I bought this thinking it would provide me with medieval color recipes, used for manuscripts of various times. It doesn't do that at all. talk about colors, illuminating, and the making of materials. The author distinguishes between painters' manuals and alchemy texts, which also often deal with pigmen

This is a survey of all manuscripts written up to ca. 1500 that ts (such as gold). He covers the difficulty of the terminology used by different scribes, some of whom were copying text they may not have understood, and others who were clearly noting their own observations.

The heart and soul of this book is the Checklist the occupies the center of the book, pp. 51 - 112. In this, Dr. Clarke lists every known surviving manuscript that references the materials needed for making manuscripts and paintings. Each manuscript is identified in full, and cross-referenced to the various later scholarly publications that reference it.

He also includes, in italics, the references listed in other books that are in error (that is, the typos), and redirects the reader to the actual manuscript identifier. The checklist is arranged by location, so that, for instance, all the British Library resources are listed together, and so on.

The Indexes that follow are: Commonly Used names of Treatises and Authors, Index of Incipits (since many manuscripts do not have titles), Language Index, a Concordance with Thompson's 'Trial Index', a Subject index to the manuscripts, an index to Contemporary illustrations of painters and illuminators, and finally 16 pp. of Bibliography.

It was not the book I was expecting, but fascinating, nonetheless.
It is a book for those who want to find the primary sources, with some perspective on interpreting what you might find, assuming that you can read the original Anglo-Norman, Icelandic, Polish, or Latin handwriting. It also points to where some of these appear in translation, and even puts * by the most accessible and complete published versions. ( )