3 ms·
Rare medieval bookmark exceeds expectations at auction
- polnurfer 5mo ago[flagged]
- hypercube33 5mo agoDisappointing it doesnt list the expected or sale price that it went for on either the article or the linked auction page.
- mfcl 5mo agoFrom the article: > The pre-sale estimate £800-1200 ($1073-1610). It sold for £7,000 ($9390).
- Luc 5mo ago> [...] the maker was almost certainly a transcriber who used it to keep his place on the page and note the column he was writing in when he stopped. The wheel would be moved to the stopping point and the circle turned to the number of the column he had been writing in when he stopped. It would make a lot more sense that the bookmark was placed in the source book rather than in the copy. I.e. the wheel would be turned to the source column they had been reading from.
- thomascountz 5mo agoI imagined the same; and in that case, it wouldn't need to follow that it was transcriber's bookmark.
- klimt01 5mo agoThe other instrument, a pencil-beam light.
- pseudohadamard 5mo agoWould that be necessary though? You've already got the perfect bookmark, all you'd need to do is check where in the copy the text stops and continue from there in the source. At most you'd need to bookmark the source page, but in theory not even that.
- Luc 5mo agoThis style of bookmark is rare so it follows it wasn't _necessary_. But with dense text it might be faster and perhaps less error prone than locating the right place in the text? Scribe would change the margin size and line spacing, and the parchment would be a different size than the source, so the page breaks would end up in different locations in the text.
- ungreased0675 5mo agoI have a pretty over engineered fidget spinner on my desk. (Flyaway) It’s amusing to imagine what a future archeologist would say about its function and importance to my work.
- sorokod 5mo agoLikely to be classified as early 21st century religious artefact.
- goodmythical 5mo agoFertility symbol
- pseudohadamard 5mo agoAnd now we know that the Antikythera Mechanism really was.
- dukeofdoom 5mo agoMaybe bookmarks need innovation. Not sure what exists out there now, but could be a cool product
- deberon 5mo agoI’ve been innovating on bookmarks for decades. Money, receipts, paint swatches, entire spiral notebooks, ripped off corners of magazines… bookmarks are everywhere!
- doubled112 5mo agoBasically anything that will fit between pages and is in reach is a bookmark.
- akkartik 5mo agoIncluding the cover of another book.
- pseudohadamard 5mo agoSilliest thing I ever used as a bookmark was a refridgerator. It did require taking the book to the bookmark though.
- thih9 5mo agoPerhaps a book that keeps track of the reading progress automatically. /s
- nortlov 5mo agoYes! A method to easily understand completion status without having to open a book to verify progress.