Judaica DH at the Penn Libraries Blog //Talking the Talk: Binding
Blog //Talking the Talk: Binding

In this series we honor the contributions made on the Zooniverse Talk boards for our project, Scribes of the Cairo Geniza . Talk is a way for citizen scientists on Zooniverse to converse with one another and experts on the different material they are working on, ask questions, and explore new insights. Each week we will feature a talk conversation that we love. Thanks for the participation #genizascribes! Subject 3074002: Gaster Printed 514–1 &Gaster Printed 514–2, The University of Manchester Library

@stefriegel: page 2 #stained #binding #cord

@mrustow: I’d never noticed this #cord before. I wonder whether it’s really evidence of binding, as it’s in the wrong spot for that. I would entertain the idea that it might actually be part of the paper itself. Hemp cords and other not-very-processed textile material was used to make cheaper paper.

@citsci-rancho: Is the cord actually part of the paper, or kind of embedded in it? The back side of the subject is a shrek! (quoting my mother here) It looks like it was lying in mud, and hasn’t been cleaned. Also, is this subject actually printed, as the label says? The letters don’t look uniform. I would have thought that this was a manuscript.

@stefriegel: I can see from an enlargement of the torn edge that the paper itself contains some textile material. The fibres are very small. The long cord mentioned above however looks very different from those fibres and looks typically more like the binding cords we have seen in other subjects. It is in the wrong spot for an egde binding, but it would be in the right place for corner binding, as known for connecting some pages of legal documents together.
See e.g. subject 21708006 for comparison. Also note the diagonal fold close to the cord in both subjects. I agree with @citsci-rancho that the letters look handwritten, not printed.

@mrustow: Right you are: corner binding. I had no idea. Thank you — this is blowing my mind. I knew there were various methods of binding, especially for archival registers, but I’d never seen this one. For a suggestive comparison, see this 14th century manuscript illustration from Central Asia (the first illustration of the two): The World History of Rashid al-Din, 1314. A Masterpiece of Islamic Painting
_Iconic Persian Manuscript in New Exhibition at Main Library: ‘The World History of Rashid al-Din, 1314. A Masterpiece…_libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk

You can read the entire conversation on the Talk Boards.

👉 Read more Talk conversations or start your own by participating in Scribes of the Cairo Geniza on Zooniverse!

By Judaica DH at the Penn Libraries on .

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Exported from Medium on April 14, 2020.

Cite this post: admin. “Talking the Talk: Binding”. Published April 18, 2019. https://judaicadh.github.io//blog/2019-04-18-talking-the-talk/. Accessed on .