Volunteers needed in the St George’s Chapter Library
Volunteers are wanted for a project in the Chapter Library. A rare opportunity to discover the collection while preserving it for future generations!
Tag: Rare Books
Wheels within wheels
In the secure, humidity-controlled strongroom ‘A’ in St George’s Chapel Archives and Chapter Library, Windsor, far away from the secrets of the sea and all things nautical, are four precious books printed in Italian and written by Robert Dudley, the ...
Adopt a Book: preserving the library’s treasures
This weekend, the Archives and Chapter Library is hosting its annual Adopt a Book Open Day, an opportunity for our supporters to have a guided tour of the building, including exhibitions of archival and library material, and to see their ...
To live well and to die well
The crafte to lyue well and to dye well is an early sixteenth century book in the Chapter Library of St George’s Chapel [SGC RBK C.452], which reminds its readers:
Conservator’s eye view: book bindings
Once the scribes and illuminators had completed their exemplary work on the vellum pages the quires were re-assembled in the correct order and the binder would start to sew each quire with linen thread around upright thicker leather thongs within ...
Conservator’s eye view: illumination
As we have seen in my previous blogs most manuscripts were written before they were decorated. Scribes often doubled as page designers, planning the hierarchy of decoration in line with the articulation of the text. They left room for the ...
Conservator’s eye view: scripts
My last blog ended thus…’with the parchment, ink and quill ready, the scribe could start work on the text.’ Anyone who has seen early manuscripts will perhaps understand the bewildering number and diversity of different styles of script there are, ...
Conservator’s eye view: writing instruments
In my last blog I wrote about quire structure of the parchment, prepared not only for the binder, but crucially for the scribe and the artist to fashion their magic with masterly hand-writing and radiant illustrations and historiated initial letters. ...
Conservator’s eye view: book structure
My blog dated 23 January gave a short introduction to the remarkable natural material called parchment or vellum and its durability. The collection of medieval documents and early books at St George’s Archives and Chapter Library is testament to its ...
On the reading habits of canons
It is perhaps to be expected that the majority of the books that make up the Chapter Library of the College of St George should be serious texts, concerning the great academic and theological issues of their respective times. More ...