journal.thewalters.orgThe Journal of the Walters Art

Museum Volume 76 About this Volume Search Journals Open Menu Scroll To Essays Seeing Codicologically: New Explorations in the Technology of the Book Do you know how to use a codex? Of course you do! A codex is a book. You open the cover, read the first page, turn it, read the next page, and so on. It would seem simple enough, but of course not every book works in precisely this way. Think of a dictionary, or a child’s choose your own adventure” book, both of which are explicitly designed not to be read in a linear fashion. Think of a travel guide with foldout maps or a Torah scroll that requires unfurling. Think about the webpage on which this journal issue appears, as you click on links and open new tabs. There are many ways a book might be designed to be used, and more ways that it might be used unexpectedly. Historically, research on decorated medieval manuscripts has tended to see the codex form of books as normal” and to assume that the books were used linearly, if use was considered at all. Scholars have often considered individual illuminated pages as stand-alone images divorced from their material context, although more recent studies have emphasized the opening”–two pages that face each other when a codex is open–as a crucial structural framework for understanding the interplay between words and images in manuscripts. Current scholarship has also reminded us that medieval manuscripts are more than words and images and certainly more than just codices: they are parchment, paper, textiles, wood, leather, metal hardware, and even the physical traces of the humans who have leafed through them, made annotations and erasures in them, hidden things within their pages, and kissed them. READ MORE Essays A Codicological Cloister for Claricia Benjamin C. Tilghman Looking through Books Nicholas Herman A Cut Above the Rest…? Unraveling the Mystery of the Walters Lace” Manuscript Lynley Anne Herbert The Rollodex: An Experiment around the Prepositional Paradigm through Peter of Poitiers’s Genealogia Christi ” Sonja Drimmer Exploring Sensuls: An Indigenous Manuscript Tradition in Ethiopia Christine Sciacca The Kennicott Bible’s Codicology and Its Implications Adam S. Cohen Portraiture and Presence in the Helmarshausen Psalter Shirin Fozi Paint it Black: An Unusual Prayer Book Illuminated by the Masters of the Dark Eyes, ca. 1510 Kathryn M. Rudy Notes An Obscenely Humorous Sam Wide Group Kylix at the Walters Art Museum Lisa Anderson-Zhu Léon Bonvin’s Landscapes with Figures, Japanese Prints, and the French Etching Revival Jo Briggs 1451: Saint Jerome in Fabriano Stanley Mazaroff Balthazar (ca. 1700) in the Walters Art Museum: Searching for the Painter Joaneath Spicer thewalters.org facebook instagram twitter About the Journal Submission Guidelines Copyright Guidelines Style Sheet Search the Journal Search the Journal About this Volume Volume 76 Other Volumes Essays A Codicological Cloister for Claricia Benjamin C. Tilghman Looking through Books Nicholas Herman A Cut Above the Rest…? Unraveling the Mystery of the Walters Lace” Manuscript Lynley Anne Herbert The Rollodex: An Experiment around the Prepositional Paradigm through Peter of Poitiers’s Genealogia Christi ” Sonja Drimmer Exploring Sensuls: An Indigenous Manuscript Tradition in Ethiopia Christine Sciacca The Kennicott Bible’s Codicology and Its Implications Adam S. Cohen Portraiture and Presence in the Helmarshausen Psalter Shirin Fozi Paint it Black: An Unusual Prayer Book Illuminated by the Masters of the Dark Eyes, ca. 1510 Kathryn M. Rudy Notes An Obscenely Humorous Sam Wide Group Kylix at the Walters Art Museum Lisa Anderson-Zhu Léon Bonvin’s Landscapes with Figures, Japanese Prints, and the French Etching Revival Jo Briggs 1451: Saint Jerome in Fabriano Stanley Mazaroff Balthazar (ca. 1700) in the Walters Art Museum: Searching for the Painter Joaneath Spicer Volumes Volume 76 Volume 75 Volume 74 Volume 73 Volume 72 Volume 70–71 Volume 68-69...