Saturday 25 June 2016

A Flemish Miniature in 19th-Century Australia

I have recently been looking at two leaves from an extremely fine Flemish Book of Hours, in a double-sided frame, in a private collection.

Saturday 18 June 2016

Descriptions of One Manuscript or Two?

[Digital Library@Villanova University; Source]
One of the challenges of tracing a manuscript from owner to owner is to verify that it is indeed a single manuscript whose path you are following, not two or more similar ones. We can exemplify this problem by looking at the catalogue descriptions of the Villanova manuscript discussed in a recent post.

Tuesday 14 June 2016

Other Tuns as Part of a Rebus

It occurs to me that a suggestion in the previous post will only seem plausible if the reader knows how common it was for a tun to form part of a rebus, so here are a few more examples:
Rings + tun = "Ringeston" (as discussed here).

A tun in a press = Preston

Saturday 11 June 2016

A Scribal and Illuminated Rebus?

Among the digitized manuscripts at Villanova University, PA, is a very small (approx.100×70mm) 14th-century English copy of some of Augustine's works, with a single illuminated page at the beginning:
[This and other images: Digital Library@Villanova University; Source]
The thing that strikes me as most unusual about this first page is the lower border, with foliage sprouting from what looks like a hole in the side of a wooden barrel:


Tuesday 7 June 2016

"Ancient Illuminated MSS in the Library at Calveley"


My interest was aroused by the description of of a 19th-century album that will be sold next week, whose catalogue description does not have an image:
I asked the auctioneer to send me some photos, and I have just received the images. The title-page is shown above.