Video

Speaker(s): Sabrina Minuzzi

Related events: New sources for book history – International Conference

Releated Working Group(s):

Collection: CERl conferences

Recorded: November 28, 2017

Abstract:

Sabrina Minuzzi (University of Oxford), New tricks for provenance lost in miscellanies: documentary evidence, coloured edges and historical catalogues in MEI In 1905, after almost a century of captivity (1812-1904), the Marciana Library moved back from Palazzo Ducale to the historical location of the Libreria del Sansovino, on the opposite side of the same Piazzetta St Mark.

During the 19th century the library collections had exceptionally increased, as thousands of books had arrived following the suppression of many local religious institutions. So, with the transfer, the library had to expand on the adjacent Mint Building and the librarians had to undertake an unavoidable new arrangement of the collections. But not all the operations carried out in this occasion were so necessary nor well-thought out, especially with regard to miscellanies. Since the early 20th century indeed most of them have been unbound and reassembled in different order with the main goal of separating Venetian editions from those printed elsewhere. This raised several issues: loss of original bindings which often bore clues of provenance; fragmentation of provenance information (owner’s inscriptions etc.) which is usually annotated on the first pages of the first item of a miscellaneous volume.

Nowadays librarians are aware of the consequences that such a practice produced, but are unable to overcome the loss of information. I will show two examples of how some original provenance of miscellanies and miscellaneous volumes has been identified thanks to the cross-referencing of historical catalogues, archival documents and the direct observation of some material features of the books (coloured edges, continuous foliation etc.), and how this alleged lost provenance can be brought back to life and documented by using the MEI-Material Evidence in Incunabula tools (fields and links to images).

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