The previous chapters examined in depth two key stages in a manuscript's production: designing the page, and filling it with text. The next two chapters also deal with these features, but they are approached from a different perspective. Our focus shifts from the production process, when the pages were being filled with text, to the completed book as it appears on our desks today. Observing a finished page provides the full picture of the scribe's design efforts: it offers information about him and the plan behind the book project he undertook. Two specific locations are particularly interesting in this respect: the opening page of the manuscript, which first introduces the reader to the book's design (assuming that he or she started at the beginning); and the final page, which closes both the story and the book.

Leaving the concluding page of the manuscript for the next chapter, let's first turn to the opening page. This is an important page, not just for the reader (How does the story start? Where is it set? Who is the main character?) but also for the historian of the book, who asks very different questions. What decisions did the scribe make with respect to script and page design? What does the decoration look like? Ultimately, the first page reflects the book as a whole, because the scribe did not usually change his design halfway through a book project. Adding further value to the first page, owners of the manuscript may also appear there.

Artisans

The most “in-your-face” clue about the people who produced the manuscript is provided by the script. As you open the manuscript and start reading the first page, paleographical information starts to flow. The shape of medieval letters transmits two important pieces of information: as Chapter 1 demonstrated, the scribe's whereabouts and “whenabouts.” An experienced book historian develops intuition about the date of a book's production: they can usually “sense” approximately when a book was written just by looking at it. It is not unlike a sommelier being able to tell in what year the wine he or she has tasted was produced. A similar feeling produces a sense of the country or region where the scribe was trained, and where he probably produced the book. All this happens at first glance while observing the opening page of the manuscript.