Milda Kvizikevičiūtė
banner
mildakviz.bsky.social
Milda Kvizikevičiūtė
@mildakviz.bsky.social
Early modern travel historian researching rare books at the National Library of Lithuania and curating rare books and manuscripts at the National Museum of Lithuania. Basically, if it’s old, bound, and mysterious, I’m probably digging into it.
Pinned
📢 #CFP is open!
Join us in Vilnius for the international conference “Scattered, Tracked, Connected: New Approaches to Dispersed Heritage” - exploring innovative ways to trace, interpret, and connect fragmented cultural collections.
🔗 lnm.lt/en/events/in...
#heritage #archives #museums #GLAM
Turns out the priest of the Church of St Joseph & Nicodemus in #Vilnius was not just keeping death records – he was also expressing himself artistically in the margins.
🧟‍♂️
February 18, 2026 at 4:37 PM
Sixteenth-century book with a perfectly placed burn hole. Proof that early modern readers lived dangerously (hello, candles).

📚🔥 #RareBooks #BookHistory #MaterialCulture #LibrarianLife
February 18, 2026 at 7:27 AM
On 7 May 1697, fire destroyed most of Stockholm’s Tre Kronor Palace.
The blaze spread fast through wooden interiors and copper roofing. Evacuation followed; servants tried to save royal possessions. That is how Bleau’s atlas and a drinking glass survived the fire!
February 13, 2026 at 5:53 PM
Hello sir!

How to kill some time while reading.

#rarebooks #doodle #earlymodern
February 11, 2026 at 2:32 PM
Arbor Consanguinitatis (Tree of Consanguinity) from a 1509 edition of the Sexti libri materia, printed in Paris. Clerics used these complex "trees" to map out prohibited degrees of relationship. If your family branches crossed here, a marriage was legally considered incestuous.
February 9, 2026 at 4:23 PM
Not even the Pope escapes the gloves-on brigade 😄 First comment on the reel where he’s flipping through the Borso d’Este Bible: “No gloves for the Pope?”
February 7, 2026 at 6:31 AM
Reposted by Milda Kvizikevičiūtė
Booked for the Evening?

Tonight we'll premier my favorite new acquisition, a 17th c. surveying manuscript with a Galileo link! My Conservation colleagues will explain the plan to deacidify and support areas with iron gall ink damage...
It's not too late to join us!
www.newberry.org/calendar/boo...
February 6, 2026 at 3:26 PM
While fighting −25 °C in #Lithuania, it feels oddly perfect to accidentally stumble upon #Seehunds 🦭 in a book about Japan.

Wilhelm Heine. Reise um die Erde nach Japan. Leipzig, 1856

#earlymodern #rarebooks #specialcollections
February 2, 2026 at 10:13 AM
Petrus Ekerman (1697–1783) pushed the #Uppsala system to its limits – writing ~600 master’s dissertations for pay. Ready-made theses, sold to students. The profits even built Ekerman’s House in Uppsala. 📚💸
#CarolinaRediviva #UppsalaUniversityLibrary #earlymodern
February 1, 2026 at 8:42 AM
#Sunny days require shiny #books!
January 21, 2026 at 11:11 AM
#NewYearResolutions | 1912
1. To wake up no later than 6 a.m.
2. 30-45 min to cultivate Lithuania culture
3. 45 min to read aloud in English
4. To walk outdoors for 1 hour
5. To reserve 1 hour per week for the art of rhetoric, writing or translation.

May constancy triumph over distraction!
December 30, 2025 at 10:49 AM
Dominican #censorship

Fun fact: in the Bibliotheca Casanatense, book theft didn’t just get you in trouble—it got you excommunicated on the spot. (At least that’s the warning that was hung up at the library)
#earlymodern #bookhistory
November 21, 2025 at 10:06 AM
A masterpiece of early natural history 🦋✨
Scilla’s 1715 butterfly manuscript, Italy’s first Lepidoptera collection, pairs meticulous watercolours with 211 specimens preserved between mica “windows” — centuries before modern plastics.

Kept at Biblioteca Casanatense,
November 20, 2025 at 10:07 PM
This fencing manual - written between 1482–1487 and dedicated to Guidobaldo da Montefeltro - once sat in the Ducal Library of Urbino. Influenced by Fiore dei Liberi, cited in the ducal index, lost after Cesare Borgia’s 1502 conquest, resurfaced centuries later at the National Central Library of Rome
November 20, 2025 at 5:56 AM
Books in paintings at the Bernini Palace in Rome: from Erasmus’s scissors to the delicate metal bookmarks of Mary.
November 19, 2025 at 8:38 AM
Resistance in the 18th c. could look like this.
At first glance, this coat of arms seems unmistakably Russian – a double-headed eagle with St George in the centre.
But LOOK closer.
One head is scraped off, and in the centre you find #Vytis, the #Lithuanian coat of arms, quietly reclaiming its place.
November 15, 2025 at 8:35 AM
Vt Cases CorpVs præDa beaVIt aMor.
Early modern authors: “Here, decode my feelings and my calendar.”
Me: sir this is a title page.

Is it 1716, though?

#earlymodern #chronigram #handwritten #manuscript
November 14, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Monday mood: quietly losing my mind over UMARC fields and 35th sermon— all in the name of research 🪄📚
November 10, 2025 at 8:33 AM
“The enemy is at the walls; we are barely holding out. If you do not come, we are all lost.”

From a textbook used by students of the Vilnius Diocesan Seminary.

#NationalLibraryofLithuania #earlymodern #manuscript
November 5, 2025 at 7:34 AM
📢 #CFP is open!
Join us in Vilnius for the international conference “Scattered, Tracked, Connected: New Approaches to Dispersed Heritage” - exploring innovative ways to trace, interpret, and connect fragmented cultural collections.
🔗 lnm.lt/en/events/in...
#heritage #archives #museums #GLAM
October 22, 2025 at 6:14 PM
✨ Acutus et Argutus: Early Modern Print Culture in Motion has finally happened!

Three days of brilliant talks, sharp ideas, and lively discussions on early modern books, poetics & print networks — with speakers from across Europe.

#bookhistory #PrintCulture #earlymodern
October 11, 2025 at 12:25 PM
Acutus et argutus has begun! Why to type something easily, when you can do labirynths, roses. Should my next paper look like that? 🫢
October 8, 2025 at 6:20 AM
Reposted by Milda Kvizikevičiūtė
Love... Or Death?

#Plague or #TooPerilous
3/3
September 6, 2025 at 6:58 PM
Reposted by Milda Kvizikevičiūtė
Believe it or not, this is a parish register from the seventeenth century that was damaged during a fire! 🔥

Heat causes the collagen fibres in the parchment to denature and shrink and eventually turn to gelatine, which sometimes has a ‘glassy’ appearance.

#EarlyModern #Skystorians
September 3, 2025 at 8:07 AM
#BalticWay was a call for #freedom! On August 23, 1989, 2 million people joined hands across #Lithuania, #Latvia, and #Estonia to mark the 50th anniversary of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, when the USSR and Nazi Germany secretly divided Europe into spheres of influence.

lithuania.lt/news/life-an...
The Baltic Way: How Holding Hands Changed History | Lithuania
On August 23, 1989, a momentous event unfolded that would forever leave its mark on history. Two million people joined hands, creating an unbroken human chain that spanned over 600 kilometres, linking...
lithuania.lt
August 23, 2025 at 8:31 AM