Introduction to the British Library’s Current Anglo-Saxon Exhibition
While the current British Library’s exhibition Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War includes not only manuscripts, books are the main topic here at iBookBinding, so we’ll focus on them in this post. Especially because it’s manuscripts that the curator Claire Breay talks about in the video you’ll find below.
Some of the most important manuscripts related to the history of England are brought to the spotlight here. Several of them had to travel quite a bit to be displayed here: an enormous 6th-century Bible Codex Amiatinus has returned to England for the first time in 1302 years; Codex Aureus, an eighth-century Northumbrian Gospel book written alternatively on purple and uncolored pages, is on a loan from the National Library of Sweden.
The other important aspect of this exhibition is to shed some light on the exquisite craftsmanship of the period many call the Dark Ages. However, the more evidence about these centuries is unearthed, the more that name appears to relate to our slender knowledge of the era, not the period itself.
Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War will be open until the 19th of February, 2019. For more information please visit the British Library website.
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