Infrared Imaging Workshop with George Bevan

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On Monday 20th Feburary 2012 the John Rylands Library welcomed a visit from Dr. George Bevan, Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics at Queen’s University, Canada.

The visit was arranged by University of Manchester Academic and Papyrologist Dr. Roberta Mazza, Lecturer in Ancient History and Early Christianity, School of Arts, Histories & Cultures.

The workshop was incredibly informative and interesting and comes at an excellent time for CHICC as we are starting to think about developing other kinds of imaging techniques, such as Infrared Photography (IR). Dr. Bevan demonstrated his techniques using kit which can be packed down and transported around inside in a single camera case.

At one time IR photography was very costly, difficult and time consuming, however Dr. Bevan convincingly demonstrated that with the development of digital technologies this is no longer the case.

Following an introductory presentation, members of the workshop got involved with imaging some items from the Rylands’ Collections. Using the Infrared equipment we worked with three very different items - some glazed papyri, ostraca and a page of a water-damaged manuscript. We saw the most impressive results from the ostraca, and learned a lot as we came across challenges in imaging the papyri and ‘missing’ text on the manuscript page.

The workshop was very successful and have given us a lot of food for thought. We are looking in to the possibility of adapting and acquiring some new equipment to carry out Infrared Imaging here at the Rylands.

 

The Aldine Collection at the Rylands

Part of the Aldine collection in its former home in the library

The John Rylands Library, Manchester holds one of the largest collections of Aldine editions in the world. There are 127 editions known to have been printed by Aldus Manutius from 1495 to 1515, of which the library is missing only seven very rare and minor items. There is also a virtually complete collection of all the publications of the Aldine Press from 1515 to 1598.

The core of this collection comes from George John 2nd Earl Spencer (1758-1834), who amassed a huge private collection of early printed books which was then purchased by Mrs Rylands from the 5th Earl in 1892. Spencer’s Aldine collection was housed separately at Spencer House in London, along with his outstanding collection of incunabula.

More books were added when the John Rylands Library merged with the University of Manchester Library in 1972. Professor Richard Copley Christie had presented his collection to the University in 1901. It includes an unrivaled set of virtually all the Greek texts published in the 15th and 16th centuries, together with a very substantial collection of Aldines. Christie also acquired over 50 counterfeit Aldines printed at Lyon between 1502 and 1527, some of which are rarer than genuine editions.

The library started a project in July 2010 to reorganise, rehouse and recatalogue the collection. This has included moving copies previously dispersed elsewhere in the collections, bringing the total to about 2,000 volumes which represent about 1,200 editions. The collection has been boxed and minor repairs completed where necessary.

Part of the collection, boxed in its new home in secure, controlled storage.

By the end of February 2012 around 1,300 volumes will have detailed descriptions on the library catalogue, following internationally recognised standards for rare books cataloguing, including information on editors, translators, inscriptions, annotations, previous owners, bindings and reference to the standard bibliographies (Renouard and Ahmanson-Murphy).

The collection, boxed in its new home in secure, controlled storage.

Highlights from the collection include;

·          A substantial number of copies printed on vellum. These are almost all ornately illuminated and form valuable source material for the study of Italian book decoration.

·         A significant number of books have evidence of previous ownership, including a number from the library of Jean Grolier, as well as books owned by Francis II, Henri II, Cardinal Antoine Granvelle, Pietro Bembo and Agostino Barbarigo. There are also copies owned by later scholars including Richard Brunck and Antoine Augustin Renouard.

·         Nineteen Aldine editions and variants of Baldassare Castiglione’s Il Libro del Cortegiano (The Book of Courtesy) printed between 1528 and 1553

·         More than 150 counterfeit Aldines, mainly printed at Lyon.

·         An important group of documents printed by Paulus Manutius for the Accademia Veneziana.
Julianne Simpson

Collection & Research Services Manager (Printed Books)

The Teeniest book in the library

The Rylands has all manner of books and manuscripts in all sorts or sizes. We’ve had the giant Koran here before, weighing in at 52KG, we have some rather beautiful Book of Hours, palm sized manuscripts (in this case belonging to Mary Queen of Scots) that are beautifully illuminated. But what about something smaller?

How about this, The Lords Prayer, in 7 different languages, measuring around 5mm by 5mm. Nothing can actually be printed that small I hear you say? Well, below is the above book, under a 10x magnification loupe.

Printed in the 50′s in Germany, the book was obviously not intended to be used for anything serious, perhaps just as an example of the current printing technology at the time.

Middle English Medical Recipes

English MS 404, f. 2r

 Rylands English MS 404 (Medical Recipes) has now been transcribed by our volunteer, Mary Begley, who worked with the text for her MA thesis in 2011. This manuscript consists predominantly of medical recipes in English, written in several different scribal hands. There are also some folios which contain fragments of a herbal, and also dies mali – lucky and unlucky days for bloodletting, travelling, getting married, etc.

Parallel recipes can be found in Gilbertus Anglicus (Wellcome MS 537; Getz, (ed.) 1991), Liber de Diversis Medicinis (Thornton manuscript, MS Lincoln Cathedral A.5.2; (ed.) Ogden, 1938), and A Fifteenth Century Leechbook (MS Medical Society of London 136; (ed.) Dawson, 1934). However the Rylands manuscript is unique, and is not a direct copy of any known medical recipes text. It is likely that it was regularly referred to by a practising leech (medieval physician), possibly carried on his person. The advisory or didactic style of some of the text also suggests that some or all of the recipes were written down for the benefit of a pupil.

The transcription has been made as diplomatically and faithfully as possible, including the use of (and lack of) punctuation, so that the text can in the future be incorporated into a corpus of medical and scientific prose searchable by linguistic and other scholars.

Mary is an AHRC-funded PhD scholar at the University of Manchester. Her working thesis title is ‘The language of madness in Middle English: language change and ideologies in Middle English medical texts’. http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/postgrad/mary.begley/

Digitising Rylands Persian MS 3

Abu Yahya Zakariya’ ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini was a Persian physician, astronomer, geographer and proto-science fiction writer, born in 1203.

In his work “Aja’ib al-makhluqat wa-ghara’ib al-mawjudat”, or “Marvels of Creatures and Strange Things Existing”, he spoke about the sky and everything in it, and the world and everything on it. It has been described as the most important work of cosmography in Islamic culture.

The work consists of two sections, the first dealing with the spheres of the heaven and its inhabitants (the angels), as well as details of  Islamic, Roman and Iranian calendars. The second part discusses the four elements, the spheres and what is on and within the earth. Qazwini also talks in detail about man, the faculties of his soul, his character, weaknesses and illnesses.

Rylands Persian MS 3 is a beautifully illuminated manuscript of this work, created in 1632 by the artist and calligrapher ‘Shamsa’. Throughout the manuscript there are beautiful images of fantastic animals and beasts, man and heavenly inhabitants.

We digitisied the manuscript using the larger copy stand in the Rylands studio. To get the best possible image, we photographed with the Phase One IQ180 digital back.

A full page from Persian MS 3, depicting angels in heaven

The entire manuscript will be available on LUNA in the very near future.

 

New ebooktreasures release: The Kelmscott Chaucer

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The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, which took four years to complete, is a masterpiece of book design and is acknowledged widely as the zenith of 19th-century book production. It contains 87 wood-engraved illustrations by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones (1833-98). Burne-Jones worked on the Chaucer designs only on Sundays when Morris, his life-long friend, would visit to talk as he drew. In addition to the Chaucer typeface – a smaller version of the Troy type – Morris himself designed for the book the woodcut title, 14 large borders, 18 different frames and 26 initial words. The text of The Canterbury Tales is based on the Ellesmere manuscript, and the remaining text on Professor Walter William Skeat’s (1835-1912) edition of Chaucer for the OUP.
The Kelmscott Chaucer was completed in June 1896, just months before Morris’s death. This copy -  one of 425 copies  printed on paper – was purchased by Mrs Enriqueta Augustina Rylands (1843-1908), the founder of The John Rylands Library, for her personal collection. The Library also holds one of the 13 copies printed on vellum.
The Kelmscott Press, set-up in 1891 by the designer and craftsman William Morris (1834-96), was the most famous and influential British private press. Inspired by the hand presses of the 15th century, Morris supervised all details of production, including the choice of ink and paper, the design of the type and the use of ornaments and illustration.

An eBookTreasures facsimile edition can now be downloaded from iTunes here.

The Mainz Psalter, now online.

The Mainz Psalter, mentioned previously, is now fully available on LUNA here. There will be a few more beautiful books and manuscripts uploaded into book objects very soon!

The Art of Illumination

From Rylands English MS 1, The Siege of Troy

We had a wonderful tweet from one of our followers via Twitter (of course) the other day. Our work has inspired Natasha Gdansk, or, @parchmentbanshe to post a poem over on the The Lost Beat blog;

Art of Illumination

 Strictly capital gent

Tangos with that flourished temptation

Harmoniously gliding and dipping

Into pure gold leaf

The bold dapper lets his seductive partner sashay

And descend into sepia and indigo

With her pointed stilettos and boisterous past

Entanglements flirting with

Angelic wings and

Questionable acts along the fringes

Hidden between the cinnabar dreams

And saffron visions

Teasing with rubric lace

Across the vellum dance floor

Transporting through time with bold hues

Delighting with their tantalizing textures

Stunning the senses

With a bold stroke of the quill

Instilling memories to be

Preserved throughout infinity.

Amazing Natasha! Thank you!

The problem with Colour.

Colour is the biggest problem we face when digitising an item. How can an item have true colour representation universally? Not everyone’s monitor is the same, and certainly not everyone’s monitor is calibrated. There are many different ways an image can be altered and corrected to gain true colours. Search for a painting on Google images. How many examples of the same painting appear, but have totally different colours? how about Van Gogh’s sunflowers? Or The Lily Pond by Monet?

Rylands Latin MS 159, Evangelia Metz, a Gospel book from 12th Century Germany. Pictured is St. Matthew

 

Above is an example of the problems we are coming across when people are ordering images from us. The image on the above right is already in Luna, and was photographed back in 2002 on transparency film. The image on the left, was taken today, using the phase one IQ180, Profoto D1 flash heads, and colour calibrarted in Capture One using an X-Rite Digital SG colour checker. As you can see, there is a dramatic difference in colour.

One of the many advantages of using digital to capture the images, is that we can see on screen, instantly what the image is going to look like. In this case, we were able to hold up the actual manuscript next to the digital image and compare the output.

The old image which is on Luna currently, will be replaced very soon. Any instance of someone ordering an image which has been photographed using transparency will also be replaced.

Haitham’s first project

Haitham digitizing Rylands Arabic MS 18

For my first digitisation project with the CHICC team, we have worked on an Arabic Manuscript, a Qur’an  from around 1000 a.d.

The manuscript is written beautifully in gold, on quite thick vellum.

We encountered a couple of issues while photographing the manuscript. The vellum pages tend to not always want to stay flat, and want to spring back to their closed position. By using 2 clear acrylic spatula’s to hold the page flat, we were able to get a clear distortion free image.

Photographing on the cradle, gave the gold script a beautifully illuminated effect, due to the lights being above the page. The cradle also supports the manuscript perfectly throughout the digitisation.

Title page of the Manuscript

TO capture the images, we shot using the 80mp IQ180 back. This gave incredible definition, allowing us to see the cracks and missing areas of pigments throughout.

A close up image of gold text

Cataloguing is currently taking place, and the images from the Quraan will be available on LUNA in the near future.

Next week, we will be working on more manuscripts and a selection of Papyrus fragments.

Haitham