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20 Jun

The best box-makers in France (which means imo the best box-makers anywhere) are Atelier Moura in Lyon. They're *extremely* slow, very expensive, and their work is incomparable. This box, for a rare 15th century Druze manuscript, has the Druze star inlaid in multicolored morocco.

The Druze largely avoid iconography, but use 5 colors ("5 Limits" خمس حدود khams ḥudūd) as a religious symbol: green, red, yellow, blue, and white. Each color represents a metaphysical power called ḥadd, literally "a limit", a distinction that separate humans from animals. 1/

Each ḥadd is color-coded as follows:
Green for ʻAql "the Universal Mind/Intelligence/Nous",
Red for Nafs "the Universal Soul/Anima mundi",
Yellow for Kalima "the Word/Logos",
Blue for Sabiq "the Potentiality/Cause/Precedent", and
White for Tali "the Future/Effect/Immanence". 2/

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Incunabula

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19 Jun

Hebrew palaeography help needed!
I'm trying to better localize and date these two leaves from a large Masoretic bible, and would very much appreciate the opinion of some of the Hebrew paleographers here. They have been tentatively dated to the late 11th or early 12th century. 1/

The leaves were recovered from the binding of a 16th century German book. The angular script has been compared with the Aragonese bible codex, once Valmadonna, MS. 2, which is circa 1100 CE, although that hand has a noticeable leftwards slope which is not present here. 2/

Here is the reverse of both leaves (they are in a double sided frame, so the versos are slightly obscured by the mount).
Any help or thoughts from some of the Hebrew manuscripts experts here would be very much appreciated! 3/

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16 Jun

Jakob Jakobsen's "An Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland", published in two vols in 1928 & 1932, still stands as the unrivalled source book of information on the origins & usage of the now extinct Norn language. The work first appeared in Danish in 4 vols. 1/

Dr. Jakob (Jákup) Jakobsen, (1864 - 1918), was a Faroese linguist and scholar of literature. His "Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland" was based on Jakobsen's fieldwork in Shetland during 1893-95 and first appeared in Danish in four volumes between 1908 and 1921. 2/

Norn is a North Germanic language once spoken in Orkney & Shetland until the islands were pledged to Scotland by Norway in 1468–69, after which it was gradually replaced by Scots. Norn became extinct in 1850, after the death of Walter Sutherland the last known native speaker. 3/

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Incunabula

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16 Jun

1000 trees have been planted in a forest near Oslo, which will supply paper for books to be printed in 100 years time. Between now and then, one writer every year will contribute a text, with the writings held in trust, unpublished, until the year 2114. 1/
theguardian.com/books/2019/may…

The author, poet, and literary critic Margaret Atwood was the first writer to contribute to the project, in 2014. The British novelist David Mitchell followed as 2015’s author, and the celebrated Icelandic novelist Sjón was Future Library’s contributing author for 2016. 2/

The Future Library is a collaboration between the conceptual artist Katie Paterson and the new Deichmanske Bibliotek in Oslo, where a special wood-lined room has been built to display the manuscripts, unread, for the next 100 years. 3/

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Incunabula

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7 Jun

A simply astonishing object: a reliquary tableau with five illuminated miniatures, a papal Agnus Dei wax seal of Pope Sixtus V, and twelve intact saints’ relics (bone and wood fragments) sewn on to the surface with silver and gold thread. 1/

The miniatures are Southern Netherlandish, painted circa 1500-20 and likely cut from a Book of Hours. The tableau itself was assembled in Spain (perhaps Andalusia) in circa 1590. It measures 23.8 x 18 cm overall; the wax seal 4.6 x 3.5 cm; the miniatures circa 7 x 5 cm. 2/

The tableau is made from ink & gilding on parchment (the miniatures), bones & wood (the saints' relics), wax recovered from the previous year's Easter candles (the Agnus Dei seal) and coiled silver & gold wire, blue glass beads & yellow silk on linen, stiffened with size. 3/

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7 Jun

Ιστορικοεθνολογικός Άτλας της Μακεδονίας / Αρχαία και Βυζαντινή εποχή [Historical-Ethnological Atlas of Macedonia / Ancient and Byzantine], Polychromatic Press of J. D. Nerantzis, Leipzig, 1903. 1/

This highly unusual work, a grand artistic and calligraphic celebration of the historical golden age of Greek hegemony in Macedonia, was the product of the eccentric mind of the Russo-Greek historian Iaonnis Petrof [Ivan Petrov] (1849 – 1922). 2/

Petrof showcases the grandeur of the Ancient Greek and Byzantine eras, in the hope that this will be enough to totally overshadow the subsequent history of the region, largely dominated by non-Greek peoples, and so anchor the contemporary Hellenic claim to Macedonia. 3/

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