A Market for Manuscripts: monks, money, morality and maintenance - Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery

Join Matthew Haley, books and manuscripts specialist for Bonhams and BBC’s Antiques Roadshow, for this insightful talk linked with the Bodleian Library’s manuscripts featured in RAMM’s exhibition Gatekeepers to Heaven: religion, knowledge and power in medieval Exeter.

This talk will cover a light history of the role of auctioneers, dealers and collectors in their preservation, and give insights into the commercial market for medieval manuscripts.

Matthew is managing director of Bonhams Knightsbridge and head of Bonhams UK books and manuscripts department. In his time as an auctioneer he has sold the 1494 edition of Columbus’ letter on the discovery of America and the sledge from Ernest Shackleton’s 1909 Antarctic expedition.
A recent Bonhams auction of a French c1390 illuminated manuscript leaf, ‘Pierre Bersuire reading’, fetched £15,900.

Images:

Matthew Haley

‘Pierre Bersuire reading’: illuminated manuscript leaf, Paris c1390