The magnificent pages of medieval missals, books of hours, brevaries, and bibles sparkle with detail illuminating the world in which they were created. This splendid volume, featuring some of the finest illuminated masterpieces from the exceptional collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, details the remarkable collaboration and craftsmanship that went into the creation of these delicate treasures. 
Close-up details show the intricacies of the various techniques used to create these fragile and rarely seen works. By helping the reader to appreciate the individual elements of illumination--the initials, borders, illustrations, script, and binding--Rowan Watson brings the world of the scribes, illuminators, and book dealers to life, and sheds light on the cooperative religious communities in which many of them worked. Watson also looks at the survival of illumination after the printing press and its revival in the 19th century in the hands of such pioneering designers as Owen Jones and William Morris.

Illuminated Manuscripts and Their Makers

Arts & Photography

Watson, Rowan

History & Criticism

Victoria & Albert Museum

Table of contents, list of abbreviations, introduction, list of figures, endnotes. Black and white frontispiece, 30 black and white illustrations in text. 32 color plates follow text. 126, 2 pages. cloth, decorated endpapers, slipcase with inlaid color illustration. 8vo..

The Playfair Hours: A Late Fifteenth Century Illuminated Manuscript from Rouen (V & A, L. 475-1918)

Victoria & Albert Pubns

At a time when the notion of the book is challenged by the advent of the screen and computer, Blood on Paper aims to show the extraordinary ways in which the book has been treated by leading artists of the past century. Focusing on new and contemporary work and on books where the artist has been the driving force in conception and design, this innovative book comprises a series of unbound booklets presented in a box.
Almost all notable artists of the 20th and 21st centuries have produced books, or works that refer to books: those represented will include artists as diverse as Matisse, Picasso, David Hockney, Damien Hirst, Richard Long, Robert Motherwell and many others whose names are synonymous with art today.

Blood on Paper: The Art of the Book

Foster, Elena

Graphic Design

Illuminated Manuscripts PB** (VA)

V&A Publishing

This lush, three-volume slipcased set catalogues the V&amp;A’s superb collection of Western illuminated manuscripts. Providing a history of an art form spanning eight centuries as an integral part of the decorative arts, it documents not only the practice of medieval and Renaissance illumination, but also the survival of medieval bookmaking crafts alongside printing in the post-Renaissance period—and their revival in the 19th century. The three volumes bring together for the first time works such as the St. Denis Missal of 1350 and the Chambord Missal of 1844, the Sanvito Petrarch of 1463–64 and William Morris’s Book of Verse of 1870. Catalogue descriptions discuss each work in detail and pay particular attention to the changing ways in which they have been evaluated and used through the centuries.

Western Illuminated Manuscripts in the Victoria and Albert Museum

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

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