Illuminated

Every third Wednesday of the month Night at the California State Library occurs. A and I attended this month's presentation on Illuminated Manuscripts. From the press release, "Illuminated Manuscripts with internationally known antiquarian bookseller John Windle specializing in illuminated manuscripts, early and fine printings and illustrated books. John will be discussing the history and making of illuminated manuscripts". 

The evening always starts with refreshments. Sandwiches, several pasta salads, they had root beer floats this time, and a sheet cake that had a page from an illuminated manuscript printed on it. There is also wine, you know, if you go for that. It's pretty swanky. 

John Windle owns a bookshop in SF. Across the hall his wife has her bookshop - she specializes in children's books. Hear that, that is the sound of nothing, because my heart just stopped. Lucky kids. And they are completely adorable. He has a great british accent and wore a tie with images from an early book on it. In case you are interested in the purchase of a manuscript Mr. Windle brought along a CD catalogue of some of the items currently available...

The lecture was fantastic. He outlined the history of manuscripts and explained the process of illumination - the gold goes on first. Then he went through an example in detail - the Rosenwald Book of Hours from 1524. 

Impressive. 

Every Book of Hours began with a calendar of the months of the year - indicating the various saint's days. Days dedicated to local saints were written in gold. Holy days were indicated in red - which is where the saying "red letter day" comes from. Example from the manuscript we looked at.

The illustrations and text itself are exquisite.

This specific Book of Hours is interesting because it was actually completed after the invention of the printing press. Mr. Windle pointed out that the scribe seems to have attempted to imitate a printed book in the layout of his text. 

Because the Library of Congress is AMAZING you can actually view the entire scanned version of the book here. It was scanned by a company in Oakland, Octavo Digital Rare Books. Maybe you have $50,000-$3,000,000 sitting around that you would like to use to buy a rare manuscript - if not you can spend $19-$80 and get a PDF of the entire book. Most are under $50. That $80 - that would be for a PDF of an entire Gutenburg Bible. I do like their tagline "bringing rare books out of archival vaults and onto your desktop". Check out their website here. 

After the lecture we looked at some of the illuminated manuscripts the library has in its collection and I met the lovely gentleman who had been sitting next to me. He happened to be, in the the words of Mr. Windle, "the best bookseller in Sacramento" - thrilled to go and visit Richard's shop in the approaching future. One of my favorite moments was when A and I went to talk to Mr. Windle (on a hunch) about our book conservation classes. Remember that 1613 book M recently preserved that had cost 300K - sure enough Mr. Windle was the seller of said monograph and had requested M preform the work on behalf of the buyer. Small book world! We are going to give M Mr. Windle's greetings when we attend our next class. 

If you ever want to attend one of the Night at the State Library events - they are free. April's topic is Ansel Adams.