Manuscripts

Picturing Piety: The Book of Hours

275 pages, paperback, 300 x 190 mm, 150 colour illustrations
PRICE: £25.00
ISBN: 9781903470657

 

Customers in the US or Canada, CLICK HERE

Roger Wieck with Sandra Hindman and Ariane Bergeron-Foote

This catalogue of Books of Hours, the 'best seller' of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, presents two dozen Books of Hours mostly dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Examples from France, the Netherlands, and Belgium are presented chronologically with illustrations in colour for each entry.

Highlights include a fine early Dutch Book of Hours with illuminations closely related to those by the artists of the Utrecht History Bibles. There is also a lavish Book of Hours signed with marks by one of the Masters of Otto von Moredrecht; and a high-quality Parisian Book of Hours with an unusual sequence of miniatures by the Master of Jacques de Besancon. Many of these Books are previously entirely unknown and unpublished. An introductorry essay explores how illuminated Books of Hours encouraged their readers to picture piety through reading of texts accompanies by visual aid.


Turkish Bookbinding in the 15th Century: The Foundation of an Ottoman Court Style

Produced for the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie, this book traces the development of the early Ottoman style under influence from their neighbours; the impact of the patronage of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror; and the development of the ‘classical’ style under his successor Bayezid II. A catalogue section provides beautiful illustrations of 41 masterpieces of bookbinding; with technical appendices, bibliography, concordance and index. More

MESROP OF XIZAN: An Armenian Master of the Seventeenth Century

Illuminator, painter, scribe, clerk, teacher, doctor of theology, restorer and binder, Mesrop was one of the greatest Armenian artists of his and following generations. He was prolific, working for at least forty-two years in Sos (New Julfa) from 1608 to 1651. This book will be the first serious study of the forty-six of his manuscripts that have survived. The focus of the book, however, is The Four Gospels, one of the few manuscripts painted entirely by Mesrop’s hand and one of the most extensively illuminated in his oeuvre. More

Ink and Gold: Masterpieces of Islamic Calligraphy

Given the status of the Qur‘an as the eternal and uncreated word of Allah, the art of the pen became the focus of an extra­ordinary energy in the Muslim world. Ink and Gold charts the development of Islamic calligraphy – the noblest, most stylized and original of the Islamic arts – over a period of some 1200 years, from its beginnings in the Arabian Peninsula. More

Chinese Books

This catalogue discusses and illustrates a wide variety of Chinese books, dating from the sixth to the nineteenth century -- some very rare. More

Amorous Delight: The Amarushataka Palm-Leaf Manuscript. Illustrated by the Master of Sharanakula in the 19th Century (Orissa, India)

Around 1800, an anonymous engraver in Sharanakula, a small temple place on the southern coast of Orissa, illustrated a palm-leaf anthology of love poems. The one hundred Sanskrit quatrains, which are said to be the work of the 7th-century poet Amaru, describe the behaviour of enamoured couples, their longing for each other, the lovers’ anxieties, their ecstatic joy as well as their doubts and sorrows. More

Islamic Manuscripts - OUT OF PRINT

The selection consists of Qur’ans, illustrated Islamic manuscripts and scientific and religious manuscripts. All are handsomely illustrated and fully discussed. The manuscripts are from all parts of the Islamic world and represent the finest achievements of the form. More