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The Collation

Let's make a model!

Co-written by Heather Wolfe and Jana Dambrogio

In 2010, Jana Dambrogio and I were thinking independently about slits and stabs in early modern letters. Jana, after having had made many models of the letters of Tomaso di Livieri from the 1580s and 1590s (housed in the Fondo Veneto, Sezione II, in the Vatican Secret Archives), had just seen a letter in London from Elizabeth I that was similar in structure to a format used by her humble Venetian. In this pre-envelope era, some of Livieri’s letters had vertical slits that aligned when the letter was folded shut. A triangular paper wedge was cut from one of the corners of the letter and threaded through the slit to “lock” it shut.

image of teaching model prior to being opened

image of teaching model prior to being opened (model made by Jana Dambrogio)

Detail of a teaching model as it is being unlocked, demonstrating the function of the slit and the triangular piece of paper.

detail of a teaching model as it is being unlocked, demonstrating the function of the slit and the triangular piece of paper

Comments

[…] from MI Matthews-Schlinzig: There is another great blog post on this topic, ‘Let’s make a model’, which was co-written by Dr Heather Wolfe (Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare […]

Jana Dambrogio on ‘Letterlocking: the art and security of letter writing’ (guest post) | What is a letter? — August 7, 2014

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