Sender: Rare book and manuscripts <EXLIBRIS-L@LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU>
Dear Ex Librans:
I just sat down to work out a Soviet publication. It came out in 1934
and was published by "Academia" [in Modified Roman script]. But the
title page seems to be written in what I would call "Ye Olde
Russian". All of the characters used can be found on neither a modern
Cyrillic alphabet, nor can they all be found on an alphabet which
Wikipedia calls "an early Slavonic alphabet." Both alphabets are
necessary in order to get romanized translations of the text [the
title page]. But both alphabets share a number of letters. These are
pronounced differently in each alphabet, and I have no grounds for
choosing one over the other.
The book is about a folk art which at that time was still being made
and seems to have used a lacquer medium. The book is a folio, and
very luxuriously printed and bound by the Soviets.
Can anyone, with this limited information, give me an idea [assuming
that this is true] what the actual language is that the title page is
printed in?
If your library has one or some of these books, can you tell me the
names of the well known masters of this form of painting? Do, please,
point me to a source which will have their names in some form of
Cyrillic script.
The last question would also, hopefully get me some absolute
cyrillic letters which I could then compare to those used in the title page.