Manuscript Cultures
Workshop ReportManuscript Albums: A First Comparative Approach
22 November 2021
Photo: Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig
From 29–30 October 2021, the CSMC hosted the online workshop ‘Manuscript Albums: Collecting & Compiling Handwritten Items’. Organisers Janine Droese and Janina Karolewski summarise their reflections on the workshop’s papers and discussions.
The workshop aimed at establishing an interdisciplinary exchange on manuscript albums from various cultural contexts. The eleven presentations gave insights into album-making from Japanese, Persian, Ottoman, Mughal, and several European manuscript cultures, with the earliest examples from the 15th century and the latest examples from the 21st century.
It was striking to see that in some cases, album-makers gathered handwritten specimen from different, sometimes faraway cultures. These interrelations between different manuscript cultures emerged several times during the workshop and led to an inspiring exchange about the intercultural character of some album cultures. Another parallel between all case studies presented at the workshop was the plan to order knowledge and to display social relations in albums. Other aspects that can connect albums from different cultural backgrounds are tensions between monumentality and ephemerality or remarkably close relationships with print. Presentations on intercession books (‘Anliegenbücher’), French salon albums, and manuscripts combining features of lute books, commonplace books, and ‘Stammbücher’ gave important impulses to explore boundaries between albums and related manuscript types.
The workshop made clear that a comparative view on albums and their cultural contexts is extremely profitable. Thus, the workshop is intended as a kick-off event for further gainful exchange and new research questions. The next step is to publish the contributions in a volume of the series ‘Studies in Manuscript Cultures’, which is expected to appear in 2023.
The organisers
Janine Droese is a Research Associate in the Research Field 'Creating Originals' and works on the project 'Creating Music Albums as Originals Made of Originals'.
Janina Karolewski is a Research Associate in the working group 'Facing New Technlogies' (FNT) and works on the project 'The Turkish Alphabet Reform and the Alevi Tradition: The End of a Manuscript Culture?'