Time Unfolded – talk

Time unfolded: The Rashleigh Calendar and medieval concertina-fold manuscripts, online talk

Join Dr Megan McNamee, Lecturer in Pre-Modern Art at the University of Edinburgh, and Dr Sarah M. Griffin, Frances A. Yates Long-Term Fellow at The Warburg Institute, and discover more about Kresen Kernow’s remarkable ‘Rashleigh Calendar’, a rare type of folded manuscript.

Such books are constructed of one, sometimes several, parchment sheets glued end-to-end and folded in a zig-zag or ‘concertina’ pattern to form a neat, easily transportable packet of information. Designed for travel, many of these manuscripts are damaged, soiled and very fragile. Only twenty-one are known to have survived from the Middle Ages. The Rashleigh is among the most compelling examples. It is the longest, stretching an impressive 2.4 metres in length when fully unfolded. Folded, it is little bigger than a wallet. Charts, diagrams, tables, and devices relating to different systems of medieval time are tucked within its pleats.

Unlike most books, there is very little text; past, present and future are pictured.

This talk opens and inspects the Rashleigh Calendar. We’ll put it into historical context, addressing what we know, and don’t know, about how these curious, concertina-fold books were used in the Middle Ages.

This is an online talk that will be delivered on Zoom.