Image: Shiviti from The Royal Library of Denmark David Simonsen Manuscripts Collection (Restored by Andrew Meit, licensed: CC0))
We are grateful to Andrew Meit for restoring a Shiviti from the Royal Library of Denmark’s Simonsen Manuscripts Collection. The image was slightly adjusted by Aharon Varady. All files including the vector art are shared with a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) Public Domain dedication.
For more information on this particular Shiviti, please visit the Royal Library’s collection. For more information on Shiviti, please read this post by Shmueli Gonzales. To see more Shiviti art shared by the Open Siddur Project, click here.
We need your help in identifying all the verses, divine names, and allusions to numinous powers in this Shiviti. Please provide more information in the comments below.
Image: Shiviti from The Royal Library of Denmark David Simonsen Manuscripts Collection (Restored by Andrew Meit, licensed: CC0))
Andrew Meit is a scholar of the imagination, scholar on Martin Buber, a type designer and software tester, and a Jewish artist who is disabled. Andrew is legally blind, legally deaf, and has several learning problems stemming from contracting congenital rubella. Through out his life Andrew has striven to turn his disabilities into well made art that inspires and celebrates beauty and truth. Although mainly self-taught in calligraphy, drawing and design, Andrew formally studied at the Cleveland Art Institute. With the font editor Fontographer, he created the well known font GoodCity Modern (a version of the typeface used in Gutenberg’s bible) and Final Roman, a template font for type designers. Recently, after decades of work, Andrew produced a digital recreation of the first page of Genesis from the Gutenberg Bible. Currently he is working on a new translation of Ich und Du and a font based on Buber's handwriting. In 1984, Andrew earned a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies with minors in Mathematics and Philosophy from Stetson University. Originally from Lousiville, Kentucky, he currently lives in Plantation, Florida.
I’ve known of this wonderful piece for several years, but upon examining it closer recently I realized that the artist actually gave his name and location in a colophon at the bottom! This information is not listed in the online cataloguing data from the Koniglige Bibliothek (I’ve written them to ask to add it) but I thought you’d like to know:
“The writer is the young singer, Mashiah Asgari, the small, dust beneath the feet of // the sages, resident of Herat, Afghanistan, [indecipherable]…”
I’ve known of this wonderful piece for several years, but upon examining it closer recently I realized that the artist actually gave his name and location in a colophon at the bottom! This information is not listed in the online cataloguing data from the Koniglige Bibliothek (I’ve written them to ask to add it) but I thought you’d like to know:
“The writer is the young singer, Mashiah Asgari, the small, dust beneath the feet of // the sages, resident of Herat, Afghanistan, [indecipherable]…”
Interestingly, another shiviti by the same scribe was sold by Kedem Auctions in 2013 for $738, see here: https://www.kedem-auctions.com/he/node/9853