One of the fundamental things in a medieval book is letters – those symbols that fill up page after page and that make up meaning. Each one of us human beings writes differently and consider...
https://medievalbooks.nl/2016/04/29/the-secrets-of-medieval-fonts/
Most of us have said “I love this book!” at one point or another. However, what we mean by it may differ a great deal. If you are like me, this statement has little to do with how enjoya...
Readers of this blog probably know that early-modern book bindings contain hidden treasure: fragments cut from medieval manuscripts, ranging from small snippets to full pages. The fragments we...
https://medievalbooks.nl/2015/12/18/x-rays-expose-a-hidden-medieval-library/
What a clever device the book is. It is compact and light, yet contains hundreds of pages that hold an incredible amount of information. Moving forward or backward in the text is as easy as fl...
https://medievalbooks.nl/2015/11/11/judging-a-book-by-its-cover/
Like most objects, books are confined to the space they occupy, obedient as they are to the laws of nature. That is to say, unlike the Incredible Hulk, they do not normally expand beyond the�...
https://medievalbooks.nl/2015/10/02/the-incredible-expandable-book/
Margins are both a universal and remarkable feature of books. From the very earliest specimens produced two millennia ago, to the e-readers we use today, books contain pages that hold bot...
https://medievalbooks.nl/2015/06/05/half-full-half-empty-the-peculiar-medieval-page/
If you are like me, you probably have two types of books on your shelves: some are new, others are second-hand. The two are very different entities: new copies are expensive, pristine and present...
When you use something for a thousand years, it is bound to get dirty. Medieval books often show stains and marks on their pages, usually from readers who did not always take very good care of th...
We are taught not to point. Pointing with your finger is rude, even though it is often extremely convenient and efficient. Medieval readers do not seem to have been hindered by this convention: ...
https://medievalbooks.nl/2015/03/13/helping-hands-on-the-medieval-page/
Reading a medieval book may not seem so different from reading a volume from your own bookshelf: just pick it up, flip to the first page, and start reading. However, apart from the fact that ...
https://medievalbooks.nl/2015/02/20/cracking-codes-in-medieval-books/