Hello DM list,
I sent the following message to the MedText Listserv and have received some good suggestions, but maybe there's someone here who can help, too. I don't know how much overlap there is between this list and that one, so I apologize in advance if you've already seen this. Not really a digital question, so I hope you'll forgive me.
**************** I've been looking at a manuscript facsimile published in 1901. The introduction doesn't appear to include any information about the practice that was followed during photography (I'm taking someone else's word on this - I don't have the book, just images of the manuscript pages from the facsimile). However, from the images it appears that the manuscript was disbound prior to photography. In some of the images it appears that the pages (which are somewhat cockled in real-life) have been somehow flattened. One of my colleagues has theorized that the disbound pages may have been placed between sheets of glass (or under a sheet of glass) during photography; they haven't been held down in any visible way (fingers, or weights). I'm not really sure how I feel about this theory. Some of the pages don't actually look that flat to me, but I don't suppose the glass need have been heavy enough to flatten the pages completely.
Does anyone on the list know anything about the practice of photographing mss in the late 19th/early 20th centuries? Or is there a book you can point me to? I've skimmed through A. W. Sijthoff's _Enterprise of the Codices Graeci et Latini_ (a fascinating read, available through GoogleBooks), but didn't see anything helpful there.
For the curious, the manuscript I'm talking about is the Marcianus Graecus Z. 454 (= 822), aka Venetus A. Several different images of the manuscript (including new regular-light images, and scans of the facsimile) are available here: http://chs75.harvard.edu/manuscripts/index.html
Thanks for any help,
Dot