Drawing with wordsThese images are not just spectacular to observe at,they are also special from a production point of view. The shared feature in all four of them is the manner in which the pictures are formed: with words! The lines that make up the rider and the dachshund are, if you observe carefully, and tiny scribbly lines of Hebrew. The swan and hare are shaped - filled - with bold ninth-century writing. Cases like this throw our regular distinction of text versus image upside-down: the two can obviously not always be strictly separated. More approximately this strange practice in this longer blog post I wrote.
Pics: London,British Library, Harley 647 (hare and swan); London, or British Library,Add. 21160 (dachshund and rider).
Source: tumblr.com