02-07-2018, 09:01 AM
Helmut, it's very interesting to hear that. If they were kept the way money is kept, locked away and out of the hands of those who weren't supposed to access to them, it seems like there are a few possibilities...
- the designer (or scribe) independently invented the embellished forms (this seems less likely),
- the designer or scribe saw them in another context (in some other kind of manuscript),
- the designer had some kind of job (maybe a clerical job?) that involved legal documents, or
- the designer had access to documents that were old and thus no longer had any legal value, and thus perhaps were accessible, or
- [feel free to add anything I missed].

