From drawing room to sale-room : albums of medieval manuscript cuttings in the 1920s

Abstract

19th-century collectors built up significant holdings of medieval manuscripts, but their descendants did not always share their tastes, resulting in the sale and dispersal of their collections in the 20th century. The 'Roaring Twenties', a decade characterised by extensive cultural change, is a productive decade to investigate the initial fragmentation of Victorian collections, and in particular to begin tracing the fate of a specific type of object, the album of medieval manuscript cuttings. Few such albums remain intact today. Frequently when bound collections came up for sale they were broken up to realise greater profits through the sale of individual pieces. Trying to pinpoint when this practice of breaking began is one of the underlying research questions behind this essay. The essay offers an analysis of the sale of medieval cuttings or fragments through Sotheby's auction house during the 1920s, focusing on the particular example of the bound album. This contributes more generally to an understanding of the movements of medieval manuscript materials during the inter-war era.