Such notes were effectively indications to "rubricate here" or "add rubric". Quite commonly the manuscript's initial scribe would provide notes to the rubricator in the form of annotations made in the margins of the text. However, this process is far less elaborate than illumination, in which detailed pictures are incorporated into the manuscript often set in thin sheets of gold to give the appearance of light within the text. ![]() This particular type of rubrication is similar to flourishing, wherein red ink is used to style a leading character with artistic loops and swirls. Rubrication may also be used to emphasize the starting character of a canto or other division of text this was often important because manuscripts often consist of multiple works in a single bound volume. Important feasts in liturgical calendars were also often rubricated, and rubrication can indicate how scribes viewed the importance of different parts of their text. ![]() In liturgical books such as missals, red may also be used to give the actions to be performed by the celebrant or others, leaving the texts to be read in black. Rubrication was used so often in this regard that the term rubric was commonly used as a generic term for headers of any type or color, though it technically referred only to headers to which red ink had been added. Such headings were sometimes used to introduce the subject of the following section or to declare its purpose and function. ![]() The practice of rubrication usually entailed the addition of red headings to mark the end of one section of text and the beginning of another. The practice began in pharaonic Egypt with scribes emphasizing important text, such as headings, new parts of a narrative, etc., on papyri with red ink. The term comes from the Latin rubrīcāre, "to color red", the base word being ruber, "red". Rubrication was one of several steps in the medieval process of manuscript making. Practitioners of rubrication, so-called rubricators or rubrishers, were specialized scribes who received text from the original scribe. Rubrication is the addition of text in red ink to a manuscript for emphasis. While it may seem like simply jumping on the adult coloring bandwagon, Color Our Collections Week, with its naturally historical focus, is actually tapping into (and shedding light on) a tradition much older.Red text added for emphasis in a manuscript Rubrication and illumination in the Malmesbury Bible from 1407 Detail from a rare Blackletter Bible (1497) printed and rubricated in Strasbourg by Johann Grüninger And it is in these images - published in the centuries prior to the advent of color printing - that we can see a precedent for this seemingly modern fad. While these chosen works are all in the public domain, and so can technically include (in the US at least) works published up until 1924, the images in these coloring books more typically hail from the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries. Now in its third year, the campaign sees, on the first week of February, archives, special collections, and libraries take to social media with individual images and even entire books compiled from their holdings for the public to color. In February 2016, with the craze still going strong, New York Academy of Medicine Library gave birth to a new initiative called Color Our Collections Week, a scholarly take on the coloring trend. What strange winds conspired to suddenly urge adults in their droves to take up colored pencils again? Whatever the reasons, sales rocketed: Nielsen logged sales of 12 million for the category in 2015, up from a measly 1 million the year before. But this upturn had a perhaps surprising source: coloring books for grown-ups. For many publishers around the world 2015 was, fiscally speaking, an excellent year - a welcome boost in an otherwise uncertain decade.
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