Three days in a working scriptorium
A small community in the Welsh borders still copies books by hand. I spent three days at their desks and came home unable to rush a sentence.
he scriptorium is a long room with north light, twelve sloped desks and a rule of silence that nobody enforces because nobody needs to.
The day starts at six with ruling. Every page is pricked with an awl down the margin and ruled with a hard point, so the lines are dents rather than marks.
The pace of a page
A skilled scribe writes about a page a day in a formal hand. After an hour I had written eleven words and ruined two sheets. The monk beside me said this was normal and went back to his psalm.
What I brought home
Not a skill, yet. A pace. The habit of finishing a line before starting the next one, and of reading my own work back slowly, as if someone else wrote it.
They let me keep the eleven words.
¶ Written by
Isolde Marr
Craft editor
Isolde trained as a manuscript conservator and still grinds her own pigments. She writes the Craft guides and tests every step in her kitchen first.
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¶ The Thursday letter
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