Open this sturdy stationery-bound journal (Post-1650 MS 0806) and join Hugh Perkins as he embarks from London to St. Petersburg, traveling through the North and Baltic Seas in the autumn of 1834, writing and sketching along the way. His illustrations are skillful, executed in various media, including pencil, watercolor, and gouache, documenting ships, birds, landscapes, […]
Category: Manuscripts
Journal of a residence in St. Petersburg
March 31, 2024
A Marriage Contract … and a Book Cover?
March 8, 2024
By Elissa B.G. Mullins Don’t judge a book by its cover—especially when the cover warrants its own catalogue record! Little did yeoman William Butter and his wife-to-be Judeth Shaw imagine that their marriage contract would one day be recycled to cover an astronomical treatise printed a century before they met. A fragment of their contract […]
Adventures in Cataloging: Arabic Manuscripts at RBML Part 3
April 1, 2022
By Hanan Jaber Welcome to the final part of our Arabic Manuscripts at RBML series! Today, we are presenting the last four books for this collection. Hand-written Qur’an – 1845 Of course I was expecting to find Qur’ans within the manuscripts just because many older books tend to be law books and religious texts. I […]
Iron Gall Ink
April 7, 2021
By: Katie Hartman Besides the quill and parchment, ink was one of the most basic components of manuscript production. Black inks were typically produced either from collecting soot (most common in Asia) or from oak galls (most common in Europe). Oak galls are growths that are formed around the larva of the gall wasp. The […]
Making Quills Part 3—Cutting the Quill
March 30, 2021
By: Katie Hartman Cutting the quill’s nib is often seen as the most finicky and difficult part of the quill making process. In a way, this assumption is both true and false. Cutting a quill nib takes practice and some getting used to, especially if you’re nervous handling a knife or razor blade. But, once […]
Making Quills Part 2- Curing with a Dutching Tool
March 25, 2021
By: Katie Hartman Technically speaking, dutching simply refers to the process of hardening a quill by using heat. However, since the process of using a dutching tool differs greatly from the other methods discussed in part 1, it is useful to refer to the process of using a dutching tool as dutching and the process […]
Making Quills Part 1: Curing
February 12, 2020
by Katie Hartman Quills are part of the basic materials needed to create a medieval manuscript. Their use and creation were a basic part of the scribe’s daily work and the quill is usually regarded to be the symbol of the scribal trade. Typically, medieval quills were taken from geese or swans. The best feathers for […]
Adventures in Cataloging: Arabic Manuscripts at RBML
December 13, 2019
By Hanan Jaber In the cold rooms of the stacks, I walk through the smell of centuries-old books As I scan the shelves, I notice a stack of books untouched, with white tags protruding from the covers. Some are wrapped with cloth strings and cardboard; others barely attached to their spines. The white tags all […]
“A League of Their Own” Typescript
October 25, 2019
With the World Series in full swing it’s a good time to take a look at one of the many interesting baseball holdings in the collection: the first draft of the typescript for the 1992 movie A League of Their Own directed by Penny Marshal. This typescript, pictured below, was written in 1989 by Lowell […]
No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks
January 22, 2018
In mid-November, No Blue Memories premiered at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago. The paper puppet show, performed by Manual Cinema, focused on the life of Gwendolyn Brooks, the first Black recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in 1950. The show was written by Dr. Eve. L. Ewing and Nate Marshall, featured live music by Ayanna and Jamila […]