[Regia-NA] That Wheelbarrow Manuscript

[rmhowe]

I think it's Woodworker the British magazine that has plans for
a wooden one in the 19th C fashion in this current issue.
Same as one would see among the forty or so types I have
pictures of from places like Williamsburg, VA, the circa 1750
recreated Colonial town.

Seems like I remember wheelbarrows in:
Singer, Charles (ed. et al): A History of Technology, Volume II, The
Mediterranean Civilizations and the Middle Ages c. 700 BC
to c. A.D. 1500; 1956, Oxford University Press, New York and
London.

And of course they are in De Re Metallica by Agricola,
late period but...
http://www.medievalwood.org/charles/

I have an assembled book in which I have various pictures of
some from the middle ages, but I can't upload them in any fashion.
The Chronicles of Matthew Paris do have some as I recall.

Leave it to the Chinese to invent the one man / one big wheel
wheelbarrow that can haul six or so passengers or about a
thousand pounds of material tied to it.
I got a 1930's National Geographic this week that shows
the thing also being towed by a donkey or two.
CHINA AT WORK is an amazing book on their 'primitive'
technology.

Magnus

Carolyn Priest-Dorman wrote:
> Okay, so there I was at the dining room table, helping brainstorm a new 
> kitchen worktable for our Pennsic camp, when I came upon another 
> reproduction of that 13th century manuscript illumination with the 
> wheelbarrow.  It's in this book.
> 
>         Goldstream, Nicola.  _Masons and Sculptors_.  Medieval Craftsmen 
> series.  University of Toronto Press [British Museum Press], 1991.  ISBN 
> 0-8020-6916-9.
> 
> The relevant page number is 11, illustration 9.  The manuscript number 
> and folio number Goldstream gives are Trinity College Dublin 177, fol. 
> 59v.  That manuscript is Matthew Paris's "Lives of St. Alban and St. 
> Amphibalus."  Goldsmith lists it with a different manuscript number than 
> the book in which I originally saw it.  Perhaps that accounts for my not 
> being able to find it in any of the compilations I checked at the time I 
> found it. ;/
> 
> Anyway, so I rechecked and found a catalogue entry for the manuscript in 
> this source.
> 
>         Morgan, Nigel.  _Early Gothic Manuscripts [I] 1190-1250_.  A 
> Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, vol. 4, part 1.  
> Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1982.  ISBN 019-921026-8.
> 
> The catalogue entry is number 85 ("Dublin, Trinity College MS 177 
> [E.I.40]), on pages 130-133.  It says the manuscript is dated to circa 
> 1240-1250.
> 
> I feel much better now that's solved.  It was really bothering me that I 
> couldn't find a reference to the darned thing.  My eyes told me it was 
> 13th century, and there I was, forced to check in the (shudder) 15th 
> century volume, just to be sure I hadn't totally misjudged!
> 
> And while I'm at it, I think I have to go write someone about those 13th 
> century coifs on the cover of _Masons and Sculptors_.... ;>
> 
> 
> Carolyn Priest-Dorman              Þóra Sharptooth
>  http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/thora.html