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It's just after four o'clock here in Oxford,

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so I'll kick off. Hello again, and welcome to this first talk in the Textiles Library 'Context and conservation' series.

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My name is Alice Evans and I'm an assistant book conservator here at the Bodleian,

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and I'm speaking to you from the conservation studio at the Weston Library in Oxford.

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This series of talks is a collaboration between the Conservation and Collection Care Team here at the Bodleian and the Centre for the Study of

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the Book and all our speakers in this series will be exploring textiles found across library collections in many unexpected and expected places.

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It is part of a project which began with our team looking at the housing of our collection of embroidered bindings,

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which then prompted us to start thinking about all the other places we can find textiles,

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from endbands, sewing threads and covering materials and bindings, to objects such as tapestries,

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puppets and items of clothing. As well as the series of public talks,

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the project is continuing behind the scenes as our team works to develop our own

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understanding of these objects and how best to care for them through outreach

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events and training, which is being generously funded by friend of the Library, T A Barron.

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Just to let you know some housekeeping things before we start today's session: we are recording this event,

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but as it is a Zoom webinar, your audio and camera will be turned off so you won't appear in the video.

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We will be sharing a link to the recording in about a week or so's time,

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and it will also be available on the University Podcast website as well as the Bodleian YouTube channel.

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And we'll also be sharing a list of shelf marks of the objects we'll be showing today.

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In this session, my colleagues will be sharing amazing objects with youand we would love for you to be involved in the discussion,

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so please do type any questions you have in the Question and Answer box as we go and we will try to answer as many of them as we can.

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We'll have a short question and answer session after each speaker has presented,

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and we'll finish the session with some time for Q&A with the whole panel. So without further ado, I'll pass over to my colleague, Martin Kauffmann,

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who is chairing today's session, and he will be introducing the rest of the panel. Thank you, Martin.

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Thanks, Alice.

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It's welcome, everyone, again. It's my pleasure to introduce our principal panellists who are my colleagues, my Bodleian colleagues.

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Andrew Honey from the Conservation and Collection Care section and Andrew's going to be casting a

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conservator's eye view over some of the materials and techniques of textiles in our books and manuscripts.

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And Jo Maddox, Curator of Rare Books, who's going to be showing us some embroidered bindings on printed books

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and one or two other surprise items. And finally, I'll be much more briefly just showing one use of textiles in our medieval illuminated manuscripts.

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Andrew and I will be will be using PowerPoint slides, but much more bravely and ambitiously,

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Jo will be using the visualiser - just a document camera to show live images of the embroidered bindings.

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But first off, it's Andrew Honey. And over to you, Andrew.

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Thank you. Paper, parchment, leather and adhesives might be the materials that spring to mind when we think about books.

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But I'm going to use my brief time today to explore the equally important but less well known

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textile materials and techniques that underpin so many of the books found in library collections.

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This dual nature of books and their methods of manufacture was caught by Dirk de Bray in his early account of book binding. On the left of his sketch,

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we can see two binders sewing books at sewing frames. And on the right,

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a binder using glue with great relish on the spine of the book - adhesive that will also be used to attach the boards and cover the book with leather.

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On the right of the slide is a print made by Chris Clarkson,

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one of the pioneers of modern book conservation, and of the conservation department at the Bodleian.

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It sums up his approach to book conservation as a break with 19th century binding traditions. Humorously

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he hints that a reliance on glue might be seen as the work of the devil,

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and he contrasts this with methods based on sound sewing that is on the side of the angels.

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This afternoon, I will explore this more angelic side: the use of textiles and textile techniques within books at the Bodleian.

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This will be a very brief overview and won't cover all the types of textiles that we find,

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but hopefully the selection will be representative of those that survive,

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as well as some that are lost, those that are obvious and some that are more hidden.

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As a practising book conservator, I shouldn't be surprised that textiles are so important as they have been fundamental to my work,

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and these three images show how sewing and textiles underpins my conservation work.

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However, my conservation training didn't specifically include textiles, though it did include leather, parchment and paper,

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and I'm very much looking forward to learning much more about textiles in libraries throughout this series of talks.

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The bound codex at its most fundamental level is a series of pairs of leaves folded into quires that are joined together,

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allowing a book to be opened, read and for the leaves to turn in a fixed order.

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This mid 17th century Ethiopian manuscript eloquently demonstrates the reliance of books on sewing,

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with two lengths of thread sewn to the wooden boards and used to sew the quires together, and it has an elegant simplicity.

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It is the thread that turns the parchment and boards of this manuscript into a bound codex.

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This reliance on sewing continues to this day. On occasions, it's necessary to rebind a mediaeval manuscript as part of its conservation.

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And this slide shows a large 12th century English Bible on a sewing frame.

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The methods we use are based on techniques seen in surviving early book bindings.

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The individual quires have been sewn to five double cord sewing supports with a heavy linen thread.

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The end leaves incorporate linen fabric,

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and the cord sewing supports will be laced and wedged into new boards; endbands will be sewn head and tail and their cords also laid into the boards.

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Bookbinding largely relies on textiles and sewing techniques to allow books to function,

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though these might not be visible when the binding is completed and the binding is covered with leather.

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Thread and sewing are also involved at earlier stages in the production of books.

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This 11th century German manuscript shows the dramatic sewn repair to the parchment leaf.

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Parchment makers process the skins of domesticated animals to produce a flexible,

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strong and opaque sheet material ideally suited for writing. The skins are de-haired and then worked

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while tensioned on a frame. Holes or flaws in the skin would stretch under this tension.

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Parchment makers would often sew holds together to prevent this, as we can see here,

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a sewn running repair to the parchment that was in place before the scribe copied out the text.

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But it's not only threads and cords that are used within books,

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this 17th century Armenian manuscript of the poetry of Araqel and Frik has a contemporary Armenian binding,

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which uses a block printed fabric as the board and foredge flap lining.

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The colours are similar to the elaborate endbands, but the linings and the endbands both have structural as well as decorative functions.

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Perhaps surprisingly, textiles were a necessary part of the day-to-day operation of the Bodleian Library in the early 17th century.

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Our accounts have regular payments for strings, tapes and inkle -

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used to make fore-edge ties. That is two tapes on each board that were tied with a bow to keep the book closed.

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These are now largely missing, having being removed in later centuries.

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Here I show six books bound by William Wildgoose for the Bodleian in 1624 from a consignment sent to him, which included Shakespeare's First Folio.

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Note that each has pinch points on the fore-edges of the boards caused by these narrow foredge ties.

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There are payments between 1620 and 1638, totalling seven pounds, 17 shillings and eight pence for many yards of strings, tapes or inkle.

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That is a narrow woven tape used for ties and presumably added within the Library.

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At this date, all books in the Library were held closed, either with metal clasps or by textile ties.

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And it's perhaps unsurprising that from at least 1640, there were annual payments of one shilling,

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and I quote: 'to poor scholars for helping to tie books against the visitation' (end quote).

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That is, to retie them ahead of the annual stocktake by the curators of the Library.

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These many yards of narrow woven tape used for fore-edge ties are now very rare.

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This is an Oxford binding from the early years of the Bodleian,

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with the remains of these ties in the state that we normally find them: drab, faded fragments cut or broken at the board.

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Luckily for us, the paste-downs within this book have been lifted,

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which exposes the ends of the ties, and I'm surprised to see how vibrant the tape is.

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The books were shelved with the fore-edges facing out,

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and the rows of books with these brightly-coloured ties must have been an incredible sight within the Library,

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although these textiles are now almost entirely lost.

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This 12th century manuscript is a glossed Gospel of Luke from Canterbury in a contemporary Romanesque binding,

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which is in incredibly good condition. It is covered in alum tawed deerskin, and would have been a vivid white when new,

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and it retains its clasp and strap and elaborate tab endbands.

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The monastic craftsmanship is exemplary, and the binding has an austere beauty.

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However, within the manuscript, there is a green, braided silk bookmark.

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And from small remains, we know that the clasp strap was once covered with a green silk textile and that

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the edges of the tabs over the endbands were worked with green silk stitching.

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Although the binding was overwhelmingly white, it had coordinated contrasting accents in green silk. Textiles,

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sometimes used in small amounts and in conjunction with other materials,

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were fundamental both to the use and the appearance of books, even if they are now sometimes missing.

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Textiles have an equally long history in the repair of books.

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This 15th century English manuscript has a contemporary binding, and it was acquired for the Library before 1602.

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It was re-covered before it arrived with alum tawed sheepskin as part of the repair, which also used lengths of plain undyed textile.

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The wooden board had split,

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possibly when an earlier iron chain staple was removed, and the board was glued together and then bridged and supported by textile.

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Linen braids, cords, threads and fabrics continue to be crucial to our current conservation.

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This 12th century Worcester manuscript was re-bound in the 1880s and then re-covered in black velvet when it entered Henry VIII's library.

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It has recently been conserved to repair the major split to the sewing and to reattach the boards,

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and the velvet covering has been stabilised and supported by textile conservator Maria Haywood.

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The conservation has relied on threads, braids and linen to bridge and repair the sewing,

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extend the sewing supports and reattach the boards, and has relied primarily on mechanical textile means rather than adhesives -

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the underlying principle of modern book conservation. The textiles that I've shown so far are not specific to books.

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They could have been used for any number of purposes.

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However, from the 1820s, we start to see textiles in the form of book cloth made specifically to cover books.

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Much work by bibliographers to characterise the patterns of these book cloths can be used to accurately describe and in some cases, date the bindings.

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This is the area of textiles in libraries with the most clearly developed terminology,

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though work continues.

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This binding, from 1839, uses a pre-ornamented book cloth, a rare technique of book cover decoration used between about 1835 and 1846.

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It was first recognised and named by Jennifer Rosner and Andrea Krupp in 2000.

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The designs of both spine and covers, with the view of Abbotsford and a portrait of Walter Scott, were embossed onto the cloth before it was used,

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with the cloth passed through a press fitted with engraved cylinders.

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Knowing how to describe textiles encountered or which terminology to use is difficult we find, this 14th century Italian manuscript, a Brunetto

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Latini, with a green textile cover, was bequeathed to the Bodleian in 1834 by Francis Douce,

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part of his large donation, which included almost 400 manuscripts.

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Our summary catalogue describes 31 of these manuscripts as covered in velvet, or almost eight percent.

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In this case, terminology might seem straightforward.

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However, we know from his own notebooks that this manuscript was sent by him in November 1811 to the London binder,

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Benjamin Pippin, to be (and I quote) 'covered in green plush'.

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The Oxford English Dictionary defines plush as 'a rich fabric of silk, cotton, wool or other material, or any of these combined, with a long,

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soft nap used especially for upholstery, servants' livery, etc'. Although at first sight this might appear to be a luxurious velvet cover,

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it will take the expertise of textile historians to fully identify what materials were used.

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Not all textiles that we encounter are luxurious and an understanding of textiles can help to indicate the relative status of the book.

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This volume contains eight Dublin chap books,

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all published by the Cheap repository for religious and moral tracts in the first two decades of the 19th century.

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The binding is covered in a coarse textile with 'No. 4' stamped on the spine.

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and 'Morville House Servants' Library' written on the board.

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Morville Hall in Shropshire is now owned by the National Trust,

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and its Servants' Library must have run to at least four volumes, as we can see. Hard-wearing canvas was used

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from the 1760s as a cheaper alternative to leather and was primarily used for binding schoolbooks.

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The use of it here within the Servants' Library surely indicates its lowly status.

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To conclude, textiles in many forms and serving many purposes are found throughout our collections.

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They were crucial to the production of books and have been vital for their use and repair over the centuries,

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and I hope this brief overview has indicated some of this wide range.

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My final example is stored with our glazed papyri and may well be the earliest bookbinding in the Bodleian's collections,

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albeit one in a fragmentary state. Now housed between glass,

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it is part two by folio of a parchment Biblical manuscript in Greek, from Egypt. Dated to the first half of the fifth century,

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it retains a length of thread that was used to sew its binding: a four-ply undyed thread with a final twist direction of Z.

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It could well be our earliest textile related to book production. And I think it's a reminder that we must consider textiles,

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we must consider the textiles that we encounter if we are to have a full understanding of our collections and the methods required to care for them.

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Thank you. Andrew, thank you so much.

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What a wonderful range of materials and techniques you've shown us in a short time.

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We're inviting the audience to send in questions and we've already got a very interesting one on some of the

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qualities of textiles and their implications for conservation and particularly the acidity of textiles.

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What effect does the acidity of textile have in degradation of these materials

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compared to other components of the elements in the construction of these books?

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That's that's a very good question, Martin,

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and one that I can't quite answer. Which is why this series and this exploration and training that we're undertaking is so important.

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I do know that the acidity and the differences between different dyes has effects on textiles that we see.

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And I think these are questions that are going to be answered more fully by Maria Hayward and Jane Eagan in the last of our series of talks.

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So I'm not answering the question, but hopefully we will later in the series.

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Andrew, thank you. I've got a question of my own, if I may, which is about the dating of these textiles.

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How easy is it to date them?

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And what techniques do we have available to us to do so?

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That may not be fair - but it's a really important question for us.

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It's a great question. And it's just showing, I think, how much we have still to learn.

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I think at the moment we're using our dating really in the same way that we would to look when something

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was added in the binding or to look at its kind of codicological archaeology.

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If we can say, has it been added when it was originally produced or later?

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I think what will be interesting is with more connections to textile historians and experts,

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I think hopefully they're going to be able to add even more information because I think beyond book cloth

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within library circles, we don't really know an awful lot about the textiles we find.

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Thank you. We've got a question here about the dye in textiles, textile dye.

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Does it smear?

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Are there any examples where the dye in a textile has smeared paper or parchment and given us a sort of conservation problem there?

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Yes. I mean, we occasionally see where books have become damp that there may be an offset from textiles.

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Certainly with book cloths and covering materials, sometimes we see that - bookmarks occasionally.

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So, yes. But again, it's the same problem - we're trying to keep our books dry, so there are bigger issues.

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But yes, we do sometimes see that.

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And it's a big question about the kind of book cloth that we use for things like boxes now to ensure that they are both light-

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fast and fast in water, just in case there ever was an emergency.

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We don't want to cause further problems. Thank you, the questions are coming in thick and fast now,

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but a very fundamental question about is there any relationship between the contents of the book and the choice of textiles used?

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And I suppose beyond the obvious one that the richer the book, then perhaps the richer the textile used might be.

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That's a very big question, and we don't have a lot of time. That's the joy of being a lowly conservator.

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I mean, I can come at it from the material perspective, but it's the joy of working with curatorial colleagues to tease out some of those questions.

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It would be interesting to see those 31 Douce manuscripts,

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how many might he have had covered himself, and how many was he buying things a certain

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class of manuscript that was deemed in the late 18th century to require a velvet cover?

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Who knows? I'm just slipping in here a helpful comment that the technical term for offset from textile dye to other materials is 'crocking'.

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But just finally, a question about the place of textiles in a study of books and bindings.

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Is this a new aspect of the study of these books, or is it something obviously that we're beginning to focus on more,

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but is it a new area of study in general, do you think?

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I think it's becoming a new, a growing area.

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I mean, I think for particularly sumptuous, some sumptuous textiles and some that we might see in a moment,

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there has been a longer period of study, but I think it's always been at the kind of high end.

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But rather than looking at textiles across the piece and across the entire spectrum, I think that's relatively new.

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And certainly new for us. Thank you, Andrew, so much.

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There are more questions coming in which we might have time for at the end,

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but I'm going to move us on now to Jo Maddocks, Curator of Rare Books, who's going to show us some embroidered bindings.

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I ought to mention, I said that Jo was using the visualiser to show live images of these books.

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I ought to mention that Jo is in fact at home and the the mystery hands you will see are those of our colleague Sarah Wheale,

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who will very kindly be handling the books in the Library for us.

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Over to you, Jo and Sarah. Thanks very much, Martin. I am Jo,

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I work in the Rare Books team. And before we start, I should probably say that I am not a textiles expert.

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So if I make any mistakes in the description of any of these bindings, they are my mistakes.

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And so please feel free to correct me in the comments.

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I'd love to know more than I do about any of these things,

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and hear your interpretations of them.

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So ahead of the session, I've been thinking about what it is about textiles in books that we find so appealing.

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And I think it's down to the fact that the fabric in this context is so unexpected,

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it's so vulnerable, and it invites touch in a way that maybe other bookish materials don't.

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So to kick off, we've got an embroidered binding here.

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It's a gorgeous thing. It's got a claim to be one of the earliest embroidered bindings

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that we have in the Library or the one that we've had in the Library the longest. Embroidered bindings I think are intriguing because

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they undermine our expectations of what a binding should be, they don't protect the book,

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they don't make it easier to store the book or handle the book in the way thaT A LEATHER

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binding might do. In a way that might make it more vulnerable. So this binding is a binding that will reveal the book's use rather than conceal it.

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So the book that you can see is a copy of the Essays of Francis Bacon.

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It was printed in London in 1625.

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And this copy is the presentation copy, which was bound for George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, to whom the book was dedicated.

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It was customary for the author to present a specially bound copy of their work to the dedicatee.

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And in this case, the binding which was commissioned is dark green velvet,

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and it's embroidered in silk and with silver thread. In the centre of the upper board, which you can see, and the lower board as well,

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there are two portraits of the Duke, which are worked in darning and satin stitches.

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The Duke of Buckingham was assassinated at Portsmouth in August 1628,

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so just three years after the book was produced.

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And later the same year, it was presented to the University of Oxford, so to the Bodleian Library by one Lewis Roberts,

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who was a London merchant. We don't know very much about him other than that he made this lovely donation to us.

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We have the the accounts of the Library, which record that in 1631,

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the Library paid one shilling for a green baize cover to protect the binding. The cover that we bought in 1631 has been lost,

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but it probably accounts for the exceptional condition of this binding today.

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You can see the colours, especially on the portrait, on the lower board, thank you Sarah,

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are still very fresh indeed.

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So the Bodleian never especially sought out embroidered bindings,

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but we have nevertheless managed to accumulate around 80 embroidered bindings, which include tapestry and beaded bindings.

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We do have a few continental European bindings, but the majority are English bindings, and most of them date from the 16th to 17th centuries,

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in particular the early mid 17th century when these kinds of bindings were really fashionable.

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This example is really unusual because it's on a secular work, almost all of our other early bindings are on Bibles and Psalters.

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And if I can ask Sarah to swap for the next one.

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Thank you, Sarah. This is another extraordinarily well-preserved example, from the Restoration this time.

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This is a Bible, the printed work inside is dated 1660 and the volume has a fore-edge painting, which is dated 1662.

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So we think it was bound around then. By this time, the fashion has changed and the embroidered bindings tend to be on white or pastel-coloured silk.

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Oh thank you, Sarah. That's very brave of you. I don't know if people can see? Yes, it's coming out really well,

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there's a lovely fore-edge painting under the gilt on the edge of the book there that you can see when you fan the book in that way,

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but you can't see when the book is held closed. And the date there in the centre is 1662.

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And that would have been done at the end of the binding, which is why we think the binding dates from around that time.

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I was saying that the bindings tend to be now on white or pastel coloured silk rather than on velvet.

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This binding is on pale blue silk, and it has this extraordinary raised embroidery and silver thread making an elaborate frame.

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And on the upper board, the one that you can see now, the central lozenge has a portrait of Charles II.

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And we've recently identified the possible source of this portrait as a painting of Charles by Peter Lely, which is now in the Royal Collection.

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The portrait is really intricate. I think you can see down to the raised medallion on Charles's chest there.

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It's extraordinarily detailed, and if I ask Sarah now to turn it over and show the lower board,

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we will be able to see that there's a portrait of Charles II's Queen, Catherine of Braganza,

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with a look of complete disdain on her face, I always think.

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This portrait has also recently been identified as a painting by Dirck Stoop,

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which is now in the National Portrait Gallery, and that painting was executed around 1660-1661,

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and circulated in engravings in the early 1660s.

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So that's likely how the embroiderer got hold of the image.

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And if, Sarah, if you could hold the book at an angle so that we can see the depth of the of the raised work we'll be able to see

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that this is absolutely not a reading copy.

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One enquirer was asking about how the textiles related to how the books were used. The really delicate

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portraits on this would be exactly where your fingers would want to grip the book if you were holding it open to read.

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But it's also not a copy for shelving. If you tried to shelve this book in between other books that

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delicate raised work with all of its very, very,

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very fine beading and spangles and silver thread would catch on other books or would get crushed in between other books.

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So really your only option if you're owning this book is to either carry it around in a bag -

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and we know that some embroidered bindings are still associated with the bags that they were carried in -

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or to have it on display on a cushion or similar in your home.

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So they were items that were made to be admired rather than read, these are items of conspicuous consumption.

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And textile bindings like this made great gifts because they were expensive.

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They were exclusive because their tactile qualities made them really enjoyable to handle, and kind of ironically,

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now we don't handle them with with bare hands.

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We use gloves because of the metal threads in them.

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We have in the collection an interesting piece of evidence actually about the sale of these books prior to the Civil War in the form

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of a petition presented to Archbishop Laud in 1638 by milliners who sold fancy goods in the Royal Exchange.

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So a new decree of the Star Chamber had made it punishable for anybody but members of the Stationers' Company to sell Bibles or Psalm books.

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(Excuse me.) And this, the milliners point out in the petition, would be a great hardship for them,

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as well as to the embroiderers who were working in their own homes to create these rare and curious embroidered covers.

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It paints quite a vivid picture of these books on sale amongst the other luxuries available in the Royal Exchange.

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And the milliners say in their petition that the Royal Exchange was a daily resort of the nobility and gentry

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from all parts of the kingdom who came there to acquire the luxury goods. Ordinary booksellers,

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on the other hand, never sold books bound this way.

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It's quite tempting to hope that some embroidered bindings were made by amateur rather than professional embroiderers.

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We know that Elizabeth I, when she was still a child, embroidered a binding on a manuscript given by Elizabeth to

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her stepmother Catherine Parr, which we have in the Library, MS. Cherry 36.

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I'm not going to show you that binding today, but I have got something intriguing. Sarah, could you change to the next binding, please?

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I think this might be a candidate for a very well-executed

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amateur embroidered binding. This is also on a Bible,

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this one is dated 1643, so just towards the beginning of the English Civil War. That again is the date of the printed book,

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we don't know for certain the date of the embroidered binding. You can see it's more modest than the previous binding.

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There is some metal thread at the top and bottom of the portrait, but it's in general showing a great variety of stitches,

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some of which are finer and some which are a little bit more,

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I don't want to say heavy-handed because I'm not an embroiderer, but a little bit less fine, let's say.

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So the ovals in this case

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have portraits of women on both the upper and the lower boards.

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This binding, like the last one, was... thank you, Sarah.

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Yeah, if we could see the other one as well, that's great.

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So you've got two women, one looking slightly to the left and one looking slightly to the right.

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So this binding was owned by the great collector Albert Ermin, as was the last one.

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We know that it was sold to him as showing two portraits of Charles I's

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first wife, Henrietta Maria. Ermin didn't believe the association with Henrietta Maria.

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and I have to say that I don't see a great likeness here to Henrietta Maria either.

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Ermin thought that they were probably two different women,

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in fact, not two portraits of the same woman and that although the two women are very alike he suggested that maybe they were sisters or even twins.

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And I am inclined to agree. I failed to find a source for either of the portraits, but if anybody recognises them,

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I'd love to hear more because it's a mystery who these Civil War era women are.

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So I had a lot to choose from when I was preparing for this session.

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And there are many, many, many things that I could have shown,

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but I thought it would be nice to show something similar, but more-or-less completely different.

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So the last thing that I've got to show you is

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an item from our Artists' Books collection, and this is a very recent acquisition.

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It was created in 2019 and acquired by us last year, and this is a book by the Iranian artist Batool Showghi,

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and it's from her Immigration Series. Batool moved to the UK from Iran in 1985, and her work often deals with journeys of displacement.

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She works in mixed media, as you can see, and she moves between painting, photography, illustration and uses a lot of textiles in her work as well.

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This is a work. It's a concertina binding, so that it opens up to form a single sheet image.

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And in this work, she's used a sewing machine as more or less a drawing tool.

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It's more-or-less one continuous stitch with scraps of fabric trapped under the stitches

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to create these really expressive and immediate portraits of immigrant mothers with their children.

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And the text is written, handwritten by her in Farsi and describes the immigrants' thoughts,

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their hopes for the future and despair for their situation. And the binding

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here is the sleeve with a single portrait on the upper.

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So that's it from me. I hope you enjoyed seeing some things that don't really very often come out into

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the reading room because they're in such delicate condition that we're

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really sadly not able to show them to as many people as would like to see them.

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And that's something that we're getting increasing numbers of enquiries about.

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So we hope to be able to do a lot more research and digitisation in the future to be able to share them more widely.

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Thank you so much, Jo, and thank you, Sarah, as well,

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The questions are flooding in, and the first one I have here is a fundamental one: who did the embroidery? And particularly, do we know

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whether they were women doing the embroidery because traditionally women were more experienced and skillful at decorative needlework?

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I think, so I am not a textile historian, but from everything I've read, I think not.

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I think the professional embroiderers were by-and-large men.

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There was a Guild of Embroiderers. And unless I'm very much mistaken, I think that they were forbidden from taking on female apprentices.

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They were allowed to teach their own daughters only.

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So all of their other mentees needed to be men.

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So we know that Elizabeth I and Charles I both had books embroidered for them by the court embroiderers who were men.

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And so, I think that the

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professional embroidery, I think it was done by men. But I would be very happy to be corrected.

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I'm sure correction may come, as we have a knowledgeable audience here.

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But next question is: Do we have any book cushions in the collection that might have been used in conjunction with these bindings?

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Would you have balanced these bindings on a book cushion?

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And do we have any? We don't have any that I know of, unless you know of any, Martin, from the manuscript collection?

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No, and I've never seen one, so. Thank you.

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There's a comment - it's slightly derogatory - about the quality of the portraits on the panels.

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They do indeed seem more primitive or even banal compared to the wonderful embroidery.

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And there's a question about whether is there some sense in which the portrait might have

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been done after the embroidery and only when a patron had been identified?

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Or is this always a bespoke trade where you don't start unless you've already got the patron?

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I think that's entirely possible. I think that the two

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wouldn't necessarily have been done at the same time.

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I think that the answer to that is that you would need a textile historian to tell you the answer. Sorry.

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A very practical question, thank you,

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about the challenges of keeping and conserving these books and indeed allowing people to study and read them.

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What are the challenges? How do we do it? How do we enable people to study and read them? And how do we look after them?

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Yes. How do we store them and how do we enable people to study them?

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So in terms of storage, that's something that's changed and continues to change.

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We used to use cotton gloves, which we don't do anymore.

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We used to wrap them in wool, which we don't do anymore.

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I think we're still finding a kind of a happy way of being able to handle them without damaging them. One of our embroidered bindings,

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the one which is supposedly bound in part of Charles's waistcoat,

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is now kept in a clear plastic box so that we can handle it without actually touching the binding.

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One of the books, which we bought in the 1980s, has had a very, very,

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very fine fabric mesh stitched over it so that it can be picked up and handled without anything kind of falling off.

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I don't think either of those solutions are ideal from a reader consultation point of view because,

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in the case with the box, you can't open the book at all.

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I think most of the books that we have embroidered bindings on, we have other copies in more standard bindings as well.

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So somebody that wants to consult the text wouldn't get kind of a surprise

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embroidered binding in addition to their bit of textual investigation.

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So sadly,

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our option at the moment is to just limit the number of people that handle

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them, to people that have a genuine research need to be able to see them.

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Thanks, Jo. One final question before we let you off, just a very interesting one about the designs of the embroideries,

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whether the designs come from other, you know, pattern books.

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And are they shared with designs on embossed leather and other book bindings?

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Or are they somehow related to costume?

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Where do these designs come from?

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We do have pattern books, but I haven't been able to marry up, we have two very rare 17th century English pattern books,

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I haven't been able to marry up any of the designs on the bindings with the designs in the pattern books, very sadly.

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I know that other bindings from other places,

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they have been able to marry up designs with more widely printed images available on single prints and on botanical books, for example.

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So more can be done to be able to find those things.

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Thank you, Jo, ever so much.

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Time presses and I'm going to have to cut off the questions there, just for the last section of our presentation,

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this is, I think, the chance when I get to introduce myself.

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But more to the point, if I can ask Andrew to return us to the PowerPoint presentation?

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00:49:10,530 --> 00:49:25,770
Thank you so much, Andrew. So just finally and very briefly, a look at the particular use of textiles in our medieval illuminated manuscripts.

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This is a little book of prayers and devotions for Easter, made in the late

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15th or early 16th century from the Cistercian Nunnery at Medingen in Germany.

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And we've got it open here, obviously for this little piece of plain open weave cloth, hemmed with a red thread,

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which we find here and which seems to be protecting an initial underneath it.

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And Andrew, if you could move us on one? And we can immediately see that it's not attached to the page in any way, it's a loose piece of cloth.

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It fulfils a protective function. But just thinking of the people who made it and used it. These were nuns who had themselves taken the veil.

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And there's a natural, well, for these nuns,

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needlework and embroidery was part of their daily existence and had a devotional aspect to it, as did the writing of books.

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And we might also just remember the natural affinity between texts and textiles, 'textus' in Latin means woven.

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And it was a medieval commonplace that texts were woven from the individual words.

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00:51:22,110 --> 00:51:36,260
Could we have the next, Andrew? This is a 14th century English psalter, a book of the Psalms. In this case, the curtain,

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00:51:36,260 --> 00:51:45,000
I think we can call it that, is attached to the page, it's sewn onto the page.

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00:51:45,000 --> 00:51:56,070
I don't know if this is clearly visible on people's screens, but it's made up of three separate pieces.

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00:51:56,070 --> 00:52:05,970
So it may well be a sort of recycled piece of cloth from a vestment or something.

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00:52:05,970 --> 00:52:14,460
It's clearly fulfilling a protective function just as we know that relics were

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00:52:14,460 --> 00:52:21,180
kept in textile bags and the textile emphasises the holiness of what's underneath.

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00:52:21,180 --> 00:52:32,910
And Andrew, if we move on, what it's protecting is a picture initial a historiated initial to Psalm 101,

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one of the main liturgical divisions of the Psalms,

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where we see King David kneeling at an altar and praying and the Lord appearing to him and blessing him out of the clouds above.

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00:52:50,970 --> 00:53:00,060
So this curtain has a sort of revelatory function, as well as a protective one,

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00:53:00,060 --> 00:53:04,440
just as we know that altarpieces often had curtains,

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and those curtains might only be opened when mass was said at that altar in the church or chapel.

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00:53:16,990 --> 00:53:33,000
Andrew, the next one, please. That's the only curtain that survives in this manuscript but

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here we can see the tell tale signs of another.

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So in the margin here we can see bits of thread and some stitching holes.

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So there were clearly other curtains in this book.

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00:53:52,800 --> 00:54:04,620
It's very difficult to date the textiles themselves and even more difficult, obviously, when they don't survive.

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00:54:04,620 --> 00:54:16,840
But we do have mediaeval references to these coverings, so we do know that it was certainly a mediaeval practise.

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00:54:16,840 --> 00:54:21,330
Andrew, the next, please.

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00:54:21,330 --> 00:54:36,960
Finally, this is a late 13th century English Psalter from Guisborough in Yorkshire, and we're not yet at the Psalms in the manuscript,

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00:54:36,960 --> 00:54:46,050
we're just at the beginning, and we've got a set of prayers to the five wounds of Christ on the cross.

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00:54:46,050 --> 00:54:54,120
And the image is obviously related to those prayers because we've got the crucifixion

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with the Virgin Mary and Saint John on either side of the crucified Christ.

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00:55:01,630 --> 00:55:10,090
Andrew, if we could have the next, just to show, I think it was visible on the other side.

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00:55:10,090 --> 00:55:18,430
But here again, all the tell tale stitching holes which reveal that there were curtains in this manuscript,

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00:55:18,430 --> 00:55:27,970
and the more you look at illuminated manuscripts and look around the edges, you do see these these tell tale holes.

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00:55:27,970 --> 00:55:33,630
And so we begin to get an idea of how many of these curtains there were.

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00:55:33,630 --> 00:55:38,570
And Andrew, if we could go forwards, which is also back to our image, thank you.

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00:55:38,570 --> 00:55:44,400
Looking at the image again. We can see that it is damaged.

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00:55:44,400 --> 00:55:46,350
It's not randomly damaged.

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00:55:46,350 --> 00:55:57,870
There's no damage to the background and it's not, I think, hostile damage, because this isn't the effacement of a devil's face,

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00:55:57,870 --> 00:56:04,470
that kind of thing that we sometimes find. This, I think, is devotional damage.

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00:56:04,470 --> 00:56:13,620
It's concentrated on the Virgin Mary and Saint John. And anyone who's been into an Orthodox church today may not be too surprised,

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00:56:13,620 --> 00:56:19,470
because if you see the faithful entering an Orthodox church,

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00:56:19,470 --> 00:56:29,160
you'll see them either kissing an icon or kissing their fingers and then reaching out with their fingertips to touch the icon.

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00:56:29,160 --> 00:56:34,350
So I think this image has suffered devotional damage.

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00:56:34,350 --> 00:56:48,300
And so we have to imagine the role of the curtain in a kind of choreography of devotion here. The saying

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00:56:48,300 --> 00:57:02,520
of prayers and the lifting of the curtain are the prelude to a devotional act which links together the the prayer and the picture.

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00:57:02,520 --> 00:57:19,200
And so what I want to say. These textile curtains, there were more of them than we realise, they may well have had a protective role,

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00:57:19,200 --> 00:57:35,610
but most of all, I think they are precious evidence for the way in which the original owners used or interacted with these books,

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00:57:35,610 --> 00:57:48,050
which is a very different way from the more refined 'don't touch' art historical appreciation that we may approach them with today.

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00:57:48,050 --> 00:57:56,060
Thanks very much. Thank you so much, Martin, that was absolutely fantastic and very insightful.

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We are actually at the end of the session, but if you're happy, we might go to the full panel and I could just ask a quick question to everyone.

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00:58:04,280 --> 00:58:09,460
I wonder, in the process of preparing for this talk or generally

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00:58:09,460 --> 00:58:16,900
in your recent work, whether you have been surprised by the amount of textiles in our collections?

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00:58:16,900 --> 00:58:19,960
Particularly for me, being involved in this project,

447
00:58:19,960 --> 00:58:28,990
I have been surprised, with textiles as kind of my main focus and thinking again about where they appear in bindings,

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00:58:28,990 --> 00:58:35,680
but then in the other objects we have. I wonder if any of you have any thoughts about that?

449
00:58:35,680 --> 00:58:47,110
Yes, they're everywhere. And actually, I forgot to point out as we passed in the 14th century Psalter that there are of course textile tabs,

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00:58:47,110 --> 00:58:55,030
which are very common in liturgical books to help you find the opening of a particular section of the text.

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00:58:55,030 --> 00:59:01,650
So yes, the more we think and look, the more textiles seem to leap out at us.

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00:59:01,650 --> 00:59:08,910
Yes. Sorry, go on, Andrew. I was just going to say, I mean, I echo that entirely.

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00:59:08,910 --> 00:59:16,980
We might have concentrated in the past on on a few sort of very sumptuous, very exceptional textiles.

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00:59:16,980 --> 00:59:25,680
But I think thinking more widely, we have them across our collections, both geographically and across time,

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00:59:25,680 --> 00:59:31,920
seemingly at every sort of point of different status across books and manuscripts.

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00:59:31,920 --> 00:59:37,390
So yes, they're everywhere, but for some reason we haven't

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00:59:37,390 --> 00:59:49,240
perhaps put two and two together before. But Jo? Yes, so I was going to say as part of this project, we are surveying embroidered bindings.

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00:59:49,240 --> 00:59:54,970
We've been telling people there were maybe 45 or 50 embroidered bindings and we found 80.

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00:59:54,970 --> 01:00:05,620
But in addition to that, we've got books printed on silk, books printed on cotton, printed on all kinds of fabric.

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01:00:05,620 --> 01:00:14,080
We've got samples of fabric brought back by Captain Cook from travels.

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01:00:14,080 --> 01:00:20,860
We've got samples of dyes. We've got things knitted out of catkins.

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01:00:20,860 --> 01:00:25,570
We've got all kinds of crazy things that we didn't know that we had.

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01:00:25,570 --> 01:00:32,140
So yes, it's been really exciting, very valuable work preparing for this.

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Thank you so much, everyone. It's gone five o'clock, so I might wrap up the session if that's OK,

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which I'd like to do by thanking you all for your fantastic presentations and for sharing all those objects and your thoughts and your insights.

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01:00:47,710 --> 01:00:53,320
I'd also like to thank the rest of the Conservation team and the Public Engagement team and Education teams here,

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01:00:53,320 --> 01:00:59,530
and Karen from the EMS team for supporting this talk and to T A Barron again for funding this series.

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We very much hope that you will join us for the next talk in the Textiles and Library series, which will be on Thursday, the 25th of November,

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01:01:06,370 --> 01:01:13,330
and we'll be joined by Georgios Boudalis who will be exploring textiles and craft practises in Byzantine book

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01:01:13,330 --> 01:01:20,770
binding. Tickets for that talk and the rest of the series are free and still available through the booking website.

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So please do check them out. And from me at the Bodleian again,

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thank you very much for joining us and we hope to see you next time.