CSMC Newsletter

Today, a significant share of the rich written culture of Southeast Asia is preserved in manuscripts that are privately owned. DREAMSEA, an initiative launched in 2018, digitises many of these private manuscript collections and contributes to their preservation. The first phase of this extensive undertaking will end in 2025. At an event held at the CSMC on 11 April, the participants looked back on what has been achieved so far: a total of 164 collections comprising 8,790 manuscripts have been digitised to date in the course of 56 field missions; this corresponds to almost 580,000 individual images. At the same time, the event was about the future of the project. In particular, DREAMSEA will draw on the wealth of experience and extensive networks of local contacts – manuscripts owners and specialists – in the continuation of the project from 2025 to 2030.

On 17 April, the CSMC welcomed a delegation from the Research and Conservation Center for Unearthed Texts (RCCUT) at Tsinghua University, Beijing, one of the leading research hubs in East Asia for the study of ancient Chinese manuscripts. The three-member delegation was led by Professor Peng Gang, Vice-President of Tsinghua University for Studies and Teaching. He was accompanied by Professors Liu Guozhong and Cheng Hao, both leading experts in the study of ancient Chinese manuscripts from the Warring States period (481–221 BCE). UHH Vice-President Natalia Filatkina expressed hopes for a continued dialogue between the CSMC and RCCUT, which were echoed in Professor Peng’s response.

The conventions that govern the production and use of written artefacts are often taken for granted. Yet they are essential to ensure that these artefacts can fulfil their role within a particular writing and reading culture. Focusing on the visual organisation of written artefacts, the latest Occasional Paper explores how the spatial arrangement of visual signs interacts with their form and format, including layout, structure, and mise en texte. Special attention is given to multigraphic artefacts, which bear different kinds of visual signs, each of which comes with its own conventions and rules. Written by Bruno Reudenbach, Hanna Wimmer, and other members of ‘Formatting Multigraphic Artefacts’ (Research Field I), the full paper is available on online.

Led by Agnieszka Helman-Ważny, a team from the CSMC Mobile Lab recently completed a week-long measurement campaign at the University of Oslo Library. The researchers investigated manuscripts from the Khams brgyad collection, which belong to the Tibetan Bon religion. Their exact provenance, both in terms of place and date, as well as details about their production are still unknown. This measurement campaign contributed to a wider effort, which is to establish a methodological framework for the material analysis of Tibetan manuscripts and to deepen our understanding of both the inorganic and organic materials used to produce them.

Notebooks can reveal how thoughts and ideas emerge, change, and develop during the writing process. This is an important reason why this type of written artefact is so interesting for research. During an evening event on ‘The Materiality of Writing’ organised by Universitätsgesellschaft Hamburg, Matthias Schemmel and Konrad Hirschler from the CSMC and Philip Döbler from the Hamburg-based company Leuchtturm 1917 discussed the special character of handwritten notebooks and the present and future of handwriting in the digital age. Visitors also had the opportunity to view an exhibition of particularly noteworthy written artefacts from the holdings of the Hamburg State and University Library and to talk to UWA researchers about the objects and their work.