DY24007 The History of Architecture 1938 V01 200224

Use this link to view Pillar and Post by Osbert Lancaster

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y1ba3gqSzS-erzoi8VM6u8AHqiwq0PjO/view?usp=sharing

This book was so near to going to landfill sitting on the top of a black bin bag in the far corner of a Gloucester City Centre charity shop. The outer cover was seriously stained and inside the paper was falling apart and torn. But when I picked it up the drawings inside captured my imagination particularly the small people included in each drawing. So 10 years ago it was saved from destruction and has sat on my bookshelf ever since waiting to be digitised for posterity. This is what DMB Publishing does, it rescues old books and freely shares them with anyone interested. If you read the text in the book you will soon appreciate you have in Osbert Lancaster a real character with strong views. So then you Google his name and realise his biography on Wikipedia takes up over 20 pages so you know you are dealing with one enormous character. Further investigation soon shows this Pillar to Post Book is stored and available to read on the Internet Archive Website and they have used all their technology to digitise it 2019. So I am not the saviour of this masterpiece. But I suspect you would never have heard about it nor Osbert Lancaster (1908 - 1986) without reading this blog.  

Its works very well as a scrolled PDF with a page of narrative about the architectural style followed by one of his brilliant drawings illustrating the style. But for me its the people I like to look at and although they are small you can see their personality. You can tell Osbert Lancaster was a gifted cartoonist as well as an architectural historian.   

Use this link to view his Wikipedia Biography

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osbert_Lancaster

Baroque. Being slightly rude in a cartoonist way.

Georgian (Town) with the plague of road works.

DY24006 Craft Guilds in Medieval England V01 190224

In the researching and writing of my Domesday Book one thing that became very clear was that with the Norman invasion of 1066 there was to be a significant advance in many technologies. The Domesday Book itself as a book technology represented a major advance in the keeping of Royal Records for individual tax purposes. But advances of the physical craft skills was to be just as significant with in particular the ceramics (pottery), stone masonry and woodworking technologies to name but a few.

Whilst prior to the Norman invasion both the minting of coins and the use of water mills for milling were more advanced under the Anglo Saxons. Both minting and milling represented the centralisation of manufacturing capabilities with minting centralised to achieve Royal Legal control whilst milling required the use of power resources (water). At least 20 mints are listed in the Domesday Book but it was likely there were many more since each Shire (Country) tended to have their own mint to keep up with the demand for coinage. Whilst with over 6000 water mill entries in the Domesday Book it was a well established Roman technology often supported by the need for joint ownership to finance the high capital investment required to build a water mill. This was the case particularly when it included a mill pond if the more efficient overshot feed water technology was being used to drive the mill.

On the subject of Craft Guilds this paper written by Gary Richardson, University of California (1992) (link below) is possibly one of the best on the subject particularly the Guild Census of 1388 (Page 10) with its list of occupations covered by the Guilds. I particularly like Minstrels and Actors since I am related to Robert and Martha Bannister, with their occupation defined as "Players and Comedians", when they registered the birth of twins Robert and Henry my forefathers in Broadway, United Kingdom on the 2nd August 1791. 

Church Registry Entry

Along with Whittawyers (saddlers), Coifmakers (cap worn under a veil) and Cordwainers (makes new shoes whilst Cobblers repair old ones) , Girdlers (makes belts often leather but particularly the metal buckle) and Spurriers (spurs added around riders shoes to urge the horse onwards). 

It is amazing to see how many craft skills existed in the Medieval Period. 

Also those that think Brexit and trade barriers is a 21st Century problem go to Page 14 noting the following :-

"A treaty between King Canute of Britain and Emperor Conrad of Lombardy limiting tolls taken from English and Italian merchants was signed in 1027."  

This paper examines if Guilds were focussed upon sharing best practice technology or discreetly maintaining a monopoly on selling prices. Guilds obviously claimed it was about setting quality standards not about price setting. Its a similar political debate to the Trump "Made in the USA" verse the "Made in China" subject being played out these days. These are acting like Country Guilds. Particularly the huge current American Government investment to bring computer chip manufacturing back to the USA from Taiwan. Whilst Taiwan is not China it is in danger of being taken over by China. 

In passing has anyone else noticed the "Made in China" electric kettles branded by numerous suppliers are lucky to last 2 years. In the 1960's the "Made in the UK" electric kettles latest about 10 years. Do we need a Guild of Electric Kettles !!!!   

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gPicn77KgHDruEZMKbq1UaLy6tzhnfww/view?usp=sharing

DY24005 The Gospels of Saint Augustine (MS 286) V01 170224

What is strange about historical research is you get lead down paths that don’t always coincide with your original interests. In researching and writing my Domesday Book what appealed to me was it documented essentially a way of life in 1086 and in my case the real interest was the available technologies supporting that way of life. Understanding the technologies that existed to both create the Domesday Book itself and the living of a life in those times is what really motivated me to write it. Also I was particularly interested in the reproduction of it over the next 1000 years and the historians that had over the years spent their lives analysing it. Inevitably religious content was a significant factor that stimulated the development of book technology but the religious content itself didn’t excite me. But religion's role in the development of communities around the Parish Church was another interest but in a social economic way not in terms of religious documents or practice. So inevitably I have ended up doing some research of medieval religious documents in the form of scrolls, codex and books but sort of ignoring the actual religious content. With no printing capabilities in the 11^th Century reproduction depended upon the copying of the original and in medieval Europe copying was a much respected skill whereas these days we all would have a fear of being accused of plagiarism. The Monasteries and their Monks formed the bed rock of these book technologies.

This whole study of medieval writings is called palaeography. Because I don’t want to get distracted into this area of research this blog post is really me just “digitising the links” with a minimum of textual content so I can easily go back to it in the future. But its not an area that I want to devote too much of my time researching at present. But in the future with my focus on “technology” I would be interested in locating those out of the suggest 1 million medieval documents internationally stored in Libraries, Universities or Private collections that have a “technology content”. It is important to appreciate that the United Kingdom is only a small source of these medieval documents which are truly international.

What lead me to “The Gospels of Saint Augustine” produced in the 6^th Century is it predated the Domesday Book by 500 years but it had the original “book technology” upon which the Domesday Book was based. It is considered the oldest existing example of this book technology in the United Kingdom and is still in existence as “MS286” in the Mathew Parker’s Library at the Corpus Christi College Library. Cambridge, United Kingdom. Working with Stanford University, America a Digital Copy has been made available to view over the internet.

One strange fact was the Saint Augustine Gospels were carried in the procession at the Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla with the book open at the page of the portrait of Saint Luke. To me it would have been more historically relevant to carry a copy of the Domesday Book instead since the continued existence of Royalty in the United Kingdom has been more dependant on the land ownership of their supporting Lords, with their ownership entitlement based upon their entries in the Domesday Book, rather than that of their poorer supporting Bishops who did not do so well in the Domesday Book. But no tears please for religious land ownership in the United Kingdom since it is still enormous.    

So lets use these links to elaborate on this subject.

Lets look at the Mathew Parker’s Library and its development as a digital resource on the web.

https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/about/about-earlier-phases-of-parker-on-the-web

Look at an actual Digital Copy of "The Gospels of Saint Augustine (MS 286)" on the Stanford University website. Tap away to 129v to see Saint Luke. 

https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/catalog/mk707wk3350

The background to the Gospels of Saint Augustine Medieval Manuscript being one of the oldest European books in existence. That is why it is "technology" wise of such importance. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Augustine_Gospels 

Some more general information on Medieval Manuscripts 

What is Palaeography?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palaeography

What is a Manuscript?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuscript

Christopher De Hamel is one of the currently acclaimed experts on Medieval Manuscripts where in his book “Meeting with Remarkable Manuscripts” (2016) he dedicates a whole Chapter One to The Gospels of Saint Augustine. I own a copy and it never ceases to impress me with its content. As I have explained earlier I am as interested in the characters that dedicate their lives to studying and researching history as I am interested in history itself.   

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_de_Hamel