MS A6: Private and Portable

MS A6: Private and Portable

MS A6 nestles easily in the reader's hands, making it a very intimate object that would give a single reader at a time a view of the text and images. Its petite stature made it easily portable, furthering the opportunity for the manuscript’s owner to incorporate it into daily public and private devotional practice.

As the manuscript passed through time and underwent wear and tear, it needed rebinding. Its current binding dates from the late sixteenth century. Scrolling ivy and circles in gold construct a central cruciform shape on the front and back black leather covers in a fanfare pattern that was a popular design beginning in the 1570s. An example similar to this binding was made in Paris and dates to 1581.

Whenever a book is rebound, pages have to be trimmed. In MS A6, rebinding resulted in the loss of the tops of the large illuminations and some missing or incorrectly ordered pages, notable in the calendar. These changes made in rebinding were never rectified, and the manuscript fell out of use as a facilitator of private devotion and became an object that was collected.

MS A6

Spencer Research Library Special Collections, University of Kansas

mid-fifteenth century, binding late sixteenth century

110 mm x 85 mm

Spencer Research Library Special Collections, MS A6

Embossed and gilded leather, cover and spine of a Book of Hours.