Macclesfield Alphabet Book Facsimile Edition

The Macclesfield Alphabet Book, named for recent owners, the earls of Macclesfield, is also known as the Baldry Pattern Book after an inscription of "Friar Baldry," who may have been the creator of the manuscript. It contains fourteen alphabets drawn on parchment dating from the late fifteenth through the early sixteenth century in various styles, from plain Textura Quadrata to elaborately decorated Italianate display initials. The book was used as a sourcebook for scribes and possibly as a pattern book for customers.

In addition to the beautiful alphabets, the book contains several examples of border motifs, some of them rendered in full color. It is a stunning artifact of the late medieval period demonstrating the delightful range of decorative styles available to late medieval scribes and illuminators, from fantastic zoomorphic and anthropomorphic letters formed from dragons and acrobats to refined grisaille initials decorated with curling acanthus leaves. It is a rare example of a book made for those who made books and preserves the marvelous extent of the medieval calligraphic arts.

Fourteen Different Alphabets

The Macclesfield Alphabet Book contains fourteen distinctive sets of decorated initials presented in groups of alphabetical order. Most are Lombardic capitals, the standard letter type used for large initials regardless of the type of script used for the text. They show an impressive range from fantastical interlaced zoomorphic forms to inhabited and historiated initials to the more typical pen-flourished letters. One alphabet sequence is presented with full foliate borders over fifteen folios, and additional pages have full-color samples of borders and line fillers.

A Book for Making Books

A rare survival from the late medieval period, this manuscript is a sourcebook for decorated initials and border designs. It may have been made by Roger Baldry, a friar of the Cluniac priory of Saint Mary of Thetford in Norfolk, as a model book for the scriptorium and perhaps also to serve as a pattern display for customers commissioning manuscripts. The two full upper- and lower-case alphabets are both types of Gothic Textura Quadrata, the standard for liturgical and devotional manuscripts in the late fifteenth century. Further Italianate Lombardic capitals sets were added in later decades.

Insight into the Production of Manuscripts

Beyond the beauty and playfulness of the various alphabets presented in the book, the manuscript is a treasure trove of the techniques late medieval scribes used to write and decorate manuscripts. Details such as the quickly written S in the space left for the missing initial on the first folio show that the main text was written before the initials were added. Light sketches on later pages reveal how an artist would plan a composition before committing it to ink.

The binding of full brown leather with gilt vegetal edge tooling front and back dates from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. The spine is tooled in gold with crowns and flowers, with the title "Old Alphabets."