hatam_soferet | serendipitous

The front of the new Koren siddur* is very pretty. Just the sort of design I like for my own artwork.

Click the thumbnail of the left image to see a bigger version. The right image is where I have highlighted the pretty. Rather indifferently :)

Still, even thought it'd make a lovely border for something, one can't very well plagiarise a prayerbook. I mean, it's a prayerbook. That seems to make it at least one degree worse than ordinary plagiarism.

So imagine my joy when I went again to the Valmadonna Trust exhibition and found this:

It's the title page of a certain Psalterium Hebraeum, printed in Genoa, in 1516 by Pietro Paolo Porro.

I tend to think that when something's that old it's fair game. Koren evidently did!

* The inside is jolly nice as well.

serendipitous

cool!