How the age of the illuminated manuscript makes the case for the 21st century paper book…
The absolute beauty of a work in print…
From Open Culture,
“What place does the paper book have in our increasingly all-digital present? While some utilitarian arguments once marshaled in its favor (“You can read them in the bathtub” and the like) have fallen into disuse, other, more aesthetically focused arguments have arisen: that a work in print, for example, can achieve a state of beauty as an object in and of itself, the way a file on a laptop, phone, or reader never can. In a sense, this case for the paper book in the 21st century comes back around to the case for the paper book from the 12th century and even earlier, the age of the illuminated manuscript.
Bookmakers back then had to concentrate on prestige products, given that they couldn’t make books in anything like the numbers even the humblest, most antiquated printing operation can run off today…”
Here’s a video: “In this episode of How To Make Everything: Book — Andy expands his repertoire of writing utensils by making quill and learning how to use it. Along the way he discovers how this one tool still impacts the way we write today.”
Read more (and see more video!), here.
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