|
|
|
|
|
|
Detailed record for Sloane 1448A
|
|
|
|
| Title |
Pattern, sketch, or model book |
| Origin |
England |
| Date |
2nd or 3rd quarter of the 15th century |
| Language |
N/A |
| Script |
Gothic |
| Decoration |
Designs in ink for initials, borders, and alphabets. Initials A-U in brown or brown and purple ink, some with full borders with foliate forms and sometimes birds or knots, one zoomorphic (ff. 3v-16v, 20v). Sketches of the initial 'D' and borders, in brown ink (ff. 18-20, 21). Initials of letters of the alphabet A-Y (without J, U or W) in brown and purple, or in brown and black with foliate forms (ff. 21v-23, 24). Anthropomorphic initials of the letters of the alphabet A-Y (without J, U or W) (ff. 25-26). Added sketches and drawings. |
| Dimensions in mm |
205 x 145 |
| Official foliation |
ff. 31 (+ 1 unfoliated paper flyleaf at the beginning and at the end) |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
BM/BL in-house. Mounted on paper guards. |
| Provenance |
Inscribed, 15th-century: 'Young' and monogram 'I H' with effaced text (f. 29v).
Inscribed several names, 16th-century: 'William Brome' (f. 3), 'Johannes', 'John & framyng', 'Richarde' (f. 4), 'Richardus Bowle' (ff. 8, 26v, 29), 'Thomas / Henry / William / Johannes / Martyno' (f. 23v), 'Robert Johnson' (f. 27v).
Inscribed, 17th-century(?): 'Ex dono Magistri Wade' (f. 29).
Sir Hans Sloane (b. 1660, d. 1753), baronet, physician and collector: inscribed 'Bibliotheca Sloanianae. Min. 266', and Min. 152 [lined through] 266' (f. 3); inscribed 'Min. 266. A book of Alphabets, being chiefly great letters with flourishes, on vellum (f. 1v, on a pasted strip).
Purchased as part of the Sloane collection from Sloane's executors and incorporated into the newly founded British Museum in 1753. |
| Notes |
f. 2 is part of Sloane 901, and ff. 30-31 were one time used as covers for Sloane 1803. The three volumes were once bound together and were separated in 1892. |
| Select bibliography |
Catalogue of Additional Manuscripts: Sloane 1091-1598 (London: British Museum unpublished manuscript of unedited descriptions, 1873), no. 1448A [available in The British Library Manuscripts Reading Room].
Janet Backhouse, 'An Illuminator's Sketchbook', The British Library Journal, 1 (1975), 3-14.
James Douglas Farquhar, Creation and Imitation: The Work of a Fifteenth-Century Manuscript Illuminator, Nova University Studies in the Humanities, 1 (Fort Lauderdale: Nova, 1976), p. 175 n. 5, pl. 23.
Sandra Hindman and James Douglas Farquhar, Pen to Press: Illustrated Manuscripts and Printed Books in the First Century of Printing (College Park: University of Maryland, 1977), pp. 71, 113.
Two East Anglian Picture Books : A Facsimile of the Helmingham Herbal and Bestiary and Bodleian Ms. Ashmole 1504, ed. by Nicholas Barker (London: The Roxburghe Club, 1988), p. 40.
Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of Work (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 175 n. 34.
S. P. Madigan, 'A Catalan Pattern Sheet in Milan', Scriptorium: Revue internationale des études relative aux manuscrits, 47 (1993), 26-36 (p. 31).
Robert W. Scheller, Exemplum: Model-Book Drawings and the Practice of Artistic Transmission in the Middle Ages (ca. 900 - ca. 1450) (Amsterdam: University Press, 1995), no. 23.
Kathleen L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390-1490, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 6, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), no. 90.
Christopher de Hamel, The British Library Guide to Manuscript Illumination: History and Techniques (London: British Library, 2001), pl. 61.
Kathleen L. Scott, 'The Decorated Letters of Two Cotton Manuscripts', in Tributes to Jonathan J. G. Alexander: The Making and Meaning of Illuminated Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts, Art & Architecture, ed. by Susan L'Engle and Gerald B. Guest (London: Harvey Miller, 2006), pp. 99-110 (p. 103). |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
ff. 4v-5
Designs for initials and borders |
f. 4v
Decorated initial |
f. 5
Initial |
| |
ff. 18v-19
Designs for initials and borders |
f. 18v
Initial |
f. 19
Initial |
| |
ff. 21v-22
Designs for initials |
f. 21v
Initials |
f. 22
Designs for initials |
| |
f. 25
Designs |
ff. 25v-26
Designs |
f. 25v
Designs |
| |
f. 26
Designs |
|
|
|
|
