St Cuthbert Gospel binding studies

It was a delight to see that the work Jim Bloxam and I did over 10 years ago is proving useful to the understanding of the St Cuthbert Gospel today. Formerly known as the Stonyhurst Gospel, this incredible little book is the earliest intact European bookbinding, and has now been dated to the early 8th century. A new publication featuring essays on the manuscript and its remarkable binding was published this week.

Detail of the facsimilie's upper board before covering. 

Jim and I were lucky enough to see the binding first hand in 2005. We were permitted two hours to look at the binding whilst handling was carried out by John Mumford, former Head of Book Conservation at the British Library. During that time we tried to understand more about the construction of the binding in advance of a class we were teaching in Montefiascone that summer. The production of binding models was an integral part of our studies and is essential to all book conservators, as Scott W Devine recently explained.

For it's most recent survey The British Library used the facsimile I made in direct comparison with the original manuscript to determine the materials used to create the wonderful relief of this unique manuscript. I was very happy to see that our experiments and hypothesis about the gentle board shaping seems to have been verified. As too does the use of a mouldable substrate for the central areas; Jim and I suggested Gesso, and the BL team says clay-like material so we were very close!

Images courtesy of Christina Duffy's British Library blog post, 25th June 2015

As for the gentle scrolling foliage which Jim and I thought might be formed with leather, like some of the examples seen in Coptic Egyptian decorative woodwork*, in fact this also seems to be the same clay-like material. How astounding. It's marvellous that such a well studied and admired book can still surprise us after 1300 years.

*The links between the St Cuthbert Gospel and North Africa are considerable, but more about that in another post.