A Manuscript Divided Between New York and North Carolina

I first became interested in the medieval manuscripts of the Bibliotheca Swaniana in the 1990s, when I encountered one at the Bodleian. At some point I compiled a list of manuscripts from the Swaniana in some rudimentary webpages, to which I added occasionally. One of the first posts I wrote after starting this blog in December 2010 concerned two MSS from the collection.

A Cistercian Missal From the Library at from Vyšší Brod, Formerly Owned by Otto Ege

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In two previous blog posts (here and here) I added to what was previously known about a well-known Cistercian Missal apparently broken-up by Otto Ege, often referred to as FOL 2, because leaves of it were included as no.2 in his portfolios of Fifty Original Leaves.

CH3MB6RP9T & M2TH5RF8CK

Mentioning a price-code in a recent post, I realised that I have not yet mentioned on this blog that there is a now a second edition, much expanded, published last year, of of The Price-Codes of the Book-Trade, whose first edition (2010) I described here.

At an eye-watering $175 for a 90-page octavo I doubt that many readers of this blog will buy their own copy, but it may be worth finding out where a library copy can be consulted. Worldcat lists about 20 copies in the US, 3 in the UK, one in Canada and one in Australia. There are certainly others in research libraries; in London, the Warburg Institute has a copy, for example.

Here are a few images to give a flavour of the contents (as usual, click the images to enlarge and make the text readable). From the Introduction:

From the main body of the book:

From the Afterword:

And here are the full title-page details (the choice of title was not mine):

Cuttings at the Free Library, From "The Property of a Gentleman" in 1923

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Looking recently in a Sotheby's catalogue from 26 March 1923, and two following days, I realised that the present whereabouts of a large number of cuttings could be identified quite easily. This provides a nice example of how a single solid clue can be pursued to reveal a great deal more.

The clue in this case is the description of some distinctive iconography.

Henry Bradshaw (1831-1886)

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The above statement, by Henry Bradshaw, could be the official Creed of the provenance researcher.

When discussing cataloguing, I sometimes tell people that I think that the single most important thing a cataloguer can tell their reader about a manuscript is its collation. (This is partly, but not exclusively, because the physical structure of leaves and bifolia is one of the few features of a manuscript that usually cannot be conveyed by photography). People who study manuscripts -- and early printed books -- seem to fall into two camps: on one hand there are those who see collation as a mechanical task, like measuring the leaves and counting the number of lines, and on the other hand are those who really understand how much a book's physical structure can tell them about its manufacture, and know how to use this powerful tool to inform their work. I won't go into details here; I mention it only as background to explain why Henry Bradshaw is one of my bibliographical heroes -- on a par with M.R. James and Neil Ker.

A Curious Cutting at the Chazen

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Last summer Maria Saffiotti Dale, Curator at the Chazen Museum of Art, sent me just the sort of provenance puzzle I enjoy. It concerned a 15th-century Italian cutting, shown above, described on the Chazen website as an "Initial 'D' from an Antiphonary from Como Cathedral with a Temple". [1]

On the back is an inscription which she could not entirely read: "I can make out all the inscriptions EXCEPT the initials(?) immediately preceding the date 1856 and what follows it. Any ideas?"

"Beyond Words" Exhibition Catalogue Online

I expect that many readers of this blog will have visited the "Beyond Words" exhibition in Boston and Cambridge towards the end of 2016, and many more will have bought the catalogue.

The catalogue has been made available online at Archive.org, where the entire text can be read, searched, or downloaded as a PDF:

[as usual, click to enlarge]