Boards: Introduction

The protective boards sewn directly onto Ethiopian manuscripts—known as gabatā (ገበታ) Mersha, “Towards a Glossary,” 151. ⊕Unless otherwise noted, the American Library Association-Library of Congress (ALA-LC) Amharic romanization table has been used to transliterate all native terminology. “Amharic.” ALA-LC Romanization Tables; accessed on 12 February 2018. —are most commonly made from locally-harvested wood or, to a lesser extent, heavy animal hide. This and the next few entries address wooden boards exclusively; hide boards will be addressed afterward. The wooden boards, which may be left bare and unadorned or covered in leather, are thicker proportionally to the size of the manuscript relative to those seen on books in other cultures. The thickness will typically complement the size of the manuscript: smaller books bound with thinner boards, larger books with thicker boards, but exceptions to this are not uncommon, as smaller books are often bound with thick boards. Generally speaking, an average wooden board, regardless of the dimensions of the manuscript, is approximately 9–10 mm thick, with the thinnest boards observed by myself being 5 mm, and the thickest about 14 mm. Boards are flush with the text block on all edges barring only very rare cases. Fig. 1.

⊕Fig. 1. MS Ethiopic 3 with boards uncharacteristically extending beyond edges of text block.

Courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University; Photo: Author

⊕Fig. 2. Alwan Codex 5 (EMIP 00110). Detail of the inside back board showing marks made by an adze during shaping.

Courtesy of Ethiopian Manuscript Imaging Project (Portland, Oregon), Steve Delamarter, director

⊕Fig. 2. MS Ethiopic 3. Back board showing a hole from a knot on an otherwise finely finished board.

Courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University; Photo: Author

The boards of Ethiopian codices are appropriately described across the literature as “rough-hewn,” regularly showing evidence of their manufacture in the form of marks from the adze used to make them. Fig. 2. They are seldom perfectly flat, square, or of uniform thickness across the board or in comparison to the other half of the pair. This assessment is particularly true for low- and moderate-quality bindings, but also often for well-finished boards that have been thoroughly-smoothed for a high-quality manuscript. Additionally, boards showing knots, cracks, holes, and torn-out grain are seen on manuscripts across the spectrum of quality. Fig. 3. Intentional shaping of the board edges at the time of binding—as was the practice in most European traditions—is virtually non-existent in Ethiopia. Manuscripts did, however, often develop thoroughly rounded edges, in addition to a smooth polished surface and dark patina, from daily use. Fig. 4. One unusual example of a manuscript with boards which appear to have been beveled deliberately prior to being covered with leather can be seen in Fig. 5.

⊕Fig. 4. MS Ethiopic 9. "Rough-hewn" and well-worn front board.

Courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University; Photo: Author

⊕Fig. 5. MS Ethiopic 11. Boards which appear to have been shaped prior to covering with leather.

Courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University; Photo: Author

⊕Fig. 6. Marwick Codex 17 (EMIP 00021). The front board has been repaired using a piece of wood oriented with the grain running perpendicular to the spine edge.

Courtesy of Ethiopian Manuscript Imaging Project (Portland, Oregon), Steve Delamarter, director

The orientation of the wood grain on the boards is, with few exceptions, always vertical, running parallel to the spine of the book. Steve Delamarter and Melaku Terefe, based on their examination of sizable manuscript collections, state that “well over 95 percent of all Ethiopian books employ … the traditional heavy and tight-grained wood with the grain running from top to bottom.” Delamarter and Melaku, Ethiopian Scribal Practice 1, 36–37. Seeming to support this assertion, exceptions do, seldomly, appear in the literature. An essay by Jan Tomaszewski and Michael Gervers shows one book with horizontal grain, and Delamarter and Melaku, in their catalog for the Ethiopian Manuscript Imaging Project, include one volume (Marwick Codex 17) on which a broken board has been repaired using a piece of wood with the grain oriented horizontally, but these examples hardly constitute a standard practice. Tomaszewski and Gervers, “Technological Aspects,” 103 (fig. 4.12). Fig. 6.

Similarly damaged boards, which have broken into multiple pieces vertically along the grain, are a very common sight in collections with even a small number of Ethiopian manuscripts. If the fragments are retained, these boards usually are repaired using a traditional technique of lacing the pieces together using any of a number of materials. Animal, plant, and synthetic threads; leather lace; plastic cord; wire; or even, albeit rarely, segments of iron rod bent into a loop or nails have been put to use for this purpose. Sergew. Bookmaking, 24; Winslow, Ethiopian Manuscript Culture, 212 (f.n. 32); Cockerell, “Ethiopian Bookbinding,” 8; Szirmai, Archaeology, 48 Fig. 7. Holes are pierced in pairs through the face of the board along and spanning the break. The thread or other lacing material is then passed through each pair of holes—often looping multiple times when thread is used—and the two pieces are cinched together. The lacing operation is often continuous; as one pair of holes is completed, the thread travels down the inner face of the board to the next pair. Fig. 8. On boards with multiple breaks, the repairs are typically done independently.

⊕Fig. 7. Board repaired with piece of different wood using a nail.

Courtesy of a private collection; Photo: Mary Wootton

⊕Fig. 8. Back board repaired using yellow plastic cord in unconventional pattern.

Courtesy of Todd Pattison; Photo: Author

⊕Fig. 9. Detail of board showing three groups of unused sewing holes.

Courtesy of Marco Di Bella and Nikolas Sarris

⊕Fig. 10. MS Ethiopic 10. Detail of board with extra holes.

Courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University; Photo: Author

Cockerell described this practice noting, “[t]his leaves the board very floppy indeed and the edges of the breaks become very rounded. I saw many boards that had been laced up but none had been repaired with adhesive.” Cockerell, “Ethiopian,” 8 The same technique has be observed on large manuscripts bound without access to wood of a suitable size. In these cases, two narrower boards are connected in the same manner described above. Sergew, Bookmaking, 24; Winslow. Ethiopian Manuscript Culture, 212 (f.n. 32) Furthermore, Marco DiBella and Nikolas Sarris describe the “very common practice … to reuse wooden boards, often more than once, as can be seen when a board has several lacing holes not corresponding to the sewing stations of the manuscript it actually protects.” Di Bella and Sarris, “Field Conservation," 302 Fig. 9. However, reuse may not always be the case when extra holes are present. The unused holes on the back board of MS Ethiopic 10 are close enough to those used for text attachment that they may have been made in error. Fig. 10.

Next Entry: Boards: Types of Wood

To receive periodic notifications about future entries subscribe here.

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Please Note Copyrights to all images not owned by the author are reserved by their individual owners.