Masterworks Letters VI

Remnant Trust (I know, posting twice in two days!! I came right home and wrote about it so I wouldn't lose anything.)

Just got back from Remnant Trust. Oh my goodness—that place is amazing. I’m going to have to see if I can get some pictures from Sarah B. We saw sooo many things in the 30 minutes or so that our group had in the vault. Speaking of the vault, it’s humidity-and-temperature controlled (45% and something like 65 or 68 degrees, respectively) and they have some kind of different fire protection system that involves pulling the oxygen out of the air (because, as the gentleman there said, if you get books wet you might as well burn them). Here are some of the highlights:

There was a sheepskin scroll of the Torah, written in Hebrew. The sheepskin feels soft on the outside, kind of like moleskin. They sewed it together with long hand-stitches. I don’t remember the exact date but it wasn’t as old as I had expected—1500s or 1600s?

There was a cuneiform tablet from sometime BC. It was small, less than 2X4 inches (I think). They don’t know much about it.

There was a first edition, first printing copy of the King James Version Bible. (They can identify the editions and printings by the typos they have.) It was quite large, like the Gutenberg Bible we saw in the Library of Congress. Again, it was just out on the table and we could feel it.

There was a page from a Gutenberg Bible, and another from the Tyndale Bible (the first English translation of the Bible, I think—or did Wycliffe do one first?) Those were well-protected, encased in plastic.

There was some old Chinese book that was either by or about Confucious. He said it was one of three copies in the world…I think. The layout, artwork, and Chinese characters combined to make a beautiful book.

But…the most amazing-est of all was a 1240 copy of the Latin Vulgate Bible. And they actually let us hold it (heavy) and turn pages. It’s surprisingly small, unlike the Gutenberg or KJV Bibles, and quite thick. The hand-writing is small and amazing, and they use a lot of color and illumination. I can’t even get my mind around how old it is, and who might have read it. Isn’t that around the time of some of the Crusades?

We saw a Magna Charta from the 1500s, and an early copy of the Constitution (in bound form), and there were old books in cases on shelves all over the room. It was just amazing, and way too much to see in the time we had. I’m so glad we had the opportunity to go.

And...I need to run to a faculty recital, and then we have fireworks! Have a happy 4th, people.