Beatus Vir - approx 1250

 BEATUS VIR - APPROX 1250 AD  #beatusvir #psalter 

Here is a Beatus Vir in which color is more important than ornament. Note the use of gold and blue the two most expensive pigments and the two images with the top one being David playing his harp and the bottom a younger David chopping off Goliath's head. The layout of the letter is also noteworthy as the illuminator had to deal with the problem of making the Be fit into a frame with room for pictures but also fitting in in the rest of the phrase  ... eatvsvirnote the usage of V for U and the style of the A. 

Beatus Vir from the Ludwig Psalter

 This is one of the oldest BEATUS VIR pages from the 9th century AD

No this is not Irish though perhaps an Irish artist trained the monks in Germany where this was produced? You can certainly see the Irish influences in the interlaced patterns and the bird heads!

More Beatus Vir images as I find them! 

Wikipedia Commons is one good place to look but don't forget to check other sites.

And cross check them. Some images appear on several sites but have varying quality of digization of the photos used.

THE SOUNDS OF J

 THE SOUNDS OF J

#letter J #sounds #orthography 

As designers and typographers or students thereof perhaps we should be glad we only have to worry about letter forms and shapes and not orthography. 

Especially for languages other than English:

The Sounds of J
	J /dʒeɪ/	Letter form J < I < iota < yod
Other languages that write /dʒ/ as J include: Hindi Pashto Malay Somali Telugu Scots Zulu	/dʒ/ voiced post alveolar affricate	Originally written as “cg” in Old English shifting to dg and then J in the Middle Ages
	However in some languages the letter J represents /x/ /h/ or /ʒ/ or /y/

Yes the letter J has been used to represent all those sounds !

Yes initial J in English is usually not /y/ but  /dʒ/ !

Possibly the example of orthography not seeming to match usage might be the Spanish usage of spelling words like Jesus or Julio and other words with a J altho its pronounced as /x/ or sometimes /h/ .

Why is this so? Well to simplify things basically PIE ProtoIndoEuropean doesn't seem to have used initial J sounds of any kind but rather a g or gh  that changed to a variety of sounds including j or y or z or dz etc . Hence the diversity of spellings in modern European and other languages.

Summer Hours

 SUMMER HOURS

While this is probably the most famous example of an illustration from a Book of Hours for the month of July it is also very typical as if you google search images for July+illuminated manuscripts you will get a great many images of varying quality with similar images of peasants and farmers reaping summer cereal crops and shearing sheep. The only odd thing is that the farmer and his wife or the woman shearing can afford clothing dyed lapis lazuli blue but perhaps this is simply the patreon showing off the ducal wealth that allows him to buy the most expensive blue mineral pigment for his illuminators ? That would explain other summer scenes using a much more restrained palate of colors ?

Woodcut J

 #woodcut #letterJ #15thcentury #initial #typography 

WOODCUT J AND 

July J and some thoughts on books and blogging.

Those who have been following glyphika for a while may have noticed I sometimes use the initial letter of a month as inspiration for themes? And it is July.

J as a letter form may have changed out as a lengthened I but it soon developed ornate forms like this one from a French 15th century woodcut illustration for a book. 

One reason for these ornate wide forms may have been that some woodcut illustrations had color added by hand or simply that the carving and  inking process for wood followed for less detail than the so to be introduced metal engraving plates? 

Another thought although fully colored illuminated manuscripts were luxury items for the wealthy there were varying grades of book and text copying from the fully painted Book of Hours of the wealthy through to copies of texts with just a few pages colored or just initial letters to copies that were just ink on paper or black and white drawings with no color.

Though these cheapest copies were expensive which is why we see images of private libraries with only one or two shelves of books! Such as this German painting of St Luke !

Printed books supported literacy. Gutenbergs press might there was a boom on woodcut production and artists designing for them since publishers soon realised there was a demand of pictures plus words not just for pamphlets and newsheet but a variety of books.

And even further ...

this morning I am typing on a laptop into a blogging template. No ink No paper. So Google and the Internet and tagging and yet still just one scribe working on a page!