Western Manuscripts and Miniatures

Tiny alphabet specimens, favored by the Victorians, not unlike pressed flowers or butterflies, now suitable as unusual gifts.

Dimensions vary: ‘A’, 34 x 34 mm.; ‘T’, 50 x 21 mm.; ‘Q’, 15 x 21 mm.; and ‘O’, 20 x 27 mm., all on parchment, in different pigments, the initial ‘A’ in red, no text or music, the initial ‘T’ in red, with bluish-purple filigree penwork, the initial ‘Q’ in blue with red penwork and possibly not from a music manuscript, and the initial ‘O’ in red with blue penwork, remnants remaining of both the stave and the red rubric, each mounted on acid-free card, and framed, in good condition.

Although today we might find horrifying the plethora of initials cut out of medieval manuscripts, sometimes still mounted page by page in an album or reassembled together to form a collage, the practice was common in Victorian England. The Victorians loved tiny things, and “the cutout fragment fit well in the bijoux world of the nineteenth-century parlor with its clutter of prints, embroideries, watercolors, and butterflies.” (Hindman et al., 2001, p. 75). Kept in portfolios, the initial was a tiny specimen, like a pressed flower or dried butterfly. Before we are too quick to judge our ancestors for their barbarous treatment of medieval manuscripts, we should remember that even such an illustrious intellectual like the author, artist, social critic, and collector John Ruskin argued that manuscript fragments, including initials (like those in the Beaupré Antiphonal, see lot 31), were deemed useful in teaching poor children. 

The Victorian craze for alphabets, scrapbooks, and collages that could be used to construct unique “new” collections led to more decorative uses of cut-out initials. Philip Augustus Hanrott, who owned of the Carmelite Missal – a key work of late fourteenth-century English illumination – evidently allowed his children and their little cousin to cut up the famous manuscript, even forming “signatures,” initial letters used to spell the name of members of the family. Glued on card, the present initials must come from one such album, now dismantled.

Provenance:
(1) Likely a Victorian album full of fragments and alphabet letters.

(2) Private Collection, USA.

LITERATURE
Unpublished; Related literature: Margaret Rickett, The Reconstructed Carmelite Missal: An English Manuscript of the Late Fourteeth Century in the British Museum (Additional MS 29704-5, 4489), Chicago, 1952; Susan Stewart, On Longing, Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, Baltimore MD, 1984; Sandra Hindman et al., Manuscript Illumination in the Modern Age, Recovery and Reconstruction, Evanston, IL, 2001; and Valerie Edden, “A Fresh Look at the Reconstructed Carmelite Missal: London, British Library, MS Additional 29704–05,” in Imaging the Book, ed. Stephen Kelly and John J. Thompson, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 7, pp. 111-126, Turnhout, 2025.

We thank Senior Consultant Sandra Hindman and Peter Bovenmyer for their assistance in preparing this sale.