Stone and chisel, vellum and quill: the hand guides the tool that shapes the works surviving into present times, but early medieval scholars most often cannot identify individual craftspeople; neither are the names known of those who inspired and designed so many breath-taking cultural artefacts. For these brilliant artists and writers, not only are they unknown, but their own custom and calling seem to have insisted upon concealing individual effort – or at least a named identity – with a revelation instead of the dignity and expertise of the craft itself and the context of community in which such craft was shared and produced. On the one hand, cultural production in and for monastic communities of ecclesiastical patrons seems generally to have been conceived of and perceived as a conveyer of unity, harmony, and collective identity, even if different hands were at work in the making of a single object or manuscript. This continues into the twelfth century as is made clear by the examples of the Cloisters Cross or the Harley 603 Psalter (London, British Library, Harley 603), a manuscript begun in the first half of the eleventh century and abandoned unfinished in the second half of the twelfth century after having been worked on for over one hundred years. In the former, stylistic sophistication, epigraphic unity, and no doubt liturgical setting and function conceal the individuality of the hand or hand of the carver(s). In the latter individual scribes and artists attempted with varying degrees of success to match their hands to those of their predecessors, or to update earlier work through the addition of new details.
1 William Noel, The Harley Psalter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Catherine E. Karkov, ‘Reading the Trinity in the Harley Psalter’, in Crossing Boundaries: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Art, Material Culture, Language and Literature of the Early Medieval World, ed. Jane Hawkes and Eric Cambridge (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017), pp. 90–96.On the other hand, however, the rise of secular patrons and artists over the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries corresponds with increased evidence for the individual expression of sculptural and scribal hands – especially in the less grand or liturgically important monuments. When it comes to teamwork and to the efforts of whole groups of individuals, the labour of the majority is usually invisible. In this period, scholars may see isolated examples of scribes and artists making their presence known, whether through their distinctive handwriting (Wulfstan), their handicraft (the sculptor of the Leeds Cross), or a combination of both (Eadwig Basan), but the many who contributed their time and expertise are invisible. It is these invisible craftspeople – among them, the women whose names also begin to become known as the centuries roll by – who pave the way for the professional pride and standing of twelfth-century compilers and lead scribes and artists such as Eadwine of Canterbury or Master Hugo.