Bringing Illuminated Manuscripts to Life in Skin

A presentation by Pat Fish

In November 2016 I was invited to Philadelphia to give a presentation at the 9th annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age.

This year's theme was "Reactions," and I was approached to participate as someone with an unusual reaction to these beautiful pieces of history - tattooing them onto my clients and making them live again in skin!  I delivered an illustrated lecture featuring photos of various illuminated manuscript pages and then showed tattoos they inspired. Fifteen academics gave informative lectures about their areas of expertise, on topics such as the current effort to digitize manuscripts in private and university collections to make them more accessible to scholars worldwide. Every speaker brought something different to the event, and my talk was very enthusiastically received. I am very grateful for the opportunity to have met such a great group of people who share my enthusiasm for the illuminated manuscripts that are our window into a marvelous past.