Lexicon Browse - T

Tab - A small flap of parchment or paper attached to the edge of the leaf to direct the reader to a specific place in the manuscript.Tablet - Tablets of wood, or sometimes ivory, were used as writing surfaces in two ways: either ink was applied on them; or they were hollowed out and filled with wax so that one could write with a stylus.Tail - Bottom edge of a book and its pages/leaves.Tail edge - Bottom edge of a book and its pages/leaves.Tailpiece - A panel of ornament, sometimes containing a rubric or colophon, which stands at the end of a text.Tall S - see Script.Tanning - The process of manufacturing leather by soaking animal skin in tannin, an acidic substance made from tree bark, gallnuts, or a similar plant source.Te igitur page - see Missal; SacramentaryTemporale - The celebration of christological feasts (including Christmas, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost) and the section of a liturgical book containing the texts for those feasts.Terminus a quo - The earliest date on which an event could have taken place.Terminus ad quem - The latest date on which an event could have taken place.Terminus ante quem - The date before which an event must have taken place.Terminus ante quem non - The date before which an event could not have taken place.Terminus post quem - The date after which an event must have taken place.Terminus post quem non - The date after which an event could not have taken place.Textualis - The Gothic script popularly known as blackletter.Thongs - see CordsThumb-scoring - Marking a place in a book with the thumbnail.Tie-mark - see Signe-de-renvoiTie/Ties - Leather or silk ties are often used to hold manuscripts shut as protection.Tinted drawing - A style and technique of illumination in which the outlines of the subject are drawn in black or colored ink and tints of colored wash are applied to all or some of the surfaces to suggest modelling.Tipped in - A leaf that has been added later by pasting it onto a stub or adjacent leaf in the quire has been 'tipped in.'Tironian notes - A series of arbitrary signs of abbreviation said to derive from the shorthand invented by the Roman, Tiro.Title piece - A decorative panel or page carrying the title of a work, or a label on a binding.Tonary - A book in which antiphons, responsories, and other chants of the Mass and Divine Office are classified according to the eight musical modes.Tool - Generically, any utensil for work; specifically, utensils for pressing decoration into a leather book cover.Tooling (Blind tooling) - The decoration of a surface with the aid of metal hand tools and stamps (a technique employing the latter being termed stamped).Top edge - The edges of the leaves at the top or head of the codex.Transcription - The recording of a text found in a manuscript without normalizing or modernizing features such as spelling, punctuation and grammar.Transitional style - A European art style from about 1180 to 1220, that is, in the period of transition between the Romanesque and the Gothic.Trompe l'oeil - A French expression meaning 'deceives the eye', trompe l'oeil describes painting in which things are made to appear to be resting on or projecting from the surface of the picture.Troper - A book containing tropes, that is, musical and textual additions to the chants of the Mass or Divine Office.Turn-in - The edges of the covering material of a binding, which are folded over the head, tail, and fore edge of the boards and secured to their inner sides.Two-compartment A - see Script; Caroline A; or Anglicana.Typology - An interpretive system in Christian thought wherein people, events, and passages of the Old Testament are seen as prefigurations of New Testament themes.Tyrian purple - A purple dye or pigment used as an ingredient in inks.