At early stages, members of the Research Team both at the Parker Library (from 1989\u20131994) and in its 5-year Leverhulme Trust Research Project (1 October 1989 \u2013 30 September 1994) participated in the discussions and some in-house research which, among other contributions, explored the ground for a survey of medieval binding structures in the British Isles.<\/p>\n
That aim, directed by Jennifer M. Sheppard<\/a> of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, became a large-scale project for identifying and recording the corpus of Medieval Binding Structures to A.D. 1550 Preserved in the British Isles<\/strong>.\u00a0 Among the results of that aim was the publication of her detailed study of The Buildwas<\/a> books:\u00a0 Book production, acquisition and use at an English Cistercian monastery, 1165-c.1400<\/i>.\u00a0 (Oxford:\u00a0 Oxford Bibliographical Society, Bodleian Library, 1997).\u00a0 A list of her published works, including reports about this project, can be found here: Sheppard, Jennifer Mary<\/a>.<\/p>\n Some milestones along the journey, recorded in publications by Jennifer M. Sheppard:<\/p>\n A worthy project, and we are glad to have witnessed stages in its creation.<\/p>\n As part of the work now of recording the early history of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence for our website, we enter the Archives, survey their range, and report some of their materials.\u00a0 Thus we may assess the Group’s activities both for its own research projects and in support of others’.\u00a0 Always glad to celebrate the work of manuscript studies, from wherever the dedication may emerge.<\/p>\n [Published on 3 October 2016 by Mildred Budny<\/em>]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From the beginning, when we learned of Jenny Sheppard’s interest in the project, we wished to support that aim however possible.\u00a0 That connection or association goes farther back into the history of manuscript studies and participation in the workshops or seminars of other organisations in Southern England (London and Oxford especially) well before the formation of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence or even the centring, for a while, upon the manuscript materials at Corpus Christi\u00a0 College, Cambridge.\u00a0 (That would qualify as a “Prequel”.)\u00a0 For this Report, we focus upon the work then.<\/p>\n We also wonder at the absence now (September 2016) of much trace readily upon the World Wide Web of much of anything concerning all that work and effort.\u00a0 A couple of years ago, when searching online for information and updates about that project, I\u00a0 [This is your Reporter reporting<\/em>] found several links both from that time and from its results.\u00a0 It seemed so easy. [That was Then!<\/em>]<\/p>\n Now, finally able to prepare the report for the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence and its website [Look, please, I have to do part-time work and complete all the administrative work for the Research Group, so it can’t all come so readily as you and I might like<\/em>], I resume the process of recording more of our history, from the Analogue to the Digital Ages.<\/p>\n Slow, but you who laugh and dismiss, please remember, when or if you manage to grow old, there were some before you who held a refined sense about how we Stand in the Now.\u00a0 And who continue to pay dearly for the chance to continue to contribute in some or any way.\u00a0 If, as more years go by, and you come, perhaps, to see what those who came before you might have had to encounter, endure, and, perhaps, overcome, in order to pursue some goals that seemed worth seeking, and if you might come to revise your disdain, contempt, or, at best, disinterest, then, please, let us know.\u00a0 Heh, heh.<\/p>\n To sum it up:\u00a0 You Had To Be There.\u00a0 Anyway, this report tells a little of How It Was.\u00a0 Some interesting manuscript structures included.<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n Front cover of the assembled booklet with the Profile of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence and the full set of 5 Annual Reports to the Leverhulme Trust, which funded the 5-year major Research Project.<\/p><\/div>\n Some of our work associated with this much larger aim of Jenny’s is recorded in the Annual Reports to the Leverhulme Trust<\/a> for the major Research Project on “The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts” at the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.\u00a0 About those Reports, see our Publications<\/a>. The First Report, like the collaboration itself, draws upon discussions, collaboration, and research during the 2-year Pilot Project at the Parker Library, beginning with the arrival of the full-time Senior Research Associate on 1 October 1987).\u00a0 That Senior Research Associate is now our Director, who submits this Report (2016).\u00a0 You are Here.<\/p>\n 1. The First Annual Report<\/strong> (1989\u20131990) describes the “pilot study” at the Parker Library for Jenny’s Medieval Binding Structures thus:<\/p>\n The Library has served as the centre for the pilot study for the Project to Survey Medieval Binding Structures to A.D. 1550 preserved in the British Isles, which was set up in 1989.\u00a0 Prof. Page, Dr Budny and Mr Hadgraft are all members of the Steering Committee of the Project, directed by Dr J.M. Sheppard (Cambridge).\u00a0 This project feeds back into our Research Project, as we collaborate in developing the study of binding history.<\/p>\n 2. The update in the Second Annual Report<\/strong> (1990\u20131991) reports (with the background more-or-less exactly as above) that<\/p>\n This year we participated in setting up and evaluating the trial census in selected libraries throughout the country, and in preparing the booklet which defines the terms and methods of the project, intended to accompany the full census [scheduled to “start in 1992”].<\/p>\n 3. Repeating some of the same background information, the Third Annual Report<\/strong> (1991\u20131992) observes that<\/p>\n This year we participated in its divers tasks:\u00a0 evaluating the trial census carried out last year in selected libraries throughout the country; developing the census form and accompanying booklet for the full census; and planning the application for long-term funding.\u00a0 This work feeds directly into our research work, as we collaborate in developing the study of binding history and apply its results to particular cases.<\/p>\n Catalogue Front Cover Volume II: Plates<\/p><\/div>\n 4. The Fourth Annual Report<\/strong> (1992\u20131993) repeats the background information of the First and Second Reports, with this addition:<\/p>\n Dr Budny’s forthcoming catalogue<\/a> reports the evidence for lost bindings (including those for MSS 69<\/a>, 144<\/a>, 197<\/a>B, 286<\/a> and 389<\/a>), through such signs as the traces of clasps or mounts; stitching patterns; added endleaves; former pastedowns; and offsets of wood-grain, paste, leather turn-ins and thongs on those pastedowns.\u00a0 Through archaeological investigation of this kind, our ongoing research on books at Corpus, as well as books owned or handled by Matthew Parker in other collections, continues to expand knowledge of Parker’s habits in rebinding books.\u00a0 This work has yielded valuable advances in understanding the history of many Anglo-Saxon and related manuscripts at Corpus and elsewhere, including MSS 12<\/a>, 41<\/a>, 162<\/a>, 193<\/a> and 198<\/a>.<\/p>\n 5. The Fifth Annual Report<\/strong> (1993\u20131994) leaves it here, after the customary background information:<\/p>\n Dr Sheppard contributed an account of binding structures for the combined exhibition catalogue on St. Edmundsbury and Cambridge produced by the Research Group in April (see below under ‘Exhibitions’ and ‘Publications’<\/a>).<\/p>\n Some of our publications report the evidence for lost bindings, through such signs as the traces of clasps or mounts; stitching patterns; added endleaves; former pastedowns; and offsets of wood-grain, paste, leather turn-ins and thongs on those pastedowns.\u00a0 Our archaeological investigation of books at Corpus, as well as books owned or handled by Matthew Parker<\/a> now in other collections, continues to expand knowledge of both medieval binding structures and Parker’s habits in rebinding books. This work has yielded valuable advances in understanding the history of many Anglo-Saxon and related manuscripts at Corpus and elsewhere.<\/p>\n A few cases found places in the publications which the Research Project was able, despite various interruptions, disruptions, and obstructions, to accomplish.\u00a0 The Report cites these:<\/p>\n Dr Budny’s forthcoming catalogue provides an account of the history of binding practices at Corpus; and reports the evidence for lost bindings detectable in individual manuscripts, for example in MSS 69<\/a>, 144<\/a>, 197<\/a>B, 286<\/a> and 389<\/a>. Her paper on ‘Physical Evidence and Manuscript Conservation’<\/a> (see below under ‘Publications’) reports on the traces of vanished bindings in some of these and other manuscripts, notably MSS 23<\/a>, 139<\/a>, 197<\/a>B and 286<\/a>.<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n The Research Group Archives<\/strong> preserve the on-shoot records, entered in pencil (of course; we were in the Library and working with Original Manuscripts) on A4-sized pages and dated 1 June 1990, for the photographic work by Mildred Budny, assisted by Timothy Graham, for the 35mm colour negatives, to be printed for distribution, “for Medieval Binding Structures trial project at CCCC”.\u00a0 The notes record the requested work to prepare photographs of selected features of Corpus Christi College MSS 86, 87<\/a>, 89<\/a>, 212<\/a> and Archives XVII.4 & XVII.5 (the “East Field Terrier”).<\/p>\n Features under consideration included the front and back covers, inside covers, spine, fore-edge, tabs, endbands, pastedowns, and lifted pastedowns.\u00a0 The selected cases aimed to exhibit a wide range of features \u2014 that is, within a single then-accessible collection and with a then-willing staff equipped with a willing photographer which the outside project was not expected to pay for \u2014 which the larger survey might encounter, and to provide specific cases for considering a reflective consensus for an appropriate terminology to employ, and to illustrate, for census-takers in many locations.<\/p>\n The Research Project at the Parker Library, in both phases (both the Pilot Project and the Leverhulme Trust Research Project, lasting altogether from 1987 to 1994), was designed to co-ordinate scholarly expertise and conservation work.\u00a0 Because the Senior Research Associate for both Projects\u00a0\u2014 now the Director of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence\u00a0\u2014 contributed her photographic equipment, time, and expertise to the research tasks, it was natural that some of the manuscripts undergoing conservation received photographic coverage to a greater extent than encompassed by the conservators, who operated according to other dictates.<\/p>\n Thus, for example, the photographic record during conservation of the Insular Gospel fragment of MS 197<\/a> Part B and its stitching patterns was accomplished by Nicholas Pickwoad<\/a> at his conservation studio already, for the most part, before the Research Project began.\u00a0 The plan was earnestly to incorporate those photographs, and Nicholas’s detailed expert study of the stitching patterns, into a monograph study of the manuscript.\u00a0 The efforts and the outcome of those plans are reported elsewhere on this website, at last, as we emerge into a position to report our history more fully.\u00a0 Silence, inertia, and inability through years of illness have something to do with the length of time.\u00a0 That was then.\u00a0 This is now.<\/p>\n At the start of the Pilot Project, at Mildred Budny’s request, MS 23<\/a> was returned to the Library from Nicholas’s conservation studio in Norfolk in its disbound state, so that photographic coverage could be performed. Some of those black-and-white photographs accompanied the Application to the Leverhulme Trust for the Research Project on “The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts”.\u00a0 Hindsight soon showed that she should have taken photographs of the full manuscript, front, back, and sideways, to record its state before the changes which the conservation next produced.\u00a0 That is another story.<\/p>\n Corpus Christi College, MS 139. Suggested reconstruction of the former cover. Technical drawings by Helen Humphreys, guided by Mildred Budny. \u00a9 Research Group on Manuscript Evidence.<\/p><\/div>\n Similarly, other manuscripts returned to the Library for detailed study after disbinding and before rebinding.\u00a0 Besides the process of recording the evidence thus revealed of the full surviving extent of the leaves, including the stitching patterns of former bindings or rebindings, we commissioned a set of technical drawings (at actual size) of the stitching patterns of each quire in the complex structure of MS 139 as part of the work for a collaborative monograph and facsimile.\u00a0 Part of this work included a reconstruction of the original binding.\u00a0 It is a regret that work on the monograph had to be abandoned.<\/p>\n James Marrow at the “Identity & Authenticity” Symposium. Photograph Mildred Budny.<\/p><\/div>\n Some skilled book-collectors (for example, our Honorary Trustee, James H. Marrow) tell me that it is the books or manuscripts that they did not buy that they regret.\u00a0 To say that, Oh, I Know the Feeling, is to say that (until I write the best-seller and can start again to buy books) it is Corpus MS 23 that I think about mostly, with the wistful wish that I had had the foresight, the money, and the knowledge that Everything In A Manuscript Should Be Photographed, and From More Than One Angle And At More Than One Time.<\/p>\n But that set of combined wishes and regrets is to enter into a world of the Ideal, and we must live Here And Now, if not solely Hand-To-Mouth.\u00a0 I prefer to remain resourcefully within the Realm of the Possible, and the Resourcefulness for that quest does rouse suspicion or envy or anger, as the Memoirs will report (unless you make it worthwhile not to, Hint, Hint).<\/p>\n It may be useful to be thankful, if not satisfied, that at least I had the chance and the forethought to photograph as much as I did.\u00a0 Digression Over.\u00a0 (Although that said, or that written, the Digression may indeed have been Relevant.)<\/p>\n Similarly, some of this photographic work of recording evidence revealed in conservation was performed even for manuscripts not targeted specifically by the Leverhulme Trust Research Project. A notable example is the luxurious manuscript of the Apocalypse<\/em> and other texts given to Saint Augustine’s Abbey by Juliana de Leybourn<\/a>, Countess of Huntingdon (died 1367): Corpus MS 20<\/a>. Those photographs have never seen the light of day, but the time for them may come.<\/p>\n Some Research Project Manuscripts “proper” received not only such extensive photography (fuller, you bet, now that I had Learned The Lesson) but also Seminars or Workshops in their own right (or write) designed specifically to consider this, as well as other, evidence which the conservation and our scholarly examinations had revealed.<\/p>\n We had planned, and I had gullibly prepared the photography for, facsimiles and monograph studies of these as well as other manuscripts.\u00a0 It had seemed that we had the resources, as in publisher and distributor\u00a0 (but we were duped), although not, or not yet, the full funding or institutional support, to assemble the materials and the expertise for such publications.\u00a0 Politics and other challenges intervened.\u00a0 Wait for the Memoirs.<\/p>\n Detail of opened book with schematic text. Photography \u00a9 Mildred Budny.<\/p><\/div>\n Meanwhile, we focus upon the research, the manuscript evidence, and the subjects of study.\u00a0 And we are working on reclaiming some of the research results.<\/p>\n Does this make you think about some recycled medieval manuscript materials?\u00a0 Yep, we are lining up to join our place in the history of reclaimed materials that might, after rejections, turn out to have some use after all.\u00a0 For the moment, I’m calling that enterprise “Salvation Limited”.\u00a0 (The “Unlimited” part is already spoken for.)<\/p>\n The Reports now for our Seminars or Workshops on some of the designated manuscripts provide more information about them, the collaborative study, and the evidence for their former binding structures.<\/p>\n Some of our early Seminars and Workshops in the Series on “The Evidence of Manuscripts”<\/a> , held mostly at the Parker Library, tackled these cases:<\/p>\n Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 139<\/a> Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 383<\/a><\/p>\n Parker Library, 16 November 1991<\/p>\n Parts of the many results of our research discoveries for Corpus MS 139<\/a> were published here, soon after the Leverhulme Trust Research Project was completed:<\/p>\n By that time, it had become too clear (see the Report now with Hindsight for the 1990 Workshop<\/a> on the manuscript) that the expected monograph had no publisher or distributor and that a still-available way to publish some of our results resided in the updated publication of an earlier conference to which I had contributed a presentation.\u00a0 And so I packed that essay with as much information and illustrations from that manuscript’s study\u00a0\u2014 not included in the original paper; it had not entered our landscape, nor should it have\u00a0\u2014 as the editors and the scope of the publication could permit.<\/p>\n This composite 12th-century manuscript, which includes the unique medieval copy of the Historia Regum<\/em><\/a> attributed to Symeon of Durham<\/a>, received detailed examination during conservation, with analysis of the sequence of stitching patterns of former bindings and the traces of a former, medieval binding impressed upon the endleaves. The examination included the preparation of a full set of technical drawings to represent the stitching patterns in each quire. A sample of those drawings, from Quires XIX, XX, XII, and XXII, was published in ‘Physical Evidence’<\/a>, Figure 1 (on page 39). At the same time, a set of technical drawings was prepared to highlight the binding traces on the endleaves and to reconstruct the shape and binding mechanism of that binding, now lost.<\/p>\n Those drawings are reproduced as Figures 2-3 on page 41 in the same publication. Now we prepare to reproduce them more accessibly on our website, along with more of the drawings for which that publication did not have room. Watch this space: “Workshop Report” for Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 139<\/a>.<\/p>\n Gold stamp on blue cloth of the logo of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence. Detail from the front cover of Volume II of ‘The Illustrated Catalogue’<\/p><\/div>\n Some of these manuscripts and other manuscripts received detailed coverage, sometimes with an account of their former bindings or traces thereof, in the Illustrated Catalogue of Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge<\/a>.<\/p>\n See our Promotional Offer<\/a>.<\/p>\n Similar reconstructions appear in the integrated study of a 9th-century Anglo-Saxon Bible Fragment, British Library Royal MS 1 E VI<\/a> (1987). Such evidence, archaeological and other, has long been regarded as significant as a subject in the work of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, and we continue to welcome and to admire work on the genres of medieval bindings in many fields.<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n Detail of an initial M on the verso of the leaf. Photography by Mildred Budny<\/p><\/div>\n To round off our Report about the Trial Project for Jennifer Sheppard’s larger project, which has given the opportunity to think again about some fascinating manuscript materials, we express thanks for the opportunity to participate in stages of the planning and formation of the project to identify and to survey Medieval Binding Structures to 1550 A.D. in Libraries in the British Isles<\/em>.\u00a0 We congratulate Jenny Sheppard, and admire the results.<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n Some of our blogposts on Manuscript Studies<\/a> report discoveries of medieval binding structures as revealed in, or through, manuscript materials rescued from various locations in Western Europe.\u00a0 Enjoy the menu presented in the Contents List<\/a>!<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Trial Project at the Parker Library (1989\u20131990) for the Census of Medieval Binding Structures to A.D. 1550 Preserved in the British Isles Plus Continuing Links 1989\u20131994 [Posted on 3 October 2016, with updates] At early stages, members of the Research Team both at the Parker Library (from 1989\u20131994) and in its 5-year Leverhulme Trust Research […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[664,1],"tags":[1179,1290,1289,1288,1285,1286,1287,1302,1284,1281,319,1210,1291],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8579"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8579"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17535,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8579\/revisions\/17535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Admiration for, and Interest in, that Survey<\/h2>\n
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<\/a>The Reports in Our Annual Reports (1989\u20131994)<\/h2>\n
The Series of Reports<\/h3>\n
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<\/a>The Trial\/Pilot Project at the Parker Library<\/h3>\n
\u00a0Glimpses of Lost Bindings during Conservation of Corpus Manuscripts<\/h3>\n
For Example, MSS 20, 23, 139, 197B, and 383<\/h4>\n
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\nParker Library, 28 September 1990<\/p>\n\n
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