1 00:00:07,460 --> 00:00:18,470 OK, I hope everybody can see the slides clearly, can hear my voice. 2 00:00:18,470 --> 00:00:32,630 So, yes, just briefly to start with the Bodleian Library corpus of manuscripts made for Prince Caraco. 3 00:00:32,630 --> 00:00:35,360 You know, the borderlands, in fact, 4 00:00:35,360 --> 00:00:49,730 quite rich in an overall body of what was quite a prolific production of manuscripts between during peer production, 5 00:00:49,730 --> 00:01:01,790 relatively short career, only ten years from fourteen fifty six to 14, 16. 6 00:01:01,790 --> 00:01:13,070 He was governor in Shiraz on behalf of his father, John Shaw, but then showed signs of insubordination. 7 00:01:13,070 --> 00:01:22,850 He was moved to Baghdad in fourteen sixty to sixty one and then finally brought on his 8 00:01:22,850 --> 00:01:31,550 father's wrath upon him in fourteen sixty six where he died at the orders of his father. 9 00:01:31,550 --> 00:01:39,620 So quite a short and fiery career, if you like. 10 00:01:39,620 --> 00:01:55,340 But during that period, he was the patron of a large number of absolutely exquisite manuscripts, many of which were made in Shiraz and very usefully. 11 00:01:55,340 --> 00:02:13,580 David Roxborough has in an essay entitled Many Wishes to Death Essays in Honour of Renata Holland has catalogued a great many of those manuscripts. 12 00:02:13,580 --> 00:02:22,640 His mentions about 14 with dedications to pay and a great many more without dedications. 13 00:02:22,640 --> 00:02:29,390 And of course, anyone who watches the sale rooms will notice that in the last two years, 14 00:02:29,390 --> 00:02:41,210 both Sotheby's and Christie's have had the most magnificent copies of baduk manuscripts up for sale. 15 00:02:41,210 --> 00:02:52,340 So I didn't have time to look deeply at all of the manuscripts during my poetry and fellowship. 16 00:02:52,340 --> 00:02:58,460 But I there's one one left that I would like to look at in more detail. 17 00:02:58,460 --> 00:03:10,910 But the ones that I managed to spend a lot of time with this wonderful copy here, you see of the must not be of Jalaluddin Rumi. 18 00:03:10,910 --> 00:03:15,890 It's a large, hulking, beautiful manuscript, very popular. 19 00:03:15,890 --> 00:03:21,170 And it's been on many, many levels in exhibitions. 20 00:03:21,170 --> 00:03:32,510 And here we see an image of the one of the two opening, she says, with a dedication to people dark in the middle. 21 00:03:32,510 --> 00:03:50,240 And one of two very ornate front pieces on the left of both of these have been heavily restored during the early 19th century of late 18th century. 22 00:03:50,240 --> 00:04:03,230 So somewhere between seven, between seventeen ninety eight to eighteen fourteen, they came into the hands of Circle Ouseley in India. 23 00:04:03,230 --> 00:04:12,290 And it seems at that time the front pages on the back page were very, very heavily restored. 24 00:04:12,290 --> 00:04:17,750 And that in itself creates some very interesting findings. 25 00:04:17,750 --> 00:04:27,680 The other manuscripts that I've looked at in some detail is this group of three exquisite little Sophina, 26 00:04:27,680 --> 00:04:37,940 the very small political speech, pretty much identical in layout and orientation. 27 00:04:37,940 --> 00:04:43,850 They each measure only about 16 centimetres by eight centimetres. 28 00:04:43,850 --> 00:04:48,560 And the most famous of all. Sorry, I hope that's better. 29 00:04:48,560 --> 00:04:57,960 I forgot to put my speaker thing front. To be the most famous of all is only one four zero. 30 00:04:57,960 --> 00:05:03,630 That comes from the collection of Syckel. His brother William. 31 00:05:03,630 --> 00:05:19,500 And this is. Possibly the earliest illuminated copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khyam, it's very famous, of course, because it was one of the, I think, 32 00:05:19,500 --> 00:05:33,810 two manuscripts that was consulted by Edward Fitzgerald when he penned his very famous English version of the book by it, 33 00:05:33,810 --> 00:05:41,640 but not quite so famous, therefore not designated Precious as yet, what I call it brothers. 34 00:05:41,640 --> 00:05:44,640 So there are two other manuscripts. 35 00:05:44,640 --> 00:05:58,200 One is contains quatrains by Cachay and some of them, and the other, interestingly, A, does the number of misery Kohistani. 36 00:05:58,200 --> 00:06:06,120 And at some point I think it would be wonderful if somebody did a study of products choice literature, 37 00:06:06,120 --> 00:06:11,490 somebody more erudite in literature than I hope. 38 00:06:11,490 --> 00:06:14,310 But these are very similar in format. 39 00:06:14,310 --> 00:06:28,050 They have been published by David Roxborough and they've also been mentioned by Elaine right in the look of the book. 40 00:06:28,050 --> 00:06:37,350 So I was looking at the, as Francesca said, the materiality of these books, how they were structured, 41 00:06:37,350 --> 00:06:45,480 how they were originally designed, the layout involving a lot of measurements. 42 00:06:45,480 --> 00:06:53,070 But also I have the great pleasure of looking at what are possibly some of the finest illuminations of the period, 43 00:06:53,070 --> 00:07:03,000 quite distinctive and slightly different from the classical by some gaudy illuminations. 44 00:07:03,000 --> 00:07:09,270 And to try and decipher how these designs that evolved and how they were put together. 45 00:07:09,270 --> 00:07:19,290 As we can see, we've got three examples of illuminations from the something this very famous SHAMSUL 46 00:07:19,290 --> 00:07:27,180 opening shots from the report of the more Payam with its title in The Star in the Centre. 47 00:07:27,180 --> 00:07:39,000 This is absolutely my new I've got my see the diagram in the next one, but I think it's about three centimetres across. 48 00:07:39,000 --> 00:07:48,630 Here is a colourful illumination from the side of caution from al-Qaida. 49 00:07:48,630 --> 00:07:57,270 And the one on the right is a beautiful GNR page from the dust or monomer of misery. 50 00:07:57,270 --> 00:08:05,010 Bustani One of the pleasures of this has been looking at illuminations that rarely see the light of day, 51 00:08:05,010 --> 00:08:12,900 partly because most of the manuscripts opens at the most obvious front pages when they're on display, 52 00:08:12,900 --> 00:08:22,740 but with no hint of the treasures that lie within the third manuscript of the. 53 00:08:22,740 --> 00:08:28,680 And of course, porpoise is a form of love. 54 00:08:28,680 --> 00:08:37,200 This, again, in fact, came much earlier to the collection via the phrase the collection. 55 00:08:37,200 --> 00:08:50,850 So it was, again, quite possibly in India because the findings are Indian, but it has arrived in excellent condition, pretty much unretouched. 56 00:08:50,850 --> 00:08:55,560 I haven't had a chance to look at it in great detail, 57 00:08:55,560 --> 00:09:07,170 but I was absolutely stunned when opening the the covers of the first volume to see that the restorers who 58 00:09:07,170 --> 00:09:18,510 found it had in fact saved the original Douglas in bindings of the original findings are the first to go, 59 00:09:18,510 --> 00:09:28,830 unfortunately. But here is a magnificent example of filigree leather work over a thick layer of lapis lazuli pigment. 60 00:09:28,830 --> 00:09:34,350 And I can't wait to get my hands on that in the near future. 61 00:09:34,350 --> 00:09:46,710 A little bit about how I work in order to understand the material and how these manuscripts will were made. 62 00:09:46,710 --> 00:09:58,410 The first stage is to look at the manuscripts in great detail, page by page, looking at the the the format, 63 00:09:58,410 --> 00:10:06,750 the layout, the quality of paper, and also to make these very detailed drawings in the study of. 64 00:10:06,750 --> 00:10:09,600 This is something you can't get from photography. 65 00:10:09,600 --> 00:10:18,930 You need your eyes to see changes of mind and things that maybe have been restored as opposed to original book. 66 00:10:18,930 --> 00:10:29,460 So all these spidery notes and diagrams translate into what I hope are some more sensible diagrams. 67 00:10:29,460 --> 00:10:38,850 And I hope in the long run will give us some information about how the original ateliers, which again, 68 00:10:38,850 --> 00:10:48,570 think of them as US institutions with directors, a bit like Pixar Studios, a lot of artists and directors working together. 69 00:10:48,570 --> 00:10:57,750 So the whole book would have been carefully planned from the beginning, starting with the format of the text, 70 00:10:57,750 --> 00:11:09,270 looking at how much space the text would take, how large the calligraphers hand has to be, and the structure of the poetry. 71 00:11:09,270 --> 00:11:24,150 This is a recreation of the layout of the mustafi of Rumi and because of the dignity of the work, according to Elane. 72 00:11:24,150 --> 00:11:37,660 Right. The the the work itself, the poetry itself in many ways governs the format of the the text covers. 73 00:11:37,660 --> 00:11:46,320 So in this case, the mustafi is generally given quite a generous, wide format text, 74 00:11:46,320 --> 00:11:56,010 which creates quite a large book, and it's divided into these columns for each of the lines of the poetry. 75 00:11:56,010 --> 00:12:06,690 So this is worked out first. And what they did was to make a template that would be preserved throughout the entire book. 76 00:12:06,690 --> 00:12:10,980 So it's a bit like the type setting of a modern publisher. 77 00:12:10,980 --> 00:12:19,310 This template was made of carved and strung with string with both columns and the lines. 78 00:12:19,310 --> 00:12:26,130 What happens is that the entire book is cut. 79 00:12:26,130 --> 00:12:32,970 The papers cut into folios and the entire entirety of the folios are placed over this 80 00:12:32,970 --> 00:12:38,910 and robbed by some poor guy who has the job of rubbing the paper over the MISTERA, 81 00:12:38,910 --> 00:12:54,120 which creates an impression. And this is then used first to line up the text panels and then by the scribe to write the poetry. 82 00:12:54,120 --> 00:12:58,380 Now we actually can see the MISTERA impressions. 83 00:12:58,380 --> 00:13:05,850 And here is the last page of one of the small poetry books, ouseley one 14. 84 00:13:05,850 --> 00:13:09,930 And you can see very clearly at the very end the back page. 85 00:13:09,930 --> 00:13:14,940 This is the first of the colourful and you can see the Mr. Marx. 86 00:13:14,940 --> 00:13:19,440 These are originals. So it's quite wonderful to see these. 87 00:13:19,440 --> 00:13:27,060 So accordingly, I put through these manuscripts through the same treatment, 88 00:13:27,060 --> 00:13:36,150 measured up their layout, and the mistera made us a recreation of a mistera. 89 00:13:36,150 --> 00:13:42,510 And sure enough, all the text and all the illuminations are centred on the mistera. 90 00:13:42,510 --> 00:13:46,920 Now, one of the reasons you see the champs is always look a bit cross-eyed when 91 00:13:46,920 --> 00:13:52,060 there's two of them is because they're centred on the centre of the mystery, 92 00:13:52,060 --> 00:13:54,090 not the centre of the folio. 93 00:13:54,090 --> 00:14:06,750 So because it's normal for the outer margins to be, why doesn't that the margins you see that most of the elements are pushed towards the centre, 94 00:14:06,750 --> 00:14:14,580 towards the gutter of the book of the things that were absolutely fascinating when looking at these. 95 00:14:14,580 --> 00:14:31,950 This is the dustier Noma is the the the line drooler or the chockful, as it's called, would then use the mistera impression to rule the text panels. 96 00:14:31,950 --> 00:14:36,060 But they didn't rely entirely on the mystery question. 97 00:14:36,060 --> 00:14:40,830 They also measured it and make these tiny little pinpricks. 98 00:14:40,830 --> 00:14:50,890 I don't know if you can actually see it, but there's a little pinprick there or you can see my Close-Up. 99 00:14:50,890 --> 00:15:02,410 And a little pinprick here and the same in all of the the the rulings, if you look very closely, 100 00:15:02,410 --> 00:15:09,910 you see the corners and the intersections, little tiny pinpricks that were used as a guide. 101 00:15:09,910 --> 00:15:16,210 Now it seems that the black lines were ruined first and then the gold filled in later. 102 00:15:16,210 --> 00:15:24,190 So here we have some of my most beautiful nostalgic calligraphy. 103 00:15:24,190 --> 00:15:36,540 He would have been the next to do his work. And generally the lines start by slightly overshooting the double black border. 104 00:15:36,540 --> 00:15:42,690 We can see that the gold was put in later, because you can see that the gold. 105 00:15:42,690 --> 00:15:53,790 It's worked round the actual writing, and here the gold slightly overshot the end of that figure. 106 00:15:53,790 --> 00:15:59,550 It also gives you a lot of insight as to how the Illuminati works. 107 00:15:59,550 --> 00:16:08,520 So this oops, sorry, this close up here is a corner of this gorgeous illumination at the end. 108 00:16:08,520 --> 00:16:18,470 And you can see how loosely and fluidly the artist worked, first with gold and then with these very calligraphic outline. 109 00:16:18,470 --> 00:16:25,680 So it's very exciting to see this because you can actually see the hand of the artist. 110 00:16:25,680 --> 00:16:30,510 There are more clues about how the Illuminatus worked. 111 00:16:30,510 --> 00:16:40,710 These illuminations are magnificent and they tend generally to be associated with the stripe shape mood. 112 00:16:40,710 --> 00:16:53,370 Who was given the Knispel people? Dr Hollingworth looked up and I sometimes wonder if it was him who actually also did the nation's. 113 00:16:53,370 --> 00:17:02,730 It's not unusual for a scribe, a master calligrapher to also be a master illuminator. 114 00:17:02,730 --> 00:17:08,940 We can see that there are guidelines that were used to help illuminate with his work. 115 00:17:08,940 --> 00:17:15,510 So here on the chapter heading of the ouseley one three one, 116 00:17:15,510 --> 00:17:23,520 we can see a guide line up here scored with the Burin to indicate the upper extent 117 00:17:23,520 --> 00:17:31,590 of the rays that extend up from the freeze of the farm or chapter headings. 118 00:17:31,590 --> 00:17:41,190 Here again, looking at the front shamsul, you can see there is another guideline. 119 00:17:41,190 --> 00:17:50,820 It's inscribed with a burin but attached to a compass. 120 00:17:50,820 --> 00:17:55,290 And sure enough, there's a compass point in the middle. 121 00:17:55,290 --> 00:18:07,050 Now this this shows us that the illuminators actually draughted the design straight onto the folio. 122 00:18:07,050 --> 00:18:11,280 They didn't draught it on another piece of paper and then transferred. 123 00:18:11,280 --> 00:18:17,370 All of this work is done straight onto the folio, draughted from scratch. 124 00:18:17,370 --> 00:18:32,310 And then all of the manuscripts. I have seen many, many examples of these so-called guide lines, even when this fairly complex geometric structures. 125 00:18:32,310 --> 00:18:40,860 We also had a look at pigments and here I was very privileged to have the collaboration of 126 00:18:40,860 --> 00:18:50,490 my colleague Marinika Stiglitz and John Howard's and Conservation and heritage science. 127 00:18:50,490 --> 00:19:00,630 In fact, I've I've had the pleasure of working with the conservation team on the pigment research prior to this. 128 00:19:00,630 --> 00:19:06,090 So it's very exciting to have this is a continuation here. 129 00:19:06,090 --> 00:19:10,740 We've got I'm sorry to interrupt, but you have reached the end of your time. 130 00:19:10,740 --> 00:19:18,090 I'm very sorry. OK, well, last minute. 131 00:19:18,090 --> 00:19:27,240 So here we have some closeups of the colours and we can see this beautiful quality of lapis lazuli. 132 00:19:27,240 --> 00:19:38,250 And here in the centre is the great big compass point that comes in the centre of this panel. 133 00:19:38,250 --> 00:19:43,740 Thank you very much. I'm sorry that I've overshot. 134 00:19:43,740 --> 00:19:53,940 So let me come out now and to.