Unfolding Time

This week Silke Lohmann caught up with Sarah Griffin, curator at Lambeth Palace Library, to discuss her latest exhibition featuring a precious collection of rare medieval folding almanacs.

Unfolding Time is your latest exhibition, introducing us to the fascinating medieval pocket calendar. Many congratulations on putting this exhibition together, I could have spent hours looking at all the fine examples on view – days if I could have seen them in more detail.

1. What triggered the exhibition? Was it just one pocket calendar in your collection that made you decide to focus on this aspect of medieval life?

Unfolding Time originated from a collaborative project with Dr Megan McNamee (University of Edinburgh), Dr Kathleen Doyle (formerly of the British Library, now retired), and myself to catalogue all known concertina-fold almanac manuscripts. They are such intrinsically fascinating and engaging objects that we had always been eager to show them to a wider audience, and that opportunity came soon after I joined Lambeth Palace Library. As I became acquainted with the Library's rich medieval holdings – including calendars, chronicles, astrological notebooks and even another rare type of folded almanac known as a 'bat book' – it became clear that these materials provided the ideal context for showcasing the concertinas and explaining their visualised temporal systems. Around this period, the Library was also preparing to open its new exhibition space – which, in retrospect, was timely.

2. I was astonished at the amazing condition of these calendars, effectively tiny fold-outs, which must have been used almost daily. Although only 29 are known to have survived when there must have been potentially hundreds of thousands, what's your theory on this and are you hoping more will be discovered on the back of this exhibition?

The exhibition displays some of the better-preserved manuscripts, but many of the 29 surviving examples are damaged, folded incorrectly or fragmented, highlighting their vulnerability to wear and tear. Given their complex structures and portability, this isn't surprising. In addition, each manuscript features a perpetual calendar, allowing them to be used year after year, but still, they would have eventually become obsolete. This suggests that more manuscripts may have existed but were discarded due to damage or expiration. At the same time, we must remember that these are handwritten, hand-drawn objects. Although some appear to have been produced relatively quickly in a sort of assembly line, others are extensive, complex and highly elaborate. The time, care and expense required to create them – many decorated with gold – should not be underestimated.

As for the printed woodblock versions, they were more easily reproduced and typically less ornate than the manuscripts, suggesting a higher number that may have been disposed of. Interestingly, all known examples are made of parchment (animal skin), raising the question of whether any were ever printed on paper but have not survived.

Finding more examples would be incredibly exciting, so the more awareness of the concertinas, the better!

3. You must have had a wonderful time looking through all the calendars and deciding on what to highlight. Please share some of your discoveries.

It's a huge privilege to be able to work with objects like these, and their research has been – and continues to be – endlessly fascinating. There's just so much we can ascertain from examining them as a group. For instance, some concertinas contain tables filled with images with a few words of explanation, while others feature these tables without any text at all. Piecing all the evidence together for the catalogue has provided us with some excellent puzzles in figuring out how they work, and that's before we even begin to look at their ciphers.

Creating facsimiles for the exhibition has also led to surprising insights. The process of replication has drawn our attention more closely to the mechanisms of their folding, highlighting intricacies of their design and craftsmanship.

4. They give such an insight into medieval life and no doubt would have been accessible to a wider audience with their high pictorial content. Who would you imagine were the owners?

This is one of the key questions we pose to viewers at the end of the exhibition. We know more about the manuscripts' later owners, but there are fewer physical traces left by their earlier users (such as annotations) and our research is still ongoing. Nevertheless, we have some insights.

First, although the concertina-fold almanacs share a common structure and core content (primarily a calendar), they are all unique. Some are highly elaborate, while others are simpler, suggesting different users and audiences. Second, we aim to challenge previous assumptions about why their medieval creators chose to represent these contents through pictures. Some scholars have speculated that they could have been made for an illiterate audience, yet even some of the simplest concertinas contain texts essential for their interpretation. Ultimately, we encourage our visitors to examine the evidence and draw their own conclusions.

5. You say that the concertina-fold almanac was almost certainly a result of people needing a travel-friendly calendar. I think you only have English examples in your exhibition. Are there known examples on the Continent and if so, how do they differ from the English ones? Or did they develop different ways to carry their calendars?

The exhibition primarily showcases English concertinas, which are typically longer, larger and feature more diverse content. In contrast, the known continental versions are all 'short-form' concertina-fold almanacs, usually consisting of just a calendar, a tabular timeline and a table for determining movable feasts. One such example from the Netherlands is displayed in the exhibition. However, the distinction between those made in England or on the Continent is not so clear-cut because the English printed concertinas resemble the continental manuscripts. This raises many questions about their production and dissemination.

6. It always takes years to work on an exhibition, with all the research and organising loans taking a lot of time, but if money were no object, what exhibition would you like to work on at Lambeth Palace Library next?

We are incredibly fortunate to have received a £53,418 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, with additional support from the Friends of Lambeth Palace Library, for this exhibition. This funding has not only enabled us to secure loans but also to create additional resources such as videos, high-quality facsimiles and workshops for schools, so that we can reach a wider audience and truly do these objects justice. We're excited to figure out how we can best apply our learnings from this project to enhance our future exhibitions – keep an eye on our website for more on those: www.lambethpalacelibrary.info.

On the exhibition topic: with such a vast and varied collection, it's always difficult to spotlight just one. However, I will say that we've been working on some of our illustrated Apocalypse manuscripts – books which I'm sure will captivate our visitors.

You can visit Unfolding Time between 14 Feb - 15 May 2025, at Lambeth Palace Library, Lambeth Palace Road, London, UK. Entrance is free.

For full details, visit: Unfolding Time – Lambeth Palace Library