In preparation for my manuscript course at the iSchool, I had a box pulled that was described as “ Fragments of medieval manuscripts”. That changed during a recent visit to The University of British Columbia’s Rare Books and Special Collections. Leaf in a boxĪlthough the St Albans Bible is rather well-known, I had never seen any of its leaves myself.
Duschnes dismembered a copy of the famous Kelmscott Chaucer and sold it by the leaf in this 1941 publication. Even modern rare books are at times cut up.
This 1928 edition, which appeared in 100 copies, contains no less than 60 original leaves from early printed books and this one, published in 1964 in 40 copies, holds an original leaf from the 1486 printing of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The practice of breaking rare books extends to incunabula. Auction houses do not usually identify new owners and, while leaves purchased by libraries may in time appear on the radar, especially when they are digitized, those in private collections may not be seen for many decades. Even today, the book’s eye-catching leaves are frequently auctioned at Sotheby’s (2015, 2016), Christie’s (2015, 2019), Bonham’s (2012), and Dreweatts (2017). Following this assumption, auction catalogues have come to refer to the broken parent manuscript acquired by Duschnes as the “St Albans Bible,” despite the uncertainty surrounding its earliest provenance.Īs a result of Duschnes’s dark deed, leaves from “the” St Albans Bible flooded the market and often found new homes in private collections (very few are held in university libraries). Duschnes’s bible was believed to have been one of these two books. The abbey’s chronicle, moreover, detailed that abbot Michael de Mentmore (1335-1349) gifted two beautiful bibles to the community (“duas bonas biblias, quarum unam dedit Conventus, alteram suo studio assignavit,” cf.
At the time of purchase, the manuscript contained two flyleaves taken from a register from St Albans Abbey, which suggests a St Albans provenance. Source Breaking a bookĭuschnes bought his bible at the Sotheby’s auction of 6 July 1964 for £1,500 (approximately $12,000 today). 1 Leaf from the St Albans Bible auctioned at Christie’s on 10 July 2019 (now part of the McCarthy Collection, see Kidd 2019). This post introduces a newly identified leaf of Duschnes’s bible at the University of British Columbia and it explores what can be known about the original manuscript to which it belonged. Today, leaves can be purchased from a variety of sources, including Ebay. The business of selling freshly-cut leaves from medieval manuscripts proved incredibly lucrative. 1951), another infamous manuscript cutter, who added the remains to his “Fifty Original Manuscript Leaves” portfolios, which he put together and sold in the 1940s (more in Gwara 2013 and here). In 1942 he sold the half-gutted missal to Otto Ege (d.
PAPYRUS REED SAMLL BOOK FULL
Cut to order.ĭuschnes had done the same with other manuscripts, such as the Beauvais Missal (read the full story here watch this lecture by Lisa Fagin Davis). In 1965, he began offering individual leaves for sale in his catalogue 169, stating that others from the same manuscript were available.
With so much beauty on each page, to Duschnes the manuscript must have seemed ideal for breaking and selling by the leaf. The manuscript also contains numerous historiated initials, like the letter S above. Every page is adorned with exuberant decoration, usually with gold leaf. 1970) bought and subsequently broke a splendid medieval Bible produced in early-fourteenth-century Paris (Figure 1). In 1964, the New York rare book dealer Philip Duschnes (d.
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