[Ansteorra] For those of you with $185, 000 just lying around...

[Bree Flowers]

I guess I just don't trust e-bay or most of the sellers on it, and
while I'll take the plunge on something worth less than $100 (and
occasionally get burned) I'm never going to drop serious cash there.
Why put something like this up on e-bay and not a more standard
auction-house style auction or are these sorts of items so common that
they just aren't worth the time of larger auction houses? Why say that
something is signed by a certain binder and not include an image of
this signature?

Maybe in the grand scheme of things 185K isn't big money in
manuscripts, but I'd be mighty suspicious just the same. I just
distrust e-bay I guess.

~Eve

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 5:13 PM, Robert G. Ferrell <rgferrell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Diane Rudin wrote:
>> I don't believe it is a fake at all.  The illumination style is exactly that of the mid-13th century, as is the script.  In the 13th and 14th centuries, students put themselves through university (especially, but not exclusively, in France) in part through income gained by churning out exactly this sort of inexpensive, lightly-decorated bible to sell.  It shows all the signs of having been re-bound in the 19th century, for a library judging by the notation on the book cover.  The pigment colors are exactly like those on my collection of authentic manuscript pages as well as in manuscripts I have examined in museums and university libraries, but which I have been unable to replicate exactly either with modern purchased paints, or by making my own pigments following period recipes.  I have also examined Victorian re-creations of medieval objects, and
>> they always get the colors wrong -- they're too bright.  The foxing (age spotting) is also consistent with period vellum wear, and the vellum itself is on the cheap side, again consistent with the medieval student bibles.
>>
>> If this is a fake, or a re-creation, someone went through more than $185,000 worth of materials and time to do it.
>
> I agree.  Looks like the real thing to me.
>
> Cynric
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