On October 8, 2018, Dr. Brandon Hawk and curator Dot Porter met to talk about these ancient books, and to compare them with manuscripts from the collection of the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania. This series is a record of those discussions.
Ms. Codex 828
In this video we talk about the binding of Ms Codex 828, a 15th century Italian philosophical manuscript. The leather that originally covered the spine has been lost, so we can see the binding structure very well. We compare it with the binding practices illustrated by LJS 102 – the Ethopian manuscript we looked at in Episode 3 and Episode 10 – and by those of the Jedi manuscripts.
Online record and digital images of LJS 459: http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017/d/medren/9931765253503681
Phil Szostak, The Art of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (https://www.amazon.com/Art-Star-Wars-Last-Jedi/dp/1419727052/)
Images of the “Tree Library” by Seth Engstrom & Rodolfo Damaggio
Mock-ups for six pages from the Jedi books by Chris Kitisakkul
Screenshots from the film and images from The Art of Star Wars are used under the Fair Use doctrine described in Section 107 of the Copyright Act (https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107)
The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies 