Angular or rounded? Medieval script reveals not only what the author wrote, but when and where the book was made. An introduction to medieval scripts by Dr. Erik Kwakkel and Dr. Beth Harris
Go on, judge a book by its sound. The thinner the parchment, the higher the pitch—and the price. Listening to the medieval book by Dr. Erik Kwakkel and Dr. Beth Harris
This 1000-year-old math primer is nothing fancy, but it took months for a scribe to make. A medieval textbook by Dr. Erik Kwakkel and Dr. Beth Harris
At medieval universities, students took notes on parchment scraps, sometimes bound together with cord. Medieval notepads by Dr. Erik Kwakkel
Manuscript readers tracked marginal comments with dots, lines, letters, and numbers—anticipating the footnote. The medieval origins of the modern footnote by Dr. Erik Kwakkel
From cupboard shelfmarks to bookcase inventories, medieval readers devised codes for locating precious volumes. Finding books by Dr. Erik Kwakkel
Lose your place? Not in a monastic library. Static or dynamic, “spider,” or wheel, these bookmarks stay put. Smart bookmarks by Dr. Erik Kwakkel
Scribes left plenty of empty space, but readers often filled the margins with comments—and even little hands. Getting personal in the margins by Dr. Erik Kwakkel
A carousel, a wheel, or a portable desk? Reading multiple books at once required ample space and custom furniture. The medieval desktop by Dr. Erik Kwakkel
Animal skin lent a durable writing surface to medieval scribes. When tanned and tooled, it also protected books. Medieval books in leather (and other materials) by Dr. Erik Kwakkel
Is that a body, or a book? Arms, hands, feet, skulls—all can feature in the anatomy of a medieval manuscript. Clasps: hugging a medieval book by Dr. Erik Kwakkel
Medieval libraries hid a forest in their shelves—wood boards, covered and clasped, protected precious parchment. Binding the book by Dr. Erik Kwakkel
Decorators drew inspiration from design books, from enlarged capitals to elaborate figures in the margins. Medieval supermodels by Dr. Erik Kwakkel
From penwork and gilding to one-letter stories, decorators offered a range of services to dazzle medieval readers. Decorating the book by Dr. Erik Kwakkel
Like modern marketers, medieval scribes advertised on posters and even inserted “spam” pages into texts. Making books for profit in medieval times by Dr. Erik Kwakkel
Caroline Minuscule, the main script of the early Middle Ages, was replaced by Gothic—and later, “Times Roman.” Words, words, words: medieval handwriting by Dr. Erik Kwakkel
Long before ruled notebooks hit the shelves, medieval writers lined, laid out, and folded their own parchment. The work of the scribe by Dr. Erik Kwakkel
Prime cuts, or strips? Scribes weren’t butchers, but they did cut skin and pick out different grades of parchment. Skins and scraps by Dr. Erik Kwakkel
Not all medieval cows went to heaven—some ended up in books. Hair follicles and holes offer clues to a page’s past. Parchment (the good, the bad, and the ... by Dr. Erik Kwakkel