Looks like this is the week for medieval studies flashbacks. I just found out one of my favourite manuscripts, the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, has been digitized and made available online by the Morgan Library. The little blue dragon in the margins of p.204 is the inspiration for the one I got tattooed on my ankle when I passed my Latin exam.[1] And, yes, it’s the one I named my company after. Because it was two days before my first fair, and I needed a name for my business cards that anglophones could pronounce, and it was the first thing I saw when I looked down to think about it.
[1] Cuz when I get hardcore, I get nerdily hardcore.
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Published by maaikecharron
My name is Maaike Charron, and I'm a potter in St. John's, Newfoundland. I started fiddling around with pottery in summer 2006, when I was told volunteering in the local clay studio would get me free studio time. I mostly taught myself, spending a lot of time poring over books, magazines and websites, and occasionally pestering the more advanced (but very helpful) potters around me with questions. After about two years, I decided I'd gotten good enough to go into business for myself. This blog, started after my first big craft fair, was created to document the process of becoming a wondrously succesful craftsperson. (Or it will document How Not To Do It. We'll see.)
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That’s pretty cool – can you read it?
Yep. It’s in a pretty late Gothic script, so it kinda makes me cross-eyed to look at until I get used to it, but it’s such a regular script it’s really hard for scribes to screw it up.
Also, whoever commissioned this book was incredibly loaded, so the monks went all out with the impressiveness. The scribes chosen to write it were not only very tidy, but had a generous budget for materials. They didn’t have to cram the text into a small space, and they didn’t use many abbreviations, so readers don’t need a magnifying glass and decoder ring to figure it out.
Also also, books of hours come with reasonably standardized texts. So, uh, I have a Fuzzy Memory Cheat Card…
If only more than 99 people could hear this..
Really interesting read. Truely!