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18 Costs We Don’t Think About

An Unusual Copy of Franciscus de Platea, Opus restitutionum (1474), and a Few Other Items

Neil Harris    Università degli Studi di Udine, Italia    

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abstract

Rubrication, or the hand-finishing of manuscripts and (very) early printed books, falls between several areas of competence; however, it often tells us important things about the book and its early history; it also had a cost, and in description it is important to distinguish between ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ rubrication. A copy of a Venetian incunable printed in 1474 in the collections of the Boston Public Library has on its final leaf a contemporary rubricator’s note, with the summary of the costs of illumination and rubrication. The edition concerned was maybe sold through the Zornale of Francesco de Madiis, the ledger of a Venetian bookseller, which records the sales of some 25,000 books between 1484 and 1488. These sales, however, mostly concerned books sold as unbound sheets, though occasionally bound copies are recorded with a consequent increase in price. Discovering the expense of rubrication and illumination, albeit in this one instance, makes it possible to understand better the real cost of purchasing a 15th-century book.

Pubblicato
24 Febbraio 2020
Accettato
13 Dicembre 2019
Presentato
15 Ottobre 2019
Lingua
EN
ISBN (PRINT)
978-88-6969-333-5
ISBN (EBOOK)
978-88-6969-332-8

Keywords: IncunabulaBooktradeVeniceRubricationBook pricesDecoration

Copyright: © 2020 Neil Harris. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.