Collaborative Methods: Evidence of Commercial Illumination Workshop Practices in the Beinecke MS 1216

Abstract

Evidence of how illumination workshops functioned within commercial manuscript production has, for the most part, been lost to time. Therefore, the remnants of workshop practices that have survived provide a rare window into the inner workings of such workshops. This annotation considers a key system located in the New Haven, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 1216, often referred to as the Clumber Park Chartier. It provides some suggestions as to how the key system may have functioned as a form of communication to coordinate members of the illumination workshop.