Blogpost 6

Well, I've finally come to the end of the research part of this task, it's been very interesting, and fascinating.  But, I have enjoyed it, although at times I've struggled with different parts.  In the beginning it was hard finding a range of sources I was hoping to, I like to have a significant number of sources so I can check facts and information.  Particularly when using the Internet, as we all know, anyone can put information up there, but it's not always authoritative, but sometimes it's a good place to start, small crumbs can be turned into whole slices and they can be turned into whole loaves of reliable information.  Hopefully, I've achieved this satisfactorily.  I've found this week that I left some of the easiest questions to answer: the process of illumination, and what happened to halt the production of illuminated manuscripts.  I'd already begun to consider the process question, through my Youtube videos that I've been uploading, but also, artists are still out there re-creating this art and sharing the knowledge.    The event that mainly halted the production of illuminated manuscripts wasn't difficult to discover either, all the sites I have been using as my sources finish off with this, whilst not completely the end of illuminated manuscripts, it was still a defining time for this art.  I did find a couple of new sources for this part of my research.  The video I've including in this week's post is one that shows the production of a manuscript from start, (the making of the parchment), to the end, (the bound codex).

 

"Making Manuscripts"

The process of illumination is a very long process, however, it is essentially only a few steps.  These are:

Polishing Gold Leaf

1. The copying of the design onto the parchment, there are different methods I found, they could be pricking or drawing with light inks.
2. The gilt, either gold or silver, is applied next.  The reason this is done first is that it could adhere to the coloured inks used for colouring the image.  The metal is fixed to the parchment with either gesso, or gum.  It is then polished with agate.
3. The colours were then added.
4. Finally the outlines were painted over with black and white highlights were added to the image. 

There were other steps involved in the entire production of an illuminated manuscript, but I have not listed them in this post, I will cover them in my final report.

Gutenberg Printing Press

So, the end to this topic is, what happened to halt the production of illuminated manuscripts?  A few things led to this end, the Black Death contributed, many monks were killed by this disease, the West's movement into the East, and discovering their cheaper paper and inks.  But, mostly, it was the invention of the printing press, specifically the Gutenberg Printing press.  There had been others since approximately the 13th century, but they were not efficient enough.  Johannes Gutenberg "created a durable and interchangeable metal type that allowed him to print many different pages, using the same letters over and over again in different combinations", Chris Butler (2007).  This allowed for the dissemination of information in a method that was quick and accurate, therefore creating a need for knowledge and information that didn't need to be beautiful, just cheap and readily accessible.  Invention of the printing press didn't stop production of illuminated manuscripts completely, they were still produced in the following centuries, but considerably less codex were produced.

Bibliography

Link to my complete Bibliographical page.