About the Cover Illustration

The figure on the cover of Play for Scala is captioned a “Woman from Šibenik, Dalmatia, Croatia.” The illustration is taken from the reproduction, published in 2006, of a 19th-century collection of costumes and ethnographic descriptions entitled Dalmatia by Professor Frane Carrara (1812–1854), an archaeologist and historian, and the first director of the Museum of Antiquity in Split, Croatia. The illustrations were obtained from a helpful librarian at the Ethnographic Museum (formerly the Museum of Antiquity), itself situated in the Roman core of the medieval center of Split: the ruins of Emperor Diocletian’s retirement palace from around AD 304. The book includes finely colored illustrations of figures from different regions of Croatia, accompanied by descriptions of the costumes and of everyday life.

Šibenik is a historic town in Croatia, located in central Dalmatia, where the river Krka flows into the Adriatic Sea. The woman on the cover is wearing an embroidered apron over a dark blue skirt, and a white linen shirt and bright red vest, topped by a black woolen jacket. A colorful headscarf completes her outfit. The rich and colorful embroidery on her costume is typical for this region of Croatia.

Dress codes have changed since the 19th century, and the diversity by region, so rich at the time, has faded away. It is now hard to tell apart the inhabitants of different continents, let alone different towns or regions. Perhaps we have traded cultural diversity for a more varied personal life—certainly for a more varied and fast-paced technological life.

At a time when it is hard to tell one computer book from another, Manning celebrates the inventiveness and initiative of the computer business with book covers based on the rich diversity of regional life of two centuries ago, brought back to life by illustrations from collections such as this one.