Thank you, Henry. Henrico has been living with these manuscripts for a long time.
I saw my first manuscript from making last week, so I think, please bear with me.
I'm not sure how many people today were at the lecture last night.
I'd be interested to just have a show of hands. Oh, good, good.
So most of you girls will know what I'm going to try and sort of elucidate slightly.
Today we had a fantastic sort of detective story about the identification of this new manuscript,
which has come to the pavilion and that kind of detective work of bringing the three disparate parts back together that had been recently separated.
And I first saw this manuscript last week because Martin and Henry said, Is there any way we can tell whether something's ivory or not?
This, you'll remember from last night is the the plaque.
That had been glued inside the left board,
the upper board of the manuscript at some point in the 19th century to make it look more authentic as a mechanical item.
And it's being reunited, as we heard last night, with the watercolour and shell gold order.
Possible to mount around it today.
So the question came up, can we say anything about it? Is it a high street?
Is it ivory or is it boat? And could the body and Conservation's section answer the question?
Well, no, not really. We don't work on this material very often.
However, I have a minor section on my bookshelf at home on skeletal material, and now they've called it,
and we looked at it up in the health space and that's through the microscope.
And so I think we can clearly say it is bone.
And I'm going to bow to your better joke yesterday.
We can now say it's an old Dutch cow, probably. So here it is, as it should have been left in place on the interface of the left board.
But I'm just it's quite hard to see, I think, under the VISUALISE.
So I'm just going to show you a couple of photos to tell you why we think it's bone before moving on the move that we've.
So here's a couple of quick photos that have been taken this week of of the plaque now in Oxford.
So you can see, obviously, a lot of engraved, carved plaque on the left.
And here we kind of reverse the back of it doesn't greatly help as it's been highly polished over the years.
So it's hard at first sight to say whether it's bone or ivory.
However, we do know that bone is or I now know being slightly ahead of you in the book.
Bone is a lightweight, hollow material compared to ivory.
So what evidence do we have? And really, it's looking at it in kind of cross section and what marks are on the back.
So if you see a cross section, this is the top page, this gentle curve to it with the lower peaks in the middle.
And the sort of three quarter shot above. You see, there's this dark depression in the middle.
This is the cavity in the centre of the body.
So if you think of bone as a hollow material with spongy material.
Bone marrow. And so in the middle of long bones, but spongy metal material in the middle accommodates.
So this is clearly the cavity from the bone. So first off, it's obviously bone and it also has.
Let me get this right. It also has nutrient for a minor running through it.
So these are traces black or darkish coloured traces that you can see low to the day along.
It has just bits and pieces in the transverse section.
So these are the narrow channels that run through bone carrying nutrients.
So it clearly states bone. Also.
McGregor in his work on bone antler ivory and horn, looking at the technology of skeletal material,
has pointed out that most of these later plaques that were seen to have been used for caskets
are made from or cut from scapula so that your shoulder bones were your shoulder bones,
but probably domesticated animal. And again, in time, it would be interesting to talk to our colleagues at the Ashmolean and Pitt Rivers to say,
can we say, is this domesticated calf or pig or whatever?
But probably if we go back, we can see this gentle curve and all the rather fitting holes of the chap on the right.
You see these slight white areas of highlights.
So we've seen we've got both the evidence of the cavity on the back and the evidence
of the highlight showing is it's quite a thin section and a gentle curving.
So probably scapula the shoulder blade. That's all I can say about that.
But I think we can say it's now own rather an ivory.
I think you have to. Of course.
No good term goes unpunished. So having shown some interest in the phone with them prompted, can we say anything else?
Is there anything, you know, looking at this new manuscript that's coming to the library, can you say anything about it?
The physical state of it. It's interesting that we have here for late medieval manuscripts from 19.
The four examples in Oxford all appear to have early or original findings,
which are something of a rarity in itself, is of high survival rate of early findings.
And at first sight you think binding know whatever it is after 1479, you know, this looks convincing as its first finding.
However, as in Henry, who was explaining the alterations and the changes that were made to this manuscript following 1526.
So scratching his head and thinking, How did they do it?
There's quite a lot cut out. Quite a lot. 14. It's quite an expert cut and paste job really.
And it's I think it became clear that this was planned and executed around about the binding at this point.
So this finding, we can clearly say dates from the time of these major changes to its structure and
therefore the binding itself will help us to date those hopefully in the future.
And that's just. Have a quick look at some of the evidence.
So I put an extra opening in the middle of the 1890,
which so these are the two additional leaves that were added towards the start of the manuscript and with new.
With new friends. So if we can see on the left, we've got this crossed through friend that has then been replaced with two leaves on the right.
It is 18 and 19. However, if we go to the next clue, you just why we are here.
It's a slightly open cut to show the climate which is on the back of the second stop.
And we're going to come back. All right. All right. Well, that's good. There is one here as well.
And it's not just that. Maybe.
Yeah, but the other. So can we now go to 31 versus 32?
So. Which is at the end of the choir following these two additional leaves.
So what I want to draw your attention to here is.
Acquire signature a three. In this case, this is the last leaf of the post 1479 third column after which you have to take my word for this.
See that cartridge here? This is the stop the conjoint stump of Leaf 19, which is the second leaf of these added.
France that the two leaves are written on single terms.
Both hoped one is hooked around the third choir, the other is hooked around the second choir.
So quite a careful planning of how these leaves are going to be added in.
When I mean, when I say hooked, what I mean is it's a folded stub that goes around the outside of the choir.
It's not held in by these if it's only held in by sewing the choirs together.
When the manuscript has been rebound. So this is clearly to me shows that the.
The vast numbers of changes to this manuscript are planning around revising campaign.
Can we now just go to if you just want to have a look at the work in this patient that you've stores in place so you.
So guess who's who. Can we go to?
Folio. 14, so 15 rectangle.
And the other crucial evidence around this finding is ole.
Ole, on the age of least 15, we see these.
Bits of red ink coming from the other side.
The forage is being folded over carefully before this manuscript was retrieved.
There is text on the other side. They were worried that it was going to get cut off as the manuscript was rebound.
So they folded this in before the accused were retrieved,
which also points out that all of these index tabs again have been added in as part of this review.
So the restructuring of this manuscript following 1526 at some point is part of a careful campaign that also involved its rebounding.
Could we have a look at the actual. We've seen it tantalisingly open and close before.
So very nice manuscript, very nice binding of think.
It has it uses for small tools.
So we've got. A pomegranate, so.
It's a diamond shaped tomb with peaceful low.
Perform a circular thing in the middle of the.
Three circles are kind of cloverleaf to here.
There's an O.G. arch, which is that these sort of.
Failure finials on them and a single roll, which is a thin, thick, thin roll.
So enforcement of one rule of one roll used on this manuscript.
And you'll notice the metal furniture that was also added at this time.
For sure, if any done it from photographs so far. But because Henrik has been madly photographing all of the manuscripts that she's discovered,
these full tools and a role are shared with possibly four other manuscripts from within.
So it will give us a chance to hopefully date these changes by the bindings.
Unfortunately, the pomegranate that we've looked for so far doesn't appear in any of the binding tool databases yet.
Who knows what's in Greenburg and what we'll be able to find, hopefully by looking for.
Printed books. Could we just have the Kindle manuscript?
And that's side by side. Just to show you and this is tool ID in action hasn't been done before putting them side by side.
I've only seen the people one from a distance and a slightly out of focus photo.
So far, I believe it shows the same small souls.
The cable one is interesting. It has an additional role.
So there's well, that's on the outside here.
We've got an additional role that's not seen on the other measures, but we've got this same diamond shape to the same O.G. arch,
and pomegranate is the same triple circle, and there's a pomegranate either on there or the other board.
But again, it seems to match. But again, more work is needed.
The other interesting thing about these is none of them share the same design and none of them seem to share the same design of metal furniture,
which makes you wonder where they all sense at the same time. Is it a workshop, a small workshop with a limited number of tools?
But again, I think there's more work that can be done with the findings.
There's one final thing I'd like to draw attention to, which is only copy and manuscript.
This may be difficult, and we come back to the key both because yes, we can do it the and we can.
Yeah, yeah. So I just yeah. And there's one last thing, which is I think an additional stage of alteration to add into your timeline from last night,
which is this as we see on the left port here, this is road stitch used here.
It has an amateur in here.
So there's a stitched piece of leather within the head of the spine.
If you can just see here, there are very unusual imbalance.
Obviously, we try and. From the fact that we.
So here we see part of a red, natural coloured and black thread braided in bands.
And also there's this red running stitch here, and bands are usually sewn onto the text block or of a manuscript or printed both in the German lines.
You also have stuck on in bands which are worked through a parchment spine lining.
That's a sort of abbreviated method. However, I've never seen anything like this,
which is a separately braided piece of textile that has been tacked on with a red running stitch in a slightly uncomfortable way.
And I wonder if this is again evidence of alteration and continued use of this manuscript within the content.
We finished.