There was a lot in the press last year about the  Treasures of the Wreck of the Unbelievable exhibition by UK artist Damien Hirst at two major venues in Venice, Italy. I was lucky enough to be invited to the private view and it really was an 'unbelievable' tour-de-force. Associated with the exhibition were 100 annotated Renaissance drawings on vellum of the 100 exhibits on display. The annotations consisted of seven different writing styles from the Renaissance to the 19th century and in different languages. These have been published in a book, interestingly called One Hundred Drawings! I can't tell you anything about these or anything to do with it for confidentiality reasons but I do hope that at some point I can. There is an interesting blogpost on the link which explains a little more (please note that someone else did the heading on the endpapers!).

What a warm, Australian welcome I received at the Carmelite Library in Melbourne just after Christmas. I must admit that my brain was still somewhat over Singapore, but that didn't seem to matter to the interested, and interesting, audience. I was amazed that the Calligraphy Society of Victoria had very kindly put on an exhibition of members' work in the library showing exciting and vibrant calligraphy just for the event. I talked about The Art and History of Calligraphy and a number of members brought in their books for me to write in names calligraphically and to sign them too. And, to make a real occasion of it, they arranged an afternoon tea reception afterwards. It all made for a most memorable occasion and many thanks to President Sally Diserio, Philip of the Carmelite Library, and all the Victorian calligraphers.

In most countries in the world, the year starts on January 1st with various celebrations, and there certainly were in Sydney. January, of course, is named after the Roman god, Janus, who is here looking in every direction, not just backwards to the past year and forwards to the next. However, although January 1st was the start of the year in Roman times from 45 BC, in 567 AD the church changed all that as they weren't too happy about the wild celebrations associated with it. So various dates were used, 1st March, 25th March (Lady Day), 25th December, and dates connected with Easter. Most countries moved back to 1st January from 1600, but in England this didn't happen until 1750. There's more on the link.

It may be too late for a Christmas present, but it's certainly not too late for a wonderful New Year's treat. The Parker Library, which houses most of the manuscripts collected by Archbishop Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of Elizabeth I, is re-launching its website this month and the images will now be free to view online. You can glory in the richness of colour used by Master Hugo in the Bury Bible shown here, look at the St Augustine Gospels which are used at the installation of new Archbishops of Canterbury, and also see the Chronica Maiora of Matthew Paris. What a treat in store for us all!

The Dragon Hours is an amazing book which was in the Sotheby's sale in November last year. In a worn, but beautiful, red velvet binding, it was this page that caught my eye. Click on the link and find this page along the bottom under the main manuscript image and then enlarge it as much as you can. Bear in mind that the pages are only 190 mm high and then think about the size of this image of the Virgin and Child. So, to that green floor – it is first outlined using a darker green and a straight edge, then the lighter green diagonal section is painted. Next the darker green diagonal section has been completed, and lastly, a line which can be only 1–2 mm long is painted in a darker green on each square. There are nigh on forty squares horizontally and the whole image is a tour-de-force. 

What would we do without the @ sign used millions of times every day when sending and receiving emails? In fact the @ sign was a pretty nondescript sign, minding its own business, used mainly in accounting to give an indication of price – so many items at (@) this amount of money. It was a symbol used on a key in early typewriters and so was transferred to the computer keyboard too. But because it wasn't really used in computing Ray Tomlinson, the inventor of the email, thought that it wouldn't cause any confusion when used in early programmes. However, it seemed so insignificant that Ray made no record of the first time he used it. More on the link, and in a short clip here.

One of the animal miniatures quite often selected by participants to gild and paint in my one-day and longer courses is a pard. The pard has been described as having a mottled coat with white speckles, and can kill with one leap. They mate with a lioness and the offspring is, of course, a leopard (think leo the lion and it's obvious!). However, the leopard, being the result of this unusual mating, is a 'beast born in sin and brought up out of wedlock' and so was often likened to the Anti-Christ. Although we know that pards are mythical beasts they were referred to by Shakespeare and even Keats.


 

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Paperbacks – an unusual history

Paperbacks are so much part of our modern life, but when did hardbacks go soft? Their history is a long one with limp vellum bindings, pamphlets and leaflets, and Penguin Classics with soft covers in the 1930s. However it wasn't quite the same in the US where they rather liked their hardbacks, but in 1944 when US troops came over to Europe, each one was given a postcard sized paper back book. They were Armed Service Editions (ASEs), that were designed specifically to fit into a pocket. The books became an important part of troop morale and books were mass produced, with the books being stapled to avoid them being attacked by glue-eating insects. There's more on the link.

 

What we can find from manuscripts

I was really amazed by how much science was able to support manuscript studies in the work done for the Colour exhibition curated by Dr Stella Panayotova at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Now, it seems, even more can be found out, and all by non-invasive methods. It's worth reading to the end of this article and also looking at the short film at the beginning. Identifying bookworms and when the eggs were laid, animals, animal husbandry and even human infections can now all be revealed in manuscripts alongside the pigments.


 

There are many mediæval manuscripts we know of that have been recorded in lists and records of libraries but which are lost to us now. However, one particular manuscript has had a rather chequered recent past. The fifteenth-century Luneborch manuscript had been in the Peabody Library at Johns Hopkins University in the USA since 1909, but between then and the 1970s it disappeared, only for it to turn up in a mysterious parcel in the post some forty years later. With no return address and nothing to indicate where it had been for all that time, the manuscript simply re-surfaced. More on the link about the significance of the book and Lübeck, part of the Hanseatic League, in the fifteenth century.

Gail McGarva is a master boat builder who has rescued a traditional Dorset boat – a lerret. Lerrets were used off Chesil Beach where the flat bottom with double-ended sterns made them ideal to be launched off the steep beach. 'Vera', built in 1923 and one of only two remaining lerrets, was in a sorry state, but Gail, together with master wheelwrights Rowland & Son created The Story Boat where memories of maritime life, oral history and recording can be made and preserved. There are various exciting events planned, so do search it out in Lyme Regis in Dorset if you're visiting.