The work focused on the production of a facsimile of the Litomyšl gradual from the year 1563, which is kept in the collection of the Regional Museum in Litomyšl. The Litomyšl gradual belongs to the large-format liturgical hymnals and it is the most valuable artifact of our Museum. Its size is 64 x 43 cm (25 x 17 in), thickness 27 cm (11 in) and weight 41 kg (90 lbs). It was originally made in the years 1561-1563 in Prague workshops by the illuminator Matouš Ornys of Lindperk, the text and musical notation was written by Jiří Lachen Nepomucký and the bookbinding was done by a bookbinder called Adam from Malá Strana in Prague. All of them were masters of their branches. The order of the book came from the Literary Brotherhood from the Church of the Raising of the Holy Rood in Litomyšl.
The assignment of the work was to produce a facsimile of an illuminated double sheet and the bookbinding, all in the same size of the original. The illuminated double sheet is on parchment, written with iron gall ink and gilded with gold foil. The illumination is painted with natural powder pigments binded by arabic gum and egg whites and light fast colours. The inner book was sown together and rounded and afterwards glued. After this, the basic patina of the book edges was done. A significant feature of the gradual is its bent book case. With such extensive deformation, it was not possible to replicate the same shape with beech wood by manual straining. Therefore, a new nontraditional inovative method was chosen of milling the shape of the book case according to the digitally modelled template of the original book case. After assembling the book case onto the inner book, the book was covered with leather – pigskin. The decoration of the book cover was done with blind tooling, which is a process of pressing heated tools onto a wet leather. The client’s request was to reconstruct the blind tooled motifs of the original, which is why the original blind tooled motifs were redrawn and digitized. The exact letterpress plates were prepared on the basis of the prepared data by using a laser. The motifs on the letterpress plates were pressed onto the book cover in precise positions with the blind tooling method. Following step was to prepare and form the ironwork of the original. The fabricated molds were filled with special wax, from which the copy of the ironworks was prepared and then casted with brass by using the lost-wax casting method. Lastly, the patina of the entire book, its parts, ironwork and buckles was done.
This process was special because of the materials and technologies. In this work the most modern methods of treatment and modification of the material were applied, which were never used to such an extent and in an interdisciplinary way on a book before. The facsimile is with its difficult execution and size an extraordinary work not only in the Czech Republic, but also in the Central European region. Its most important task is ahead of it, since it is supposed to fully replace the exhibited original in the exposition of the Museum, while the renaissance gem stays safely deposited in the depository for the next generations.
Nominated for the Gloria musaealis award of 2020 (https://www.cz-museums.cz/gloria-musaealis/eventDetail/56209).
