Élodie Lévêque: Gaelic manuscripts collection survey: Discovery of a non-adhesive 19th-century binding.
The Gaelic Manuscripts Collection
The National Library of Ireland collection of approximately 1200 bound Gaelic Manuscripts was surveyed in 2012. This collection is extremely important to Irish history and literature ranging from the 14th – 21st century, and covering subjects such as literature, genealogy, hagiography, spirituality, law, medicine, and dinnseanchas (place-lore). In particular, the ancient bardic tradition is represented by the earliest surviving book of praise poetry, the 14th century Book of Magauran, and by other important volumes of bardic poetry.
Survey of the collection
The goal of the survey was to record the condition of the volumes, to identify the items in need of conservation, and to prioritize treatments. The second aspect of the survey was to take measurements to house the unprotected items in individual boxes.
Items were examined from a structural point of view, in a “minimum intervention” approach, without aesthetical concerns. 55,7% of the surveyed items were bound volumes, 35% were notebooks and 9% were archives material. 0.3% was other material as binders or photographs. The volumes were made of various materials and covered with paper, leather, parchment, cloth or fabric. 45% of the collection needed minor stabilisation treatment, 25% intermediate conservation treatment and 15% full treatment.
Scholar-bindings
“Scholar binding” is a term used by conservators and codicologists referring to a binding that has not been made by a professional bookbinder. Out of the 1200 bound Gaelic manuscript volumes that were surveyed, 65 were scholar bindings.
Various examples of this particular type of bindings were found, all were structurally adequate but none seemed to follow specific craft rules.
A study of these bindings would be very worthwhile as there is little in the way of published material available. The unique use of technique and materials also offers an insight to the technologies and the local availability of materials.
Most are non-adhesive bindings and a better understanding of their mechanism could help develop new conservation binding structures.
There were probably more scholar bindings in the NLI collection in the past, but the most important manuscripts may have been rebound, in the 19th century with “proper” Western binding structures and covers.
The survey showed that 12 of the 65 scholar bindings were in bad condition and needed full conservation treatment and 6 (at least) were already conserved, with the original structure recently replaced with a ‘standard’ conservation structure.
In order to learn more about this type of scholar bindings, 3 volumes were selected for closer examination and full conservation treatment: a paper binding, a leather binding and a parchment binding.
Ms. 314: Discovery of a new structure
The leather binding was particularly interesting, due to its unusual sewing structure. The sewing and covering material seemed to have been made using available materials on site: pieces of sheep skin sewn together to make a bigger piece, pieces of cardboard sewn together also, various vegetable and animal threads to attach the pieces together, pieces of newspaper and other various scrap papers reused in the binding, with wax.
The bookbinder preferred to use sewing threads to attach the cover unclear if the spine was covered in the past. This paper will describe the particulars of the sewing system and covering with drawings, diagrams and photographs.
Due to its unique structure, an “archaeological” approach was chosen in the treatment of the manuscript. The goal was to keep as many original elements as possible. This approach is usually not suitable for libraries, because of the frequent use of the volumes. It was recommended that this manuscript was prioritised for digitisation to limit handling in the future.
The original structure could be adapted as an alternative non-adhesive conservation binding for other volumes. This will be discussed in the paper.