Black Manuscripts

Only a few of them have survived - but their splendor is striking.

The earliest black manuscript is mentioned in an library account of 1400, but the reached their short peak of fashíon during the time of Phillipe le Bon of Burgundy around 1450.

The black iron gall ink affects both paper and parchment very much. Nowadays all the few remaining manuscripts are extremely brittle, so that some of them have been taken apart and the separate pages are kept between acrylic plates to keep them from crumbling even further. You can see the ragged edges in the examples below.

	The Black Book of Hours, Pierpont Morgan Library Ms. 493, fol 18v
The Black Book of Hours, Pierpont Morgan Library Ms. 493, fol 19r
	Vatican Library, Vat. Lat 9488 folios 90v and 89r with very colorful illumination compared to the Pierpoint Morgan one

Here is one of my own scrolls, losely based on the Pierpont Morgan manuscript. Click on the thumbnail for the bigger picture.

The scroll is made of rabbit parchment from my own rabbits which I had painted black with iron gall ink (which I made myself, too). This picture doesn't show the parchment that well, the next black parchment will receive two coats of ink because this one looked grayish in some areas.

The calligraphy was done in a modern size ("Gilder's Milk") and gilded with 24 k gold leaf.

[Black] [Bryn] [Doodles] [Initials] [Parchment] [Unusual]