume. And they're small and, and they managed to pack it all in with a very small script, but also with very high quality parchment that is really thin. So.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: So they're aiming for super thin.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Because they want the Bible to be.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: Portable so it's lighter and easier.
[00:27:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the early Bibles are like. Yeah, yeah.
[00:27:30] Speaker A: And then the inks and paint and things. Were they kind of making their own ink are this.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: Yes, yeah, they would be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the most common in the medieval period is. Is for the. The black ink to use iron. Iron gall ink, which is. Is like.
It's like a disease that develops on. On oaks some. It's a special type of wasp which is called a gall gall wasp.
The wasp lays its eggs in the growing bud of the tree and then a bowl kind of grows around the larva and it feeds from that bowl. But then it was discovered that also if you were using that bowl actually and grinding it, then it created this black substance that you could then mix with. With a, like a gum of some sort, like a kind of binding agent. And then. And then you could use it as a. As a writing ink. And that is the most common.
Wow.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: And that sounds incredibly rare to find the way you've described it, but.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: No, no, no, no, no, it's not actually. It's not. You find it once, you know, like you find it actually in nature. You see it and you see these little bowls and you think, oh, I know what this is, you know, so. But I've never. I've never tried myself to make it. I'd love to go on a. On an illumination course, like, to where they teach you how to assemble the pigments together and. Yeah.
And for the pigments, the different colors come from mineral origins or plants. It's a mixture and sometimes animal as well, but to a lesser extent.
And so for instance, the blues are usually azurite, so it's a ground stone.
A more expensive blue would be lapis lazuli, and that would have to come from further away and so would be more expensive.
But you also find sometimes when. Because it's possible now to analyze these and to find out, like, what is what, like if it has a blue pigment used. And then you can, you can actually see that sometimes they used an under layer of azurite and then, and then lapis isolate on the, on the top or, you know, it really depends.
Verdigris was used for greens or malachite. So verdigris, it comes from oxidized metals like brass, copper. Right. And you get the powder off of this.
And then malachite is a stone that you grind and the grinding is a really important stage. I think it really determines the quality of your pigment as well.
And there's always a binding element. So it can be egg white or egg yolk or some animal glues.
And in terms of the gold leaf, you can have. So in the early period, you have more, it's more gold leaf as opposed to liquid, liquid gold or shell gold, which is used more in the modern period and later Middle Ages and early Renaissance.
And so for gold leaf, well, as you know, I guess you would, you would use a bowl, like to kind of prepare the parchment to receive the gold leaf and make, make a kind of adhesive surface.
And that is usually done with a kind of white plaster.
And actually it can be also a kind of orangey color. And that is more in Italian manuscripts. And you see when the gold has flaked off, that the support of the gold is, is a warmer color. And it also then gives a tinge to the, to the gold because it makes it a warmer, warmer gold compared to the white.
And then you burnish it. So to make it really with a ductus or to make it really shiny.
And so, so that's how it would be done.
But yeah, I'd love to learn just to kind of do a hands on session to understand.
And there is quite a lot online, again, like if you want to learn more about it. But basically what I exhibited during this show was not so much integral manuscripts, like bound manuscripts, but bits from the manuscripts. So like cuttings, so fragments cut out of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. And that is something that starts happening quite early on, but really takes off in the 19th century because many of the manuscripts were liturgical. They would have been like, say, the choir books were no longer used in the communities that they had been made for. And also with the wave of secularization that happens in the early 19th century and even like starting in the late 18th century, you've got a lot of those manuscripts are like kind of disposed of or just seized and gathered and will go into what will become public libraries. But during this moment of turmoil, and a lot of those manuscripts are ending up on the market.
And they are not so much valued for their content because it's completely obsolete. And many people don't understand they're written in Latin and they don't really speak to anyone. Many of those. I mean, all of the ones for the liturgy were written in Latin.
And so they get caught up and they're more like they're interesting to people for their artistry, for the ornaments that they have.
And sometimes, you know, an initial in a choir book can be really large because relatively, you know, it's. It might be this size, you know, and so you can frame it, you can put it on your wall or you can put it in an album, if you're interested in Italian painting. And you think, oh, actually, that's an interesting example of an early painting. And so even though it's a letter, it completely loses its. Its context and is just.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: It's a piece in itself, isn't it, because of the. Where it's been created? Yeah, yeah. Incredible.
This is a really interesting period of time, isn't it? Because that, that. That's a complete change of the function of them. But also, I guess people. People's value of them are changing, so they're becoming desirable, but by. By changing what they began as.
So you're getting these fragmented manuscript cuttings, which then become pieces of art, and then. But there's still some. Obviously, plenty of whole, full manuscripts surviving, which is brilliant.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: And holy manuscripts. Manuscripts with holes in them as well.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: Holy and whole. Holy. Oh, God.
[00:35:01] Speaker B: Because sometimes they dispose completely, completely of the manuscript, and sometimes they didn't.
Okay.
[00:35:06] Speaker A: Which is also kind of interesting for us.
[00:35:08] Speaker B: It's fascinating, isn't it? Yeah.
[00:35:10] Speaker A: And along the way, have you discovered any particular manuscripts or cuttings or anything? Have you got any favorites in the collection or anything kind of unusual that you weren't expecting to find?
[00:35:24] Speaker B: Well, when I was working on the.
On the show. On the fragmented illuminations show, the museum in the 19th century, so bought many of those cuttings. I mean, we have over 2,000. So imagine.
And so it was. It was hard to choose from for the show. But we also bought some copies because these were meant to inspire people and provide models.
Copies were often as good as originals, you know, if we had gaps in the.
And so we bought many copies. And I wanted also to have some copies showing in the show because that was part of the story.
And when I was going through these boxes. So they're kind of. They're kept in the. They're not in the library. They are accessible through the prints and drawings Study room. But you can request to see. To see some of these, and they're fascinating.
And when I was going through books, boxes of copies, I came across a miniature, so a little painting showing a woman painting at an easel in a little kind of room that looked like 15th century.
And I was quite struck because I was thinking, I don't think this is a copy.
And reading a bit more about it, I found out who we got it from and when. Like, we had bought it in 1856. So we've got some good institutional records for many of these.
And, and it was. It was bought as. As a copy with a question mark.
So they weren't quite sure what they were buying, but they got. Got it anyway.
And, and, and then I was really intrigued because to me it really looks like something that could have been painted in the, in the late 15th century, like, you know, 1460s.
It looked French to me. And, and there was an inscription on it which said Irene.
And so, so I was like that. That kind of.
It just figures like, I think it belongs to a literary manuscript.
And when I started doing some research, I realized that actually it had come from a copy of Boccaccio's work on famous women. So it's a bit too misogynistic to be kind of claimed as.
But it was his attempt at like, praising different women, like, across centuries.
And so this Irene was supposed to be a very talented painter. Painter even. Even though she was a woman.
And, and she, she was the daughter of. Of a painter called Kratinus, and she's supposed to have lived in, In Greece. I mean, it's a kind of mythical story. It's not. It's a legend. Okay. But he was.
So he dedicated a chapter to her and, And I thought, well, it would figure if this miniature came from a copy of this book.
And then I found the book that it had come from because there is a much depleted copy dating from the 1460s, painted in Paris, matching the style in terms of the.
Because there are remaining miniatures in there. There's remaining illumination.
And so it's in New York, in the public library in New York.
And I reading the, you know, about like, different surviving copies of Boccaccio's work. I was able to locate this copy and then thought, oh, this is looking very promising.
And, and yes, and it has come from a section that is now missing several leaves, so on either side, like, yeah, I. It's not. It doesn't have like, the neatly cut out page where I could put my.
But it does. It it is, it matches completely, like in terms of the, of the style, but also the size of the miniature because the miniatures would have been the same more or less the same size across the manuscript. And so, so, yeah, so that was really exciting. And I'm, I'm currently writing an article kind of telling that whole story.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: Oh my goodness.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: Because it was just. Yeah. And so actually you can be lucky. Sometimes the original actually survives, the source manuscript survives.
But that was a eureka moment. I was like, yes, very exciting.
[00:40:22] Speaker A: Incredible, incredible.
How can people find out more about medieval manuscripts? I know we talked about the library. Obviously they can come and access the reading rooms and obviously not everybody's lucky enough to be based in London down the road and, you know, someone like me still doesn't take advantage of it. But you've got an incredible resource online as well, haven't you? So people can.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: Yeah, so, I mean, yeah, so that there are, there are images of our manuscripts. Not all of them, but some of them are on Explore the Collections, which is the museum's database. And so you can see images of them there.
If you want to have a stronger sense of what we have, like in a more complete sense of what we have in terms of illuminated manuscripts in the library's collection, you can look at a massive book, which I'm sure a library near you will have. But there is a three volume catalog written by my predecessor, a catalog of all of the Western illuminated manuscripts in the collection. And that goes, that goes even into the early 20th century, I believe.
So you've got quite a lot there.
But more generally, I mean, there has been a flourishing of online resources on illuminated manuscripts in the last, say 20 years.
So most major libraries will have a lot of their manuscripts fully digitized.
Unfortunately, the British Library ones are no longer accessible, but you can still access, for instance, the ones at the Bibliotheque Nationale in France.
Not all of them, but many of them are on accessible and you can zoom in and look in great detail. So it's amazing.
Yeah.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: Do we know the kind of script style and are they different scripts? Do you, can you identify the different scripts that come from different places?
[00:42:47] Speaker B: Yes. So I mean, I'm not a specialist like a paleographer, so I'm not a historian of handwriting, so I can't read in terms of like, define like the hands and as well as a paleographer, but you can identify the script definitely. And, and there are so throughout the. So the medieval period is a really long period, as I was saying. So you have different scripts kind of coming into use and then falling out of use and leading to other, other scripts or morphing into other scripts. And so I guess the script that is most associated with the Middle Ages would be the Gothic script, which is very driven by verticals. And so it's quite difficult to read these days because a U will look very much like an N or an I will be like just these repeated strokes. And it can be more or less spiky or more or less like vertical, more or less cursive. You can have a slightly cursive Gothic script as well. So you'll have variations. And the spikier, usually the, the more northern it is.
You know, I'm giving very broad strokes here.
[00:44:07] Speaker A: Broad strokes is good. More than I have in my mind.
[00:44:10] Speaker B: So yeah, around, around the Gothic is usually associated with Italian Gothic. Okay.
And then.
And so the Gothic script is, is very much like, you know, from the, the 13th to the 15th century, really like the kind of main script. But from the 14th century onwards you, you have a movement which is called the humanist movement, which, which is born in Italy but then spreads beyond the peninsula. And it is a movement of people that are really interested in anything to do with classical writings and classical texts. So whether it's from Greek or Roman antiquity. And they are basically scouring libraries around Europe and trying to retrieve texts that they did not know by classical authors and making copies of them and sharing them amongst them. And there's circles of these people. There's a lot of literature around humanism and Renaissance humanism.
And there is a script linked to this because they are also passionate about what the folk looks like. And so they are kind of determining at that point very much the, the aesthetic of the book that we use now because the script that they develop is, is much more legible.
The letters, the words are more like spaced out and the letters are closer to what we know. So I guess for, for us then they're a bit less distant than if you come across something that is written in Gothic script.
Yeah.
[00:46:05] Speaker A: What's lovely is so for this series we've got this sort of overarching theme of community. And I think you've just covered that in such a lovely way. The fact that obviously books are, are often community centered. So there's a, there's a reason behind it that is going out into the world and sharing the information or the content in the book and bringing people together quite often, whether that's for religious reasons or sharing of information about, as you say, sort of recipes and instruct documents. But also this idea that people were gathering these collections, you know, previous to what we do now as the library is operating and really collecting and curating all of these incredible works from all over the place. But this idea that it's, it's sharing this knowledge in such a wide way for so many people to access, and I love that that's what obviously you and the team at the National Art Library do and at the VA and all of these lovely institutions, which is just. It's incredible.
[00:47:12] Speaker B: Yeah. It's important to stress that it's open to everyone. And I think it's really amazing to think that you can make an appointment and say, I want to see these. You know, you would have found them on the museum website and you would give the list of what you wanted see and, and it will be there for you to see, you know, and for. And for the library.
Most of our collections are requestable online.
I mean, in the sense that you book them online and then you come on the day that you plan to come. But for Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, because they are a little bit more fragile, or we, we, we kind of arrange an appointment. So. But you just get in touch with us and you explain why you, you need to have access to this one in particular.
[00:48:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:06] Speaker B: I should stress for people who are either like, in the vicinity of London or traveling to London at some point, there are many of our collections that are on display throughout the museum. So.
So they can find many of those Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in the Medieval and Renaissance galleries, but also in the British galleries.
[00:48:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: And then, yeah, any, any books that are on display in the. Throughout the museum is likely to have come from the library. There's a few exceptions, but. But most of the books will have come from. From us.
And so it gives you an insight into what we have. And some are shown for their binding as well, that they might be shown closed.
[00:48:47] Speaker A: Well, to find out more about you as well. So you can obviously connect with Catherine on Instagram. Instagram at Cyvard, so Cvard and at the VA Museum, obviously, if you wanted to follow all the things happening there at VA Museum.
And then we will put some links to sort of general inquiries, how to join the library or any questions. All in the links there'll be images and all the details will be in today's episode show Notes. But I just want to say a very, very, very big thank you to Katherine. Thank you so much for joining me today. It has been an absolute pleasure and such an incredible amount of information. I mean.
[00:49:33] Speaker B: Too much.
Sorry.
[00:49:36] Speaker A: No, it's fascinating. It's fascinating. And to hold all that knowledge as one person is incredible. Be able to just answer all my sudden questions is. Is lovely. So thank you.
[00:49:48] Speaker B: I hope it inspires people to. Yeah.
And. Or to. To find also, if you're far away, just find similar resources near you. Because the beauty of manuscripts is that they're everywhere.
So there are. There are libraries with ancient manuscripts everywhere.
And, and I mean everywhere. So.
So they may have different policies in terms of access, but you can find out and there's no harm in asking.
[00:50:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Lovely. Oh, thank you so much for joining me, Catherine.
[00:50:21] Speaker B: No, thank you. Thank you for inviting me along.
[00:50:24] Speaker A: Thank you so much for listening. If you're enjoying the podcast, please subscribe, leave a review, or share it with a fellow lettering enthusiast. And for all the details to connect with us, check out the show notes. A huge thank you to my producer, Heidi Cullop, for ensuring that this podcast reached your ears. And finally, to all the guests featured in this series, go check them out.
