British artist Emma Carlow has created a series of folk-art style whistles based on bestiary animals, which were shown at a recent exhibition at the Meiklejohn Gallery. “On March 17th 2022 Emma Carlow decided to make a clay whistle every day for a year. The whistle is an ephemeral item that links cultures from all […]

What you see above is the Beastmaster’s hands holding a facsimile of a bestiary, MS. Bodley 764, to be exact, from the Bodleian Library. It is my very first full, printed bestiary facsimile, and I am very pleased with it. The reproduction quality is outstanding; the only way the facsimile could be better would be […]

There is a new text available in the Digital Text Library: “The Fabulous Natural History of the Middle Ages” by Thomas Wright. This text was originally published as a chapter in The Archaeological Album; or, Museum of National Antiquities (pages 174-186), London: Chapman & Hall, 1845. The complete book is available on Google Books. This […]

A difference in defensive strategies: bonnacon (top), beaver (bottom, not recommended) Jennifer Lynn Jordan, author of the blog Per Omnia Saecula, says our beloved medieval animals are weird — at least on Mondays. The bonnacon would like to inform Ms. Jordan that he is not especially weird on Mondays, though he admits he is inclined […]

I was doing a vanity search on Google for “badke” and “bestiary”, just to see who was linking to my site, when I was surprised to see a reference to “Badke’s bestiary”. While I do write about the bestiary, I don’t recall ever having written one myself. Yet there it was, on the Temeraire website: […]