Monday, June 3, 2019

Golden Dragons: some recycled manuscript fragments?

I have long been interested in the recycling of manuscripts and early printed books. In truth, I'm also interested in the recycling of more recent books and textual materials, but I can't help being fascinated with those items that have survived the longest, even when they survive only as fragments.


"REGLE": pasted-in cut-outs? (Note how
the G appears to be inverted)
As a rule, recycled items were valued for something other than the words they contained: binding fragments were generally used as strengtheners, their vellum more substantial than paper. Sometimes paper incunabula pages were pasted together to make boards (pasteboards, I'd call them). 

When I get such items, however, I generally do my best to attend once more to the textual component: I try to read these fragments, and in the case of manuscript items, I often use what I know of paleography to date and localize the fragments and texts. 

In a recent purchase, however, I've come across some bits that look to me like recycled fragments of medieval manuscripts, but most of my tools for reading them and dating them fail: where there is a textual component, it is made up only of capital letters--which are not well treated in the paleographical resources I use most often. And other bits are pure decoration: gold dragons. 




And yet it seems likely that these can be dated: my best guess from what I see here is a date perhaps in the 1300s, perhaps from France (or Germany?). But I'd be happy to be corrected, or guided to a better sense of them.




All of these pieces, both letters and dragons, stand a bit above the surface of the paper pages they appear on: I think they are cut from another book and mounted here. But the nature of gold manuscript additions has sometimes involved a palpably thick buildup of material upon the page surface as preparation for receiving the gold: so I'm not 100% certain these are recycled at all. But I'm pretty.




Whatever these are, they are such fun! 



Note that the decorative blue dots and red tongues have been added at the time of remounting these pieces, and they are not part of the original dragons. Also, the dragons may originally have been oriented vertically, in the side margin, though in their current use, they are horizontal, as I've shown them. 





1 comment:

  1. Wonderful find, and very fun.

    Little typo: "involved a palpably think buildup"

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