By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-
Ethiopian Bookmanship
Ethiopian bookmanship, at least by the fourteenth or fifteenth
centuries, was highly developed. Manuscripts were often beautifully
fashioned, and indeed works of art, and craftsmanship, in their own
right.
Parchment, or Vellum
Manuscripts were invariably made of parchment, usually fashioned from
cow, sheep or goat skin, but sometimes also of horse hide, which
enabled the production of particularly large sheets of vellum.
Manuscripts were in many cases strongly bound, and often covered with
stout wooden boards, generally made from either the wanza tree(Cordia africana) or the (Olea africana).
Leather and its Production
The finer volumes, those belonging in particular to important
churches, monasteries, and imperial and other rulers, were often covered
with beautifully fashioned leather.
The preparation of leather was a well-established Ethiopian
traditional craft, but imported skin from Arabia was later also used,
and is to this day known as arab leather. Leather bindings were in many
cases tooled with a variety of decorative motifs. Most of these were
based on a large central cross, often framed by a series of box-like
designs, and some kind of simple border decoration. Many such themes, to
judge by datable examples, changed remarkably little over the
centuries, with the incidental result that manuscripts can scarcely be
dated by their binding styles.
Gold Bindings
Some of the finest Ethiopian bindings were plated in gold, or
elaborately decorated with gold thread. Such volumes were, however,
naturally very rare, and, because of their immense value, sadly tended
to attract the attention of looters, particularly in time of war.
Very few indeed are today extant.
Imported Cloth
The inside front and back covers of Ethiopian manuscripts were in
many cases attractively adorned with pieces of imported cloth, which was
pasted into the interior bindings. Many of the fabrics, printed
cottons, silks, damasks and the like, came from Gujarat and the Deccan
in India, as well as from Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, and parts of
Europe, particularly Italy and France. Often of pristine quality the
place of origin, as well as the date of production of such cloth, can in
many cases be established, with a high degree of certainty. Such cloth
binding material is therefore of considerable help in helping to date
manuscripts, as well as in tracing historical and commercial contacts
between Ethiopia and the outside world.
“Indian” Ink, and Rubrication
The text of the manuscript was no less beautifully presented. Pages
were neatly ruled, with a reed ruler, and awl for incising lines. On
these latter the scribe wrote almost invariably with considerable care,
using locally-made ink held in a speciallyfashioned cow-horn. Texts, in
Ge’ez, the country’s Semitic, and eccleasistical, language, were written
with considerable calligraphic skill, in jet black ink, like that known
in Europe as Indian ink. The names of God, members of the Holy Family,
Saints, and such-like figures were, however, often rubricated, or
written in red ink. The process of writing a manuscript is not
infrequently vividly depicted in Ge’ez copies of the Gospels, many of
which show each of the Evangelists, pen in hand, with two ink-horns, one
for black ink, and the other for red.
Ethiopian manuscript illustrations took the form of paintings, almost
entirely of Biblical or other religious scenes, and harag, literally
“vine”, a creeper-like decorative device often found at the beginning or
end of the manuscript, or of chapters in the Bible or other works.
The writing, and illustration, of a typical manuscript, even if
commissioned by a church, monarch, or wealthy individual, was regarded
by the scribe as an act of devotion to God, and could take as much as a
year to complete.
Method of Manuscript Illustration
No contemporary account of the method of manuscript illustration in
Ethiopia is extant. A fair understanding of the process, and of the
successive stages of such illustration, can, however, be deduced by an
examination of manuscripts which were for one reason or another left
unfinished.
Scrutiny of such volumes indicates that the first step would be for
the entire text to be written, leaving spaces, large or small, for the
subsequent inclusion of pictures. Before starting to draw, the artist
might, however, make one or more trial sketches, perhaps on an empty
page or a loose piece on parchment. Artists might also make use of
pattern books, which, to judge from such works as are extant, seem
nevertheless to have been extremely rare. More proficient, or
self-assured, artists might, on the other hand, entirely dispense with
such preliminaries.
A Charcoal Outline, Later Inked In
The first step would be for the artist to draw the outlines of the
desired picture in charcoal. The use of this medium allowed him to
revise, or rework, his drawing, and thus “feel his way”, as he thought
fit, to a final version. Once satisfied with his charcoal outline he
would firmly delineate its main features, permanently, in black ink. On
the completion of this outline the drawing would be ready for colouring.
This was a virtually routine operation, with little further artistic
creativity, for pigments were almost invariably applied flatly, without
any attempt to impart a rounded characteristic to the figures, or to
depict light and dark, or shadows. The range of paints employed was
moreover usually extremely narrow, confined perhaps to a single shade of
only four colours: red, yellow, blue, and green.
Colouring
Artists, in the process of colouring, would invariably start at the
beginning of the manuscript. Using a single colour, they would start by
painting the sky, or some other background feature, for a number of
pages, before turning to other aspects of the painting. On completing
the background, or portion thereof, in any particular colour the artist
would be tempted to continue using the same paint on other parts of the
work. This was because employing the same colour obviated the need to
clean the brush, or to search out or prepare paint of another hue. Only
when the background was finally completed, would the artist usually turn
to the foreground, and, with it. the painting’s principal features.
Henry Salt
The above procedures for the production of illustrated manuscripts
seem to have been deeply ingrained in Ethiopian artistic life. The early
nineteenth century British traveller Henry Salt recalls that, being
“desirous of bringing home an example of Abyssinian art”, he begged the
“chief painter” at Cheliqot, in Tegray, to paint for him “one of his
best paintings”. The artist, he recalls, accordingly, “made an exact
outline of it with charcoal, and afterwards went over it with a coarse
sort of India ink, subsequently to which he introduced the colour”.
Source: http://www.linkethiopia.org
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