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Sara Charles and Teaching Manuscripts
28 Plays11 days ago
Sarah Kernan speaks with Sara Charles, a medieval book historian at the University of London. Sara recently published The Medieval Scriptorium: Making Books in the Middle Ages (Reaktion Books, 2024). She incorporates “historical remaking” into her research practices and she shares her knowledge with broader audiences through workshops, social media, and her website, teachingmanuscripts.com. Follow Sara on Bluesky and Instagram for updates.
Show notes, links, and transcript available on The Recipes Project.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Around the Table' Podcast
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oh you
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This is Around the Table, a podcast from the Recipes Project. I'm your host, Sarah Kernan. Together, we will learn about exciting scholars, professionals, projects, resources, and collections focused on historical recipes.
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Welcome to Season 2, Dedicated to Making. In each episode this season, we will feature interviews with guests who describe what making means to them.
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For some, it is recreating a historic recipe as closely as possible. For others, it is creating something new in a modern setting. However imperfect the process or the outcome, making historical recipes offers a powerful methodology for connecting with and understanding the past in a direct and
Introducing Sarah Charles: Medieval Book Historian
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tangible way.
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I am thrilled to speak with Sarah Charles today. Sarah is a medieval book historian at the University of London. In addition to serving as the editor of the academic journal, Historical Research at the Institute of Historical Research and journals manager for the University of London Press, she also recently completed PhD at the Institute of English Studies, researching medieval martyrologies.
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Sarah incorporates historical remaking into her research practices, and she generously shares her knowledge with broader audiences through workshops, social media, and her website, teachingmanuscripts.com.
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Last year, Sarah published to wonderful reviews the Medieval Scriptorium, making books in the Middle Ages with reaction books. I am excited to speak to Sarah today about her many experiences recreating inks and materials for making medieval manuscripts.
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Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you
Sarah's Museum and Library Science Background
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for having me. It's pleasure to be here. Could we start by speaking about your interests in medieval manuscripts and how you go about examining and researching your interests?
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You really seem to have um such skill for combining traditional research in special collections and archives with historical remaking. And I would love to hear more from you about these two methodologies.
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Thank you. That's very kind of you to say. think I have a background in working in museums and art galleries, as well as libraries. So I think that kind of um experience ah of public environments and communicating with a general audience has helped me a lot.
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Also, I trained as a librarian, which I think I really learned the importance of doing good research through that, understanding how knowledge is organised, the importance of cataloguing.
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and knowing how to use catalogues for research. And I think that kind of all all combined together um with my research in book history. I also still work at the British Library on on Saturdays in the manuscripts reading room. So I still have that kind of like,
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hands-on experience that every week ah of dealing with requests and and talking about manuscripts and and just being in that kind of the same physical space as them, which I do love. And I think for me, when I sort of first started coming into book history, there's a, some of it is kind of, there's a bit of an old fashioned air to it. And I thought, ah sometimes I felt quite intimidated buy it. And I thought, oh, if I do, then other people do. And I don't want other people to, because it's such a joyous world to experience. And so I guess I just wanted to share my enthusiasm and just to tell people, you know, it's not scary. It's for you. It's for everyone. You know, it's not just for academics.
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How did you become interested in the making side of things, making the inks and the other yeah other products like the quills for making medieval manuscripts?
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And where do you find the recipes and the instructions and actually source all the materials you use? I'll try and work through all all of those. So first became interested in manuscripts when I was doing the library course, the Library and Information Studies Masters, and there were modules on manuscripts and also rare books. But I just found manuscripts just so much more interesting because they were so, you know, everything was handmade. um And there's just something about that that that is just so interesting and and amazing.
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And I think A large part of it was that I was really scared of touching manuscripts. When I went into a reading room, I was so scared because like the parchment wasn't familiar to me.
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I didn't know how to handle them. And I wanted to understand those materials to really get to grips with them so that i so that I would be able to go into a reading room and feel confident handling a manuscript.
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And so and and so that but that was part of it. I wanted to kind of really deconstruct how they
First Forays into Medieval Manuscript Remaking
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were made just so I could understand them. Patricia Lovett, who's um a really amazing calligrapher and illuminator, she does courses. So I went to one of her illumination classes.
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And that again, then opened up a whole new world of possibilities of like, wow, we can we can actually do this now. And that kind of like set me on my journey. And then I just started researching, you know, other people's blog posts, books by Christopher Dehammel,
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and things like that. I started small. The first thing I did ah after the illumination class was I thought about making my own inks using oak galls, which are found on on oak trees, the small round growths that found on oak trees. And I just happened to go to a small woodland that's behind my house. ah And literally the first tree I looked at had them. And I was i so thrilled. And I'm not sure.
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Perhaps if it hadn't have been such a serendipitous moment, I don't know I'd have been so enthusiastic. But it was it was so exciting. It was this whole new world that was opening up to me. And so then I came home and
Using Primary Sources for Authentic Recreation
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and I made the ink and it works. And it was just like, wow.
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And that encouraged me to want to do more and more. Now I tend to go to the primary sources first to look for recipes and things. So there's things like um Theophilus' On Diverse Arts.
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ah He was a 12th century German monk who wrote down a load of recipes. And he was a practitioner as well. So you know that he's writing these things down from his own experience.
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Also, Cianino Cianini, in his um Craftsman's Handbook, that's from the 15th century. And he was an an Italian craftsperson. Again, he's he' writing down what he knows, which just gives that air of authenticity, which is really great. So i tend to start with the primary sources now if I want to do something and then kind of work from there now that I have that experience of, you know, maybe filling in the gaps between what is missing or converting ah what they're saying when they're using strange terminology
Sourcing Materials Safely for Historical Remaking
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and and things like that.
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And where do I source my ingredients and materials? I can make it myself, I do. and there's there's things like for plant pigments. So for woad, which is a indigo, dark blue. Madda, which is a reddish colour.
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um Also weld, which is a yellow colour. You can grow those quite easily, certainly where I am here in in London. Grow those quite easily in the garden and harvest those. it It sometimes takes a few years, but if I can do that, I will. Things like the black ink, so the iron gall, as I say... was luckily easy to um source those. Carbon black as well, that's a very easy one because you're just collecting soot from an open flame. Also verdigris, the kind of them the green turquoise pigment, that's a very easy one to do at home as well. You just need some copper strips and some vinegar. So things like that. If I can do it myself, I will.
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But there's also very dangerous pigments like orpiment, which is um arsenic based, or vermilion which is mercury s sulfide so I'm happy to um use specialist art shops like Pornelison for things like that and then I've also prepared parchment and made allantooled leather and things like that and paintbrushes and foxtooth burners so yeah if if it's possible i will do it myself but I'm happy to um you know if it's dangerous I'm happy to let the experts do that for me.
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Absolutely. would too.
Insights and Reflections from Material Recreation
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You've had an experience with recreating and remaking a lot of these different materials. How does this making process help you understand better the training and the labor and the output of medieval scribes?
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or any other craftspeople that were involved in the the making process. Have you gained any surprising or unexpected insights because of your own experiences?
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Yeah, I mean, The thing that always stands out to me is just the amount of work you have to do before you even start putting anything on the manuscript. You know you you have to plan everything out in advance, um what you need to buy.
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But also you need to make sure things like trade networks are in place. So You would need to import lapis lazuli from Afghanistan. You're also relying on the weather and the environment. and Like i say, a lot of the pigments are plant-based, so you need a good crop.
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ah You'd need such a vast array of sources from many different places. They come from the ground, from the workshop, manufactured in a workshop, or from the merchants importing stuff. So you'd need to be able to access all these. You'd have to work out how much parchment was needed before you started.
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Then you'd have to think about how much decoration to include, what pigments you were going to use, how much gold. It just would have been such an immense task. So you'd need to access the resources. You'd need to know if you could afford the resources.
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um And also if you had the skilled artists and scribes to carry those out. So I think the the thing that always really stands out to me is just how much work would have needed to be done before you even started writing anything on the parchment. it You
Impact of Material Making on Research and Writing
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would have needed... it such a lot of planning for the process and it blows my mind.
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Can you talk a little bit more about your work with remaking and specifically how it has impacted or informed your research? And I'm thinking here, if you could at least touch upon this, your recent book, The Medieval Scriptorium, every chapter begins with this wonderful narrative of a medieval scribe in a different place and time.
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And to me, it feels like those narratives are so richly informed by your experiences and talking not only about the weather and the room and the space that they worked in and the amount of light, but also the process of writing or what they were doing with their hands or or their bodies at that time. And that just seems so informed by personal experience. So was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.
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Yeah, yeah. and And thank you for picking up on that, because because that's something that I really try to get into my writing. And and I think actually the process that I enjoyed and learned from the most was making parchment. It was a really quite sobering experience because I had to go to the abattoir in the morning to collect the skins. um And they were still warm.
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So that was like really kind of like brings it home. Just just what a visceral process it is. And then just going through that process, and you you soak it in lime to remove the hair. You stretch it on a wooden frame and then and then you you scrape it with a lunellum.
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It just gave me such a profound connection to the material. And it's really amazing to be able to understand how that the skin fit, around the animal and you can still see the spine and the veins. that You can see imperfections where the animal had been bitten by insects. So you've just got all those traces still on the parchment.
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And you can you can feel how the the different thicknesses as well. The skin's much thicker around the sort of the shoulders and the neck area and it's much thinner around the tummy area. And and you can feel that as as you're working around the parchment.
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And I found it really funny. And I did actually put this in my book. But when I went to bed that night after working on the skin all day, I could i could still feel it on my fingertips, I could still feel the texture of it.
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And that really stayed with me. And I thought, well, that must have been, you know, how how they felt as well. And it's such a tactile process by necessity.
Sharing Remaking Experiences on Social Media
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But I think in turn that lends to a greater understanding, not just of what it would have been like to be a parchment maker, but also that relationship between humans and animals and working with the natural materials to create these these things of beauty. And as you say, it's also interesting to see what parts of the body come under stress while you're doing these things. Parchment's very physical, making parchment, because you're you're lifting and you're scraping and and you're doing all of this with your arms. But the thing that I struggled with the most was my fingers not being dexterous enough when when you're tying it to the frame. And I didn't expect you know that. That was that was unexpected. and
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And then that leads me to wonder whether parchment makers would have suffered from arthritis in their later years, you know having having to be so dexterous. Which, of course, is pure speculation, but it's interesting how these practices can kind of like open your mind to to pathways like that.
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Absolutely. That's a really interesting observation. i've certainly thought about when I've sat and written things for a long time. thought, oh, I'm glad I'm not doing this for a living, writing out by hand. You know, i I would have arthritis very early, but yeah if you're using your hands in the same way as a parchment maker...
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What inspired you to start posting all of these experiences on social media and on your website? Was it mainly for yourself or to inform other scholars? Or were you were you trying to reach out to a broader public, as as you had kind of mentioned before?
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Yeah, I think what it was is, I was just so delighted when these things worked, that I just wanted to share it with people, you know, just want to say, wow, look at this, this is amazing. I was so thrilled when something actually worked. So and I think as well, I'm doing it at home in my kitchen or whatever. So it can be a bit lonely sometimes. So you know, when something works, worked, I just wanted to, to share that. And I don't think I quite expected it to have the the traction that it did. I didn't expect people to be so kind of come to to come along with me as well. But it but it's been really fantastic.
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I think my maybe ah my cats, the inclusion of my cats might have had something to do with it, which which I had no control over. They just invited themselves into these things. But you know that makes for a much more natural experience. It's in a domestic setting.
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And there would have been cats wandering around medieval workshops. So you know, i i think it just adds to the experience of of what it would have been really like rather than something done in in a lab, you know, where everything's very sterilized and things like that. I think it's,
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It's much more fun to do it and in a domestic environment. and Has your cat made any paw prints like we have evidence of? Yeah, I have had incidents of that. um And also as well, there was another time when I was copying something and the doorbell rang and the ank ink was still wet. And as I went to answer the door, one of my cats, she's ragdoll cat, so she has this huge fluffy tail and her tail just swept through the wet ink and smeared the way.
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all over the lines above. So yeah, you have to watch them. It's all part of the experience, I think. And medieval scribes have documented, yeah, the yeah the nuisance that ah cats and other animals can do to manuscripts.
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I would say it's the general audience that I have, which is, you know, always what I was aiming for. But I've been really pleasantly surprised by how many academics have been supportive of what I do as well. um and And I think there's much more of an appetite now to bring these processes into the classroom. Certainly, you know, I did a summer school recently and I do a lot of workshops. And and so I think, yeah, there there is definitely at the moment um more interest in bringing that that type of learning.
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into the classroom. And I think also as well, everything now is kind of so artificial and overproduced and everything is digital. So it's just a real human instinct, I think, to to want to connect with these natural produced items.
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Yeah, I think that's why it appeals to people. Do people ever reach out to you with special requests of
Advice on Starting Craft Projects
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things to work on or things to post about? Sometimes, yeah. Yeah. And I've had a few people that have sort of come across strange recipes or strange recipes for things and they've wanted me to recreate them. So yeah, that's always good fun.
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That is. What advice would you give anyone, particularly these students and teachers and researchers who are interested in incorporating craft and historical making into their research and teaching?
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I would say start small, start with something that's easy that you can do at home. You don't need specialist equipment or you don't need, you know, dangerous equipment or materials for that matter.
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And do your research, try to get as close to the original things as possible. When I'm making Iron Goul Link, I always go and source the ghoul nuts myself.
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I know that's not possible for everyone, but I've only ever bought ghouls off of the internet once. And that's the only time my ink didn't work. So, you know, that was a lesson for me. Just do what you can within your means, but try and keep it as as sort of authentic as possible.
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Enjoy the process. You know, don't focus on the end result on making like a perfect batch of ink or a perfect pigment, but just enjoy the process. Take time to think about how you your senses are engaged, you know, what parts of your body are you using? How does your body adapt to different tasks?
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It's amazing how often you will use your mouth as a third hand without even realizing it when when you're doing other things. And I just think that's so interesting, the way your body just automatically puts itself in the right position for you to be able to do what you need to do. Also say,
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don't worry if it doesn't work. You know, that it's all part of the process. Then you can kind of have your own troubleshooting guide and you learn from that. The other thing I would say is document the process.
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make notes, take videos, take photos, everything, because it's amazing how much you forget when you step away from it. and But if if you've got that, photos and videos, I think work best for me. And then that that just allows me to go back and and look closer at what I was doing. Sometimes quite unconsciously, I was doing these things. And so you want to look back and think, oh, right. So yeah, that's how I added it. I added it gradually rather than quickly and things like that.
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But yeah, it's just a tremendous amount of fun. And it really just gives you so much greater insight into how things were made that that I think it's a great thing to do. i would I would encourage ah anyone when
Future Projects: Exploring Medieval Craftsmen in Oxford
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to do it according to their means and what they could do in their environment.
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Well, I have one final question for you. Are there any upcoming projects or collaborations you're particularly excited about and want to talk about?
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So I've just finished my PhD, so I'll probably get a few things out from that. The Medieval Scriptorium book comes out in paperback in September. So if anyone wants to get hold of a ah paperback copy, they can.
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I am thinking about my next book, very much thinking about rather than doing anything about. But What I'm really interested in is certainly after the manuscript making moved away from the monasteries and out into the the workshops, the urban workshops, and there's street in Oxford called Cat Street.
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And that's where all the illuminators and scribes and and bookbinders, they all lived in this one street. And I just think it's a wonderful microcosm of everything that was going on. And We have surviv surviving records of the people that live there. We have the tenement records. um So I just think it would be wonderful to just explore all those lives and all the people that were living there and how they interacted with each other remotely.
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I just think it must have been such a wonderful hub of creativity, um especially at that time in in the 13th century, I'd like to look at when it was moving away from the monasteries and new ways of doing things was opening up. So I'd really like to do some research and write a book about Cat Street in Oxford in the 13th century.
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But um it's still early days. That would be so interesting to read. I hope that you do work on that. I just kind of wonder what what evidence there is of their their own interactions or but or what you can glean.
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Yeah, they often, um you know, they they married each other. There's brothers, sisters, parents, you know, all living in there. You know, they would be witness to documents and things like that. And they'd be like, you know, Thomas the scribe or Roger the bookbinder. So you know who they are or by their trade. And it would just be wonderful to kind of weave all those ah stories together.
00:21:41
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Absolutely. Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today. It was a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you. It's been very enjoyable. Thanks to everyone for listening today.
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Please remember to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. I'll see you again next time on Around the Table.
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