Historian Erik Kwakkel has spent years at Leiden University in the Netherlands examining some of the populace ’s oldest books and manuscript . He ’s fascinated with “ penitentiary trials”—small sketches drawn by medieval scribes testing the ink menstruation of their quill feather . Among his discovery : the smiley boldness goes back centuries .
As the art and design land site Colossalwrites :
In some sense , these vignette are like fingerprint or touch , fiddling clue that reveal a piece about these long forget scribes who copied textbook but who had no literal opportunity to express themselves while knead . Including additional study or even initials in these books was often forbidden .
While many of Kwakkel ’s discoveries are stock penitentiary trials , other scribble he finds relate to a human construct as universal as topic talk about in these thirteenth and fourteenth 100 Word such as love , morals , or religion . Specifically : ennui . It seems the tedium of reading through a ism school text or law manuscript dates back to the very invention of books . Some of these scribble were even made one C of years after a book ’s publication , suggesting no gross profit is sanctified when monotony is occupy .
See more gothic doodle atColossaland onKwakkel ’s Twitter provender .
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