chd.dk is offline

EDIT 16 June 2015: Someone has apparently paid to extend the registration for another 12 months, and the site is active again.

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Erik Drigsdahl's registration of his domain, chd.dk, has expired.

The details on the Danish whois site read:

I downloaded a copy of the site recently using wget, and copies are archived at Archive.org's Wayback Machine. This should suffice for the time being.

I will be visiting Copenhagen in July to meet with Erik's Executor, and anticipate being able to obtain his original files, and make the entire site available again, although perhaps not at the chd.dk address.

Erik Drigsdahl (1942–2015)

[Source]

There can hardly be a student of illuminated manuscripts that does not know, and has not benefited from, the website of Erik Drigsdahl at www.chd.dk. His online tools and guides for identifying the liturgical Use of Books of Hours has perhaps contributed more to the accurate localisation of manuscripts, and thus their earliest provenance, than any other resource.

Erik Drigsdahl, London, 2009

A Fourth Leo X Cutting

I'm too busy to do proper blog-posts at the moment, but here's a recent find, relating to the previous posts here, here, and here.

From Maggs, European Miniatures and Illumination: Bulletin No.6 (London, n.d. [between 1966 and 1971]), no.44

A Cutting Attributed to Jacquemart de Hesdin in Los Angeles

A series of cutting of calendar scenes attributed to Jacquemart de Hesdin was recently sold at Christie's.

They had previously been sold as part of the collection of Daniel Burckhardt-Wildt (1759–1819), at Sotheby's, 25 April 1983, lot 100, together with three larger miniatures (lot 99), doubtless from the same parent volume:

Robert de Ormesby, sub-prior of Norwich?

The Bishop of Norwich and Robert de Ormesby (?)
(Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 366, fol.9v (Beatus page, detail).

The Ormesby Psalter, one of the greatest treasures of English manuscript illumination, is so-called because of its flyleaf inscription stating that it was the Psalter of brother Robert de Ormesby, monk of Norwich, assigned by him to the choir of the church of the Holy Trinity, Norwich [i.e. the cathedral] to lie before the sub-prior in perpetuity:

"[P]salterium fratris Roberti de Or-
mesby monachi Norwyc[ensis] per eunde[m]
assignatu[m] choro eccl[es]ie s[an]c[t]e Trinitatis
Norwici ad iacendu[m] coram Supp[ri]ore
qui pro tempore fuerit in p[er]petuum"

It has always been a puzzle why Robert gave the manuscript to the sub-prior: if he gave the magnificent manuscript to the cathedral in order to gain favour and recognition, why not give it instead to the bishop or prior?

"BRYANSTOLE": Henry Yates Thompson's Price-Code

I was recently made aware of a digitized manuscript at Princeton from the collection of Henry Yates Thompson, which has his characteristic "Ex Musæo" label inscribed with his manuscript number, price in code, source and date of acquisition:

[Source]

As I have been discussing price-codes in recent posts, I thought it might be worth correcting an error that has appeared in print at least four times.[1]

Arthur Feldman Cuttings Awaiting Restitution

In a previous post I described the restitution of a charter to Germany, from where it had gone missing during the War. Its safe return is recounted on the blog of the Westfalen-Lippe archives. 

I show above and below images of two other items in the LostArt database, both from the collection of Arthur Feldman. According to an old Sotheby's press release (PDF here):