Making Manuscripts

As a follow-up to my last post about the Strahov Monastery and the history of libraries, I wanted to post an excellent video from the J. Paul Getty Museum, "Making Manuscripts" - one of many informative videos about "Making Art" from their website - and a couple more of my photos from Prague.  

I was lucky enough to see examples of beautiful parchment-bound books in the Theological Hall at the  Strahov Monastery Library in Prague.

The parchment binding with a slotted spine, a style seen commonly in Italian bindings of the 16th-17th centuries, gives the books a ghostly appearance, don't you think?

The short documentary below starts with the ancient process of making parchment, and then reveals the beauty of how Medieval illuminated manuscripts were made.

Whether or not you're a book lover, I think you'll find this video fascinating!  And teachers and homeschoolers will count it as a great resource for their students.  



Pre-Internet!  We just have to open a new "window" or "tab" - they had a rotating table of little bookshelves for their texts!
I want to share one more photo with you from my visit to Prague: on the right-hand side of the Theological Hall, there was a 'compilation wheel', commissioned by the library in 1678 and used to compile texts.

The scribe had the various sources he was using distributed over the shelves of the wheel. The planet mechanism means that when turned, its shelves were kept at the same angle so the books are not liable to fall. (Notice more of the parchment bound books in the background).