Scribes and Illuminators (Medieval Craftsmen) Review

Scribes and Illuminators (Medieval Craftsmen)
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Like all this series, this book is a real gem. Clearly written, interesting, informative, with a fine selection of pictures (most in colour), it's truly amazing how much it covers in a small book. Particularly useful are the contemporary illustrations of scribes and painters at work, showing such details as a scribe's sloping desk with holes to hold his quills and inkhorn (cover illustration). The whole construction of a medieval book is explained, from makig the parchment to the final cover. Examples of unfinished manuscripts, not shown in facimile books, provide fascinating insight into the whole production process. The inclusion of charming pictures such as the self-portrait of a scribe and his apprentice, cursing a mouse running off with the the cheese from their lunch table, brings the lives of these workers into immediate and human detail.
If you are only going to get one book about medieval scribes and illuminators, this is the one to buy.

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Illuminated manuscripts survive in great numbers from the Middle Ages.They are often beautifully preserved, enabling us to appreciate the skilled design and craftsmanship of the people who created them.

Christopher de Hamel describes each stage of production from the preparation of the vellum, pens, paints and inks to the writing of the scripts and the final decoration and illumination of the book. He then examines the role of the stationer or bookshop in co-ordinating book production and describes the supply of exemplars and the accuracy of texts.He follows the careers of a number of specific scribes and illuminators who emerge not as anonymous monks but as identifiable professional lay artisans.He also looks at those who bought the completed books, why they did so, and how much they paid.

His survey ranges from the eleventh century through the golden age of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to the luxurious manuscripts existing at the invention of printing.

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