A Psalter with penwork after a medieval model
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My previous post : ‘Making a Psalter on a medieval model’ ended with:
‘to be continued’.
Actually, everything was ready then only the work still needed to be bound and that has now been done. Karin Cox ( Ars Ligandi) has made work of it! She has made a beautiful 13th-century binding around it that only remains to be stamped.
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The leather binding has two straps to close the book.
Here are some photos of the binding process by Karin Cox of Ars Ligandi
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Inside flat beech wood
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Bookspine
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The stitching of the quires and binding was still tricky. There is a lot of experience in binding old parchment quires but almost none of ‘modern’ parchment. On top of that, I made it extra difficult to supply parchment quires of different thicknesses.
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As I wrote earlier, I had long had the desire to make a book and now I have succeeded. Started in 2018, it did become a multi-year project.
When you start something like this, you encounter all sorts of things and a lot of things go wrong too……..
In my journal I wrote somewhere: ‘Have now decided to move on with a different attitude.Try to make the best of it bearing in mind that it is also a learning process, where mistakes are made and problems have to be solved. The final product does not have to be perfect but will be a product that I learn from as I go along’.
For such a project, take your time and realise that it is the first time for you when you do something like this.
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The psalms have been a source of joy, comfort, and hope for countless people throughout history. They express the awareness that life in all its shades is not a meaningless story but a willed act of Someone greater than ourselves, the Eternal God Himself. A knowing in and out of which to live with joy. That is what Israel sang of, the monks in medieval monasteries and I humbly join them today.
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It has indeed been a quest for the medieval book. For years I kept myself busy with illuminating but loose pieces are different, they only get their place in the book for which they were originally intended.
Now on to the next project: an Apocalypse but that may take some time….