Christopher de Hamel
Born
in London, The United Kingdom
November 20, 1950
Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
24 editions
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published
2016
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A History of Illuminated Manuscripts
8 editions
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published
1986
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The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club
5 editions
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published
2022
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Scribes And Illuminators
10 editions
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published
1992
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The Book in the Cathedral: The Last Relic of Thomas Becket
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The Book: A History of the Bible
8 editions
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published
2001
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Making Medieval Manuscripts
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The British Library Guide to Manuscript Illumination: History and Techniques
2 editions
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published
2001
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Bibles: An Illustrated History from Papyrus to Print
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published
2011
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The Rothschilds and their Collections of Illuminated Manuscripts
4 editions
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published
2005
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“Newcomers to manuscripts sometimes ask what such books tell us about the societies that created them. At one level, these Gospel Books describe nothing, for they are not local chronicles but standard Latin translations of religious texts from far away. At the same time, this is itself extraordinarily revealing about Ireland. No one knows how literacy and Christianity had first reached the islands of Ireland, possibly through North Africa. This was clearly no primitive backwater but a civilization which could now read Latin, although never occupied by the Romans, and which was somehow familiar with the texts and artistic designs which have unambiguous parallels in the Coptic and Greek churches, such as carpet pages and Canon tables. Although the Book of Kells itself is as uniquely Irish as anything imaginable, it is a Mediterranean text and the pigments used in making it include orpiment, a yellow made from arsenic sulphide, exported from Italy, where it is found in volcanoes. There are clearly lines of trade and communication unknown to us.”
― Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
― Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
“The writing, in huge insular majuscule script, is flawless in its regularity and utter control. One can only marvel at the penmanship. It is calligraphic and as exact as printing, and yet it flows and shapes itself into the space available. It sometimes swells and seems to take breath at the ends of lines. The decoration is more extensive and more overwhelming than one could possibly imagine. Virtually every line is embellished with color or ornament.”
― Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
― Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
“If Jorge Luis Borges' Library of Babel could have existed in reality, it would have been something like the Long Room of Trinity College.”
― Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
― Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
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