Making Manuscripts

[The Lawspeaker]

An illuminated manuscript is a book written and decorated completely by hand. Illuminated manuscripts were among the most precious objects produced in the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, primarily in monasteries and courts. Society's rulers--emperors, kings, dukes, cardinals, and bishops--commissioned the most splendid manuscripts.

[Tooting Carmen]

There is certainly something elegant and evocative about them, in a way that isn't really true about standard paperback or hardback.

[The Lawspeaker]

Some of the most vivid pigments in medieval manuscripts were manufactured through alchemy, an experimental practice that predates modern chemistry. Today, chemistry deepens our knowledge about paint colors, their identification, and potential continued transformations.

For more than a thousand years all manuscripts were written and illustrated by hand. By the Middle Ages, books were being made by folding sheets of parchment, arranging them into gatherings, and assembling and binding them together. This animation from the Getty Museum illustrates how medieval books were constructed--a feat of engineering that remains essentially the same tod