My Black Hours Book

The Creation of My Black Hours Book

This project started as part of a hands on project for a Coursera class about medieval manuscripts. As I worked further into the project I decided that I will make this as a gift for the Crown at our Kingdom's 40th. Below are all the steps taken to make this book.

Step One: Preparation of the Parchment

Five Sheets = 1 Hour

I have always been fascinated with the Black Hours manuscripts and wish to emulate those works with this project. What make the Black Hours so interesting is that they were crafted on parchment that was dyed black, much like the purple dyed manuscripts mentioned in class. What poses a challenge for this project is that there are only seven surviving manuscripts that are labeled as black hours books, of which only three are done entirely on black dyed parchment. Of those three manuscripts, only one has been digitized extensively and that is the Morgan's Black Hours. The other two only have two pictures that can be found on the internet.

Project Goal

The entire Morgan Black Hours: https://www.pinterest.com/georgemenke/the-black-book-of-hours/

Materials and Tools Used
    5x Black Poster Board
    Water
    2-inch Paint Brush
    Sponge
    String
    Clothes pins

My original intention had been to use white poster board and use a black Rit dye to color the poster board but out of concern for her counter tops, my wife vetoed that idea. So I had to come up with another idea and hope it would work, which I think it did to the desired effect.

Step 1: Laid out newspaper to protect my work surface from any possible staining. At this point I had no idea what may happen with the dye already in the board.

Step 2: Place a sheet of black poster board upon the newspaper. I tried to make sure that the entire surface area under the poster board was covered with an excess of newspaper.

Step 3: Began running a wet paint brush over the surface of the black poster board (side one) This took about 3 to 4 minutes for each sheet.

Step 3a: When moving the brush, I tried to keep a random pattern of straight brushing as well as circular to encourage random streaking and blotches.

Step 4: Continued to brush the sheets until all of the water had evaporated or was absorbed by the poster board in order to proceed to the next step without causing an issue while drying. I also would use a sponge to carefully soak up any excess water and to create some blotches of the whitening effect.

Step 5: Hung the sheet up on a string using clothes pins and proceeded to do the other four sheets using steps 2 through 4.

Step 6: Starting from the first sheet done to the last, I would start to wet brush the opposite side of the sheet (side two) using steps 2 through 4.

Step 7: Once again, hung the sheets up to dry.

Step 8: Repeat step 2 through 4 again with side one to further washout so as to have one side slightly lighter than the other and create my skin side. I would only work the wet paint brush for about a minute this time. This only slightly made them lighter than the other side. Then hung them up to dry.

After about an hour the sheets were completely dry and gave me the appearance I was hoping for; a worn appearance of the black dye on the parchment over time.

Step 9: (Optional) Now the sheets show some signs of having been wet with some slight warping, so I may between now and the next step of this project iron the sheets to make them more flat. I have yet to decide and wont be able to until the next stage of this project is reveal.

This process was very simple and gave the effect of my “Working Example 1” as best as I could emulate. I chose to emulate this example due to it being mostly a blank page of the original work. As for project clean up, it was very easy. I was able to just throw away the newspaper and there were some black spots on the counter top that cleaned up easily with a sponge.

Now upon looking through the entire collection of the Morgan Black Hours, there were not any easily visible imperfection on the parchment such as hair follicles, vein patterns, changes in shade product of marks in the animal skin, holes caused during the process of parchment making, repairs. Due to this I did not add any to my simulated parchment.

Parchment dying has been done to many manuscripts, and another example is a 5th Century vulgate Bible currently housed in the Capitular Library of Verona which was written on crimson vellum, which has since aged to purple. For further information on the Black Hours, please check out the Morgan Library & Museum's website at http://www.themorgan.org/collection/Black-Hours .

Step 2