Did the earliest printers know what print was? Book historian Anna Dlabacova, former fellow in the W. Kluge Center and senior university lecturer at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, offers some observations about what a 15th-century book from the Netherlands can teach us about culture and innovation.
In this post Haim Gottschalk, Hebraica-Judaica Cataloging Librarian for the Israel and Judaica Section of the Asian and Middle Eastern Division at the Library of Congress, writes about the provenance of two Hebraic items in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.
Likely created in Tours in the 1470s in a workshop influenced by the French painter and manuscript illuminator, Jean Fouquet (c. 1420 - 1480), a Book of Hours in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress reminds us that Halloween is just around the corner.
Memory training was an important part of education in the Middle Ages. Borrowing from classical sources, medieval techniques offered elaborate and creative methods for memorizing lengthy works and speeches. The blockbook Ars memorandi, likely printed in Germany around 1470, offers a surprising lesson for those interested in the history of graphic design or mnemonic theory.
