2. Page Marker
4. Seals
5. Rowels
8. Tweezers
9. Pricker
10. Leads
11. Quill Pens
12. Four-flanged Pen
13. Stylus
14. Penners
15. Firelighter Iron
16. Tooth Burnisher
17. Medieval Inks
18. Lead Inkwell
19. Inkhorn
Title Tweezers
Brief description Although tweezers are perhaps most associated for precise medical tasks, scribes had two unique applications for these tools that kept them in a scribe’s toolkit for nearly four hundred years. The Cole Collection’s Anglo Saxon Tweezers for Manuscript Leaves is made from iron and is missing one of its plates (the flat portion of the tool that would have clamped onto leaves of manuscripts). The loop at the base of the tool suggests that that a cord could have been threaded to suspend the manuscript from the clamped tweezers to air-dry (each top corner would likely have been suspended by a set of tweezers to prevent the leaf from curling or warping). The cylindrical lock could be slid into a locked position, fixed at the plates’ ends. Once the leaves were firmly secured between the plates, they could be hung to dry, and released by sliding the lock back towards the base loop. This technique was also used to carefully dry manuscripts, freshly ornamented with decorative lettering or illuminations. An alternate design and use for tweezers in the Medieval workshop is the Mid-Medieval Tweezers for Manuscript Leaves. A completely different style, this pair of tweezers does not have a cylindrical lock to slide and has now other way of locking into place. Rather, this style would have been used to pick up, hold, and move manuscript leaves by their edge without the user’s dirty fingers soiling the page. At 43mm long and 13mm at the widest end, they were small enough to easily be held and operated in one hand As far back as the mid–14th century, documents suggest that tweezers were used to keep a single leaf taut so as not to warp during the writing process. The lock would be loosened and slid to the looped end, with the page carefully positioned between the plates (similar to the drying process). Once secure, the lock would slide into place near the plates’ end. This technique could also clamp one to three leaves of a codex as a kind of bookmark. The tweezers’s flat plates would not disrupt the codex’s sheets but would keep the reade’s place in the volume. These decorative cover fasteners, referred to as book clasps or book mounts, were attached to the covers of books to help keep heavy volumes closed. The locks varied from simple closures to fasteners secured with leather or more ornate chain styles. However, they had to be executed in a relatively flat manner so that the additional dimension would not transfer contact to other volumes when stored. Metal clasps were also used in designs requiring multiple pieces to lock around a book’s covers, boasting hinges that gave pieces a range of motion. These samples from Alan Cole’s Collection have both figural and decorative forms. The Armorial Lion in bronze, measures 47mm high and frames the beast with its rearing head in a miniature vignette. Decorative/Geometric Design, finished in iron, is 40mm high and is wholly abstract and ornamental in its shape and design. Finally, the Wolf’s Head is rendered in bronze, and features the disembodied form of a snarling wolf. At 40mm high, it also clearly displays the small holes that would have held the fasteners to the book’s cover. Placed at the fore edge of the cover’s boards, clasps/mounts were placed on the front and back to create a secure closure. The clasps/mounts were typically used on larger volumes with multitudinous leaves; the delicate nature of paper or parchment meant that is was susceptible to warp and cockle, and the pressure from a book clasped shut helped prevent this type of weathering.
Contributor: Kira Fluor-Scacchi
Contribution date: Winter 2014