The Big Four
The Big Four is a collection of four extraordinary facsimiles.
Facsimiles
A facsimile is an accurate reproduction of a document or drawing, performed mechanically or manually. In the case of monuments of literature, the copy is made by hand, in accordance with the methods characteristic of the period in which the original was created. Facsimiles are created with the utmost care so that every letter and every piece of paper is perfectly reproduced. Richly decorated covers complement the unusual interior of the facsimile.
De Revolutionibus - the most important scientific book in the history of mankind.
The work of the Polish astronomer who "withheld the Sun, set the Earth in motion". Nicolaus Copernicus created "On the rotation of the celestial spheres" in the years 1515-1540. This is the most valuable manuscript in Poland, located in the treasury of the Jagiellonian Library in Krakow.
Initially, his lecture on heliocentric theory was positively received by scholars and church hierarchs. However, in 1616 "De Revolutionibus" was included in the list of Forbidden Books because of the threatening theories in the then worldview.
After Mikołaj's death, the book was inherited by his long-time friend, the bishop of Chełmno - Tiedemann Giese, and through him he went to Copernicus' pupil - mathematician Jerzy Rheticus, who at that time was a physician at the court of King Sigismund August in Kraków. After further transmissions, the manuscript was handed over to Professor Jakub Christmann, who lectured on astronomy. He framed the manuscript, and instead of the missing title page he added an information note about the author of the work. After further adventures and changes of owners, the work went to the Czech Republic, and in 1956 the Czechoslovak government exchanged it with the Polish government for a manuscript of their compatriot, which was in our hands. In 1999, it was included in the UNESCO list "Memory of the World".
"De Revolutionibus" has 213 pages (426 pages) paginated with pencil in 1854 by Erwin Nostitz (1806-1872). The text covers 417 pages, 9 pages remain unsaved.
The facsimiles of the book are richly decorated. The front depicts an image of Nicolaus Copernicus known from the Toruń City Hall (hand-painted oil paintings) and a visualization of the Copernican solar system. The book is decorated with over 320 jewelry stones (turquoise, coral, malachite, lapis lazuli, sunstone and Swarovski crystals), as well as the Muonionalusta meteorite found in Sweden in 1906, the oldest object on our planet, dating back to 4.6 billion years! The luminaire was fully refined with the most precious aged silver and selectively 24-carat gold. The reverse of the book is decorated with jewellery stones and an image of an armillary sphere enriched with gold.
Codex Leicester - the most expensive manuscript in the world
"The Leicester Code is a collection of ideas from the most famous Renaissance person, Leonardo da Vinci. It contains his ideas, sketches, theories, illustrations and observations. It consists of 18 sheets of paper, each of which is folded in half and written on both sides to form a complete 72-page document. It is written in Italian, using mirror writing, because of Leonardo's left-handedness. It was named after Thomas Coke, the first Earl of Leicester to buy it in 1717.
It is not a single book, it is a series of pages divided into different issues:
- Moonlight - Da Vinci, explore the relationship between the Sun, Earth and Moon by speculating on the composition of the Moon and considering two possible explanations of its luminous appearance. It shows how rough water on the Moon affects its uneven brightness.
- The history of the Earth - Leonardo discusses ancient transformations in the Danube valley from the point of view of sea fossils found there. Through the traces of river flows and the effects of their flow he describes the geological history of Europe and the Middle East.
- The Moon, the twins of the Earth - Leonardo suggests that the Moon is similar to the Earth and is affected by the same laws of physics. Although we now know that there are no seas on the Moon, his theory that the Moon has its own gravity was accurate and groundbreaking. Leonardo develops an optical analysis of the reflection of sunlight between the Earth and the Moon, providing an explanation of what is now known as "ashen light".
- A disorderly compilation - da Vinci explores various topics: how to dry a pond, study moon gravity, rock stratification and the behaviour of objects moving in water.
- Origin of springs - throughout the entire Leonardo Code, he seeks to explain the presence of springs in high mountains. It analyzes the causes of water erosion and the variable density and permeability of soil. At the bottom of the page, da Vinci sets out a plan for his work on the presence of shells in the mountain layers.
- On Waves - Leonardo describes in detail, both in drawings and in texts, the complex behaviour of waves. He observes the differences between river waves and waves on the seashore and states that a river wave does not break down unless it is hit by another wave. He carries out an experiment to demonstrate this phenomenon.
- Water treaty repertory - in which it plans to analyse the nature and movement of water, the effects of currents and rivers at a confluence, along with their tides and outflows.
- Rain and clouds - On this page, da Vinci shows the correlation between its sensitivity to beauty and its passion for science. A series of illustrations illustrates the impact of dams of different shapes placed at different angles along the flow of a river on the prevention of river bank erosion. It also describes the evaporation of rain and the formation of clouds from water vapour.
- Surface waves - Leonardo explores the characteristics of different types of waves and the dynamics of their fall and rise, testing these phenomena in both natural and controlled environments. It also describes a series of observations of river flows and waterfalls and describes the patterns of waves created by dropping objects of different shapes into the water.
The manuscript was sold to Bill Gates at Christie auction house on November 11, 1994 in New York City for a record price of $30.8 million and is now the most expensive book ever purchased.
The facsimile is an artistic copy of the original, handmade by an extremely laborious and complex technique of paper sculpture. In the process of finishing the cards, appropriate ageing methods and unique techniques were used to give the work the right colour, smell and structure.
Wojnicz Manuscript - the most mysterious manuscript in the world
It is not known who is the author of this manuscript, nor in what language is it written. It is not known what it contains. To this day, no one has managed to decipher its content.
It dates back to the 15th century and 120 cards survived from the book. The text has about 35,000 "words" of various lengths, but these "words" seem to comply with some kind of phonetic and grammatical rules. It also contains numerous illustrations. They do not shed light on the manuscript, but from them it can be deduced that the book consists of six sections:
- herbal
- astronomical
- biologically
- cosmological
- pharmaceutical
- footnotes.
Almost every page contains at least one illustration, with the exception of the last section, which consists of text only.
The first documented owner of the manuscript was Georg Baresch, a little known alchemist who lived in Prague at the beginning of the 17th century. The manuscript is now held in the Beinecke Rare Books Library of Yale University.
The name of the manuscript comes from the name of a Polish antiquarian from New York, Michał Wojnicz, who bought it in 1912 from the Jesuits of Villa Mondragone in Frascati near Rome.
The facsimile is an artistic copy of the original, hand-finished with a scalpel, hand-cut. The bookbinding binding is made of natural calf parchment/100-year-old wood. Parchment cards made of parchment perfectly imitating parchment.
The work is a very demanding object, to which the publisher devoted a lot of work so that the final book in structure, colour, smell and touch fully reflect the original appearance. The copy is undoubtedly a true work of art and a testimony to the extraordinary artistry of the artists and specialists involved in its creation.
The Bible of Maximus - the largest Bible that ever was published in Poland
The Bible of Maxim, which refers to times of greatness of Poland (under the rule of first Piasts), in the original translation of Jakub Uncle, is simultaneously a pioneering scientific publication of the New Testament that contains canons of Eusebius.
As in the Middle Ages, so today canons of Eusebius facilitate the "navigation" through the Gospels. In the Middle Ages, there was no division of Scripture into chapters and verses. Instead, the Gospel text was divided into increasingly numbered fragments - percopes. The canons of Eusebius are a combination of these pericles from different Gospels in corresponding columns. Thanks to this it is easy to find similar fragments or descriptions of the same events in different Evangelists.
So far no other Bible in Poland has contained this type of decoding. In the Middle Ages, the Bibles were used mainly to celebrate holy liturgy, calculate the number of movable holidays in the calendar and the functioning of the church. Effortlessly prescribed by scriptwriters, they rarely contained the entire scripture in one book - due to the volume of all the biblical books was limited to individual parts, most often to the New Testament, supplemented by the Revelation of St. John the Evangelist.
The most beautiful manuscript announcing the imminent end of the world was the Bamber Revelation from the 11th century, and it is from it and from the Evangeliary of Otto III that the illuminations placed in Maxim's Bible come from.
The medieval Bible also served as a manifestation of power and power for kings. They ordered extremely expensive and richly decorated manuscripts as a symbol of their status. Most often these were the Evangeliars, whose cards contained rich illuminations, allegorically expressing claims to power, to the crown or praise the merits and achievements of the founder of the manuscript. The huge Maxim's Bible, weighing over 10 kg and measuring 50/35 cm, was created using the rules according to which medieval manuscripts were created. It preserves the decorations, typeface and illustrations of the time, as well as the jewellery binding modelled on the original binding at the Museum of the Middle Ages in De Cluney, France.
Four Books with unusual history and binding. Each of them is different, each unique. You can also see them in our offer.