Design portfolio from the 16th century
These pages are from the Macclesfield Alphabet Book, essentially a 16th century design studio's marketing portfolio. The British Library is hoping to buy the book from its current owner, at a price of £600,000. From the CR Blog:
Produced c1500, the book is filled with designs for different styles of script, letters, initials and decorative borders. All are believed to have come from one workshop, where the book would have been used not just in ye olde pitche meetinge but also to teach assistants how to reproduce the house styles."A Designer's Portfolio, 16th Century-Style"
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Um, shouldn't they, like, not be touching the 500-year-old book with their, um, bare hands? Maybe? Just throwin' it out there.
The blog's take on this:
"Only a handful survive but the British Library has recently discovered a prime example – the so-called Macclesfield Alphabet Book."
Can be translated:
"Someone took such a bath in the market recently that they're selling the family gems."
This is awesome. I'd love to see more of this.
Maybe, just maybe, the British Library will scan it and provide the digital edition for free?
Then again, who knows what kind of lawyers are in the wings waiting to litigate and collect royalties from a 500 year old copyright...
This is the sort of thing I would like to see digitized. If the library is going to shell out the big bucks, then some of it should be spent to make this an open resource. As a digital book one would be able to zoom in and see the fine detail far better than if it were shown in a glass case. And yes, Gabu, white cotton gloves should be used when touching any fine document/book/art.
Beautiful book, but I hate it when historical documents are described using 21st century marketing terms, ie: "... 16th century design studio's marketing portfolio."
Phrases like that are loaded with a modern sensibility that would have been foreign to the creators of that book & their potential patrons. It leads people to think they are connecting with history when instead they are merely giving it modern gloss and missing the actual substance.
Sorry to be so pedantic, but I've worked in too many design studios to buy the simile.
ordulph
#3: They do that, by the way, complete with audio notes...
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html
@ Gabu
The British Library has a no-gloves policy, as do many libraries. The theory is, these things have survived hundreds of years of far clumsier handling already, and you can be more careful with bare hands than you can with gloves on.
Hey, a book of fonts! Cool!
(With apologies to no. 5).
@1 Actually, after much debate, archivists have decided that it's safer to use your bare hands. You're far more likely to tear a page while wearing gloves.
#2, dane:
...and they've already sold the Macclesfield Psalter; the Government contributed a large amount of money to keep it in the country.
I saw the Psalter at the Fitzwilliam Museum a couple of years ago- it is spectacular.
Yep. Don't take it to Walmart.
More @1: I work in a university art museum and the gloves-or-no-gloves thing is usually a stipulation of the lending institution. Most will ask for no gloves for manuscripts. A MS on vellum is little affected by hand oils; works on paper often have textured surfaces which can catch the threads of cotton gloves. Gloves are still used with other objects--particularly frames whose gilding would be affected by bare hands. I suspect that gloves continue to be used in auction houses for their theatricality (but that's just me guessing).
Hmmm...I actually have an account, but when I logged in, no comment box appeared. Hope that won't stop my comment from getting posted...I tried...and apparently did something wrong...
Anyway...
As a conservator, I would like to point out that the glove thing is not cut and dried. When I see that image, I think "are his/her hands clean?" I am a generalist, not someone who specializes in paper, or books.
Some materials are really sensitive to body oils, others not so much. It's true that lending institutions set rules about how you handle their stuff, but I would hope that those doing the handling also understand why those rules might be set. Sometimes a glove rule is enforced for everything on loan whether the specific objects being loaned are best served by it. That doesn't mean that all materials are safe to be handled bare-handed.
Those materials that are not easily damaged by body oils will accumulate lots of dirt/stains if subjected to years, decades, centuries, millenia of handling. This can obscure details/information critical to their being understood by viewers and can result in their having to undergo expensive conservation treatment.
Some artifacts/documents are covered with mould, or pesticide residues. They can include toxic pigments, or coatings. The gloves are also used protect the handler, some of whom have to touch many of these kinds of objects in their working life.
Personally, I wear cloth gloves for metals and for uncoated wood(if the piece is not so heavy that gloves will increase the risk of my dropping it!) and for semi-tanned hide pieces, if they are not heavily beaded, or quilled, or covered in powdery or lifting paint/pigment or anything else likely to catch on the gloves, for textiles, if they are not heavily embroidered, or have lifting paint, etc. and for plastics.
If the piece I am handling includes surfaces that will catch/be damaged by cloth gloves, I will switch to latex or vinyl gloves, or I will handle it as little as possible with CLEAN bare hands. I wash my hands OFTEN when handling artifacts without gloves. I always wash my hands afterwards, before eating or drinking.
I agree that cotton gloves are not always the answer. They may be used for their theatrical effect by auction house marketers. They can also be a very good idea, used in the appropriate context, and with a little thought.
Valery
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