Male anatomy monk-doodled scurrilously in the margins of an early The Canterbury Tales. A sale notice found on the walls of a house in Pompeii. Cross-hatches etched into the walls near the opening to a Homo naledi burial site. A weepily sentimental gift inscription scrawled inside a Civil War-era Bible, flecked with blood. Faked Nevil Shute signatures of On the Beach that fetch hundreds. Real Cormac McCarthys of Blood Meridian that fetch thousands. The English "secretary hand" that was used in the 17th and early 18th centuries but not thereafter. An Anais Nin signature made by ball-point pen ink, posthumously, compared to one featuring Parisian commercial inks she would have used in the '40s while alive. John Hancock's "John Hancock."
"Palaeography: adj., mod. L palaeographia (1708). 1) "Ancient writing, or an ancient style or method of writing; 2) "The study of writing and ancient inscriptions; the science or art of deciphering or determining the date of ancient writings or systems of writings." Palaeographer: "one who studies or who is skilled in palaeography" (O.E.D., 1971, Volume II, p. 2056).
"Palaeography" appeared first in 1708 in the Benedictine monk Bernard de Montfaucon's Paleographia Graeca, but his countryman Jean Mabillon's 1681 publication De Re Diplomatica discoursed upon the differences between genuine documents and forgeries. De Montfaucon categorized Latin manuscripts by their "palaeographic" features into Antiqua Romana, Gothica, Longobardica, Saxonica, and Franco-Gallica, thus building ethnicity, geography and nationality into "palaeography." A modern-day expert on early Latin palaeography, Dr. Laure Miolo, also attends to the What, How and Why of early scripts, real and spurious.
Meet Andrea Boltresz, palaeographer extraordinaire. Hungarian by birth, Australian of residence, wife to Paul, trained public historian, archivist, tool-user and dye-maker, fine embroiderer, chook-chaser, wren-wrangler, bat-handler, paste-paper maker, co-owner of Armchair Adventures, forgery detector-what can't this woman do? Don't let Ms Boltresz catch you faking it. She just wrote to me: "I have just rumbled another forgery racket [not far from you]; Xxx Xxxxxx, of Xxxxx xx Xxxxx Books . . . He's mostly faking Douglas Adamses but a few other things, too. Thought you'd like to be aware." I would. Ms Boltresz seeks to understand "why someone chooses a particular pen and ink, why they write the way they do, what motivates them to write in a book." Poring over "original source material like letters and journals," she seeks to put people, pens and paper, fibers, fakes and forgeries, "into a detailed historical context." That includes what certain forgers choose to fake and why.
Wanna buy my signed copy of Grapes of Wrath for five grand?
Reach me at svafinebooks@gmail.com or at http://www.svafinebooks.com.
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