A silk binding from Yemen

It’s very rare to come across a binding that seems to be unrelated to any type of binding we know. But it does happen. A cloth binding on a Yemeni manuscript is a case in point.

Karin Scheper • June 07, 2019

The cartography of Captain James Cook

It must have been quite the sight. On the 3rd of June 1769 – now 250 years ago – Englishmen were on the island of Tahiti looking through high-quality telescopes to watch a rare natural phenomenon: the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun.

Guest author • June 02, 2019

The Ricklefs collection at Leiden University Libraries. Some material features.

Manuscripts are not only about content. The leather bindings, the kinds of paper, and the ink used may tell us stories without words – material talks. Dr. Dick van der Meij will introduce us to some Javanese manuscripts

Guest author • May 13, 2019

A fifteenth-century manuscript from The Hague

“Dit boeck hoert toe den susteren van sinte agnieten binnen scrave[n] haghe van sinte augustijns oerde” (This book belongs to the sisters of St. Agnes of the Augustinian order in The Hague)

Guest author • April 29, 2019

A Medieval Matthäus-Passion

This is what the ‘score’ of a St Matthew Passion looked like, long before Johann Sebastian Bach was to create his famous Oratorio.

André Bouwman • April 15, 2019

The Imperially Inscribed Illustrations of Cotton

Cotton production and Chinese imperial poems in blue ink: a new set of stone rubbings in the Leiden collection

Guest author • March 29, 2019

Maps with flaps

Berkhey’s time travel map of northern Holland and the Haarlemmermeer (c. 1778): a GIS avant la lettre

Martijn Storms • February 26, 2019

Dutch nationalism and the story of the Portengen manuscript

The 19th-century Portengen manuscript, recently donated to Leiden University Libraries, is a prime example of a text that shows how nationalism stimulated the self-consciousness of middle-class families.

Guest author • January 29, 2019

The first Japanese love letter by Sonogi to Von Siebold now discovered

"Reading your letters, I recall your face and long for the days gone by."

Guest author • December 04, 2018