Displaying items by tag: manuscript

A British university disclosed Wednesday that scientific tests prove a Quran manuscript in its collection is one of the oldest known and may have been written close to the time of the Prophet Muhammad.

The announcement by the University of Birmingham thrilled Muslim scholars and the local community, which boasts one of the country's largest Muslim populations. The find came after questions raised by a doctoral student prompted radiocarbon testing that dated the parchment to the time of the prophet, who is generally believed to have lived between 570 and 632.

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem is hosting a series of shows that pair work from its archeological and fine arts collections with loans from museums across the world, including the British Museum, the Louvre, and the Rijksmuseum. 

On view now through September 20, a loan from the Vatican Library joins together two volumes of Maimonides’ “Mishneh Torah,” an illuminated Hebrew manuscripts dating from the 15th century in Northern Italy, after 200 years apart.

Margaret Tanchuck was cleaning out her late father’s jewelry store about a year and a half ago when she found some old Bibles and books, including a centuries-old manuscript by Benjamin Franklin potentially worth more than $1 million.

The only catch was the New York Public Library call numbers on the spines.

Now, the manuscript—a handwritten workbook of the items printed in Mr. Franklin’s print shop in the 18th century—and seven other rare books are at the heart of a contentious dispute between the 50-year-old Nassau County woman and the library, which alleges the books were stolen from the library decades ago.

Australians will get their first look at one of the world’s most expensive illuminated manuscripts in May.

The National Library of Australia announced on Friday morning that the early sixteenth-century Rothschild prayerbook, owned by Australian businessman Kerry Stokes, will go on display for the first time in the southern hemisphere.

Stokes made headlines last year when he purchased the 150-page prayer book through London auction house Christie’s for $15.5m, making it the most expensive manuscript ever purchased at the time.

A rare Leonardo da Vinci manuscript from the collection of Microsoft founder Bill Gates is coming to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) this summer.

The "Codex Leicester," one of only 31 Leonardo notebooks known to exist, features the artist and scientist's distinctive right to left "mirror writing" and includes his drawings, texts, and observations about the properties of water, and how it might behave on the moon and other planets. The MIA will offer visitors a complete translation and explanation of the codex through an interactive touch-screen digital device called Codascope.

A Spanish court sentenced a man on Wednesday to 10 years in prison for crimes including the theft of a priceless medieval document considered the first guidebook to Spain's Saint James pilgrimage trail.

Police recovered the unique 12th-century manuscript in July 2012, a year after it was found to have gone missing from a safe in the famous cathedral of the northwestern city of Santiago de Compostela.

Judges in a court in the nearby city of La Coruna said in a written ruling that they "consider it proven" that an electrician who worked for years at the cathedral, Manuel Fernandez Castineiras, stole the manuscript.

Lewis Carroll's original handwritten, illustrated manuscript for "Alice in Wonderland" will travel to the U.S. to mark its 150th anniversary.

The British Library said Thursday it will loan the book -- presented by the author to Alice Liddell, who inspired it -- to New York's Morgan Library and Museum and the Rosenbach Museum of the Free Library of Philadelphia next year.

Just in time for Thanksgiving, Seth Kaller, one of the world’s leading dealers in rare historic documents, will exhibit and offer for sale George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation in conjunction with Leigh Keno, President of Keno Auctions, now through November 26.

The Thanksgiving Proclamation is priced at $8.4 million, and is the only example in private hands. The only other Washington-signed copy was acquired by the Library of Congress in 1921. The document was offered at Christie’s on November 14, 2013, where it was expected to sell for upwards of $12,000,000. Kaller represents the document’s owner, who has decided to offer the manuscript through exhibition and private sale.

Pages of an unfinished Jane Austen novel, bought for £1m, will go on display at her Hampshire home later.

One of 11 booklets from The Watsons manuscript is going on show as part of an exhibition at Jane Austen's House Museum in Chawton.

The rare manuscript was bought in 2011 by Oxford's Bodleian Libraries.

Apart from two chapters of "Persuasion," none of the six published Austen novels survives in manuscript form.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has launched MetCollects, a new web series that grants visitors first glimpses of the Met’s recent acquisitions. MetCollects will highlight one work each month, selected from the hundreds of pieces that the museum acquires through gifts and purchases each year. Each MetCollects feature will include photography, curatorial commentary, and occasionally, informative videos.

Three MetCollects features are currently available on the museum’s website. The features explore the following recent acquisitions: a multimedia meditation on time and space by the modern artist William Kentridge, an early 19th century portrait by the French painter François Gérard, and the Mishneh Torah by the Master of the Barbo Missal. The Italian manuscript from around 1457 is jointly owned by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the Met.

Since 2000, the Met has launched a number of web-based initiatives including its Connections series, which offers personal perspectives on works of art in the museum’s collection by 100 members of the museum’s staff, and 82nd and Fifth, which features 100 curators from across the Met who talk about the one work of art from the collection that changed the way they see the world.

To view the MetCollects series click here.