It’s a comfort show that’s still popular. But for some people they just don’t get it. Kinda like how the office is a comfort show. Why do people still watch them? Not sure, I don’t get the appeal. But it’s pretty common to have a comfort show and that’s probably fine.
I think the period that this book was illuminated in was from later when really fancy books was more of a business for the church. Usually the very early illuminated books were made by a single monk doing most steps of the process (prepping parchment, calligraphy, painting, binding, etc.) but the later books like this may have had different artists for the illuminated letters vs the borders. So there could have been one monk that just likes sea stuff and he was too good for the other brothers to tell him to stop.
Source: mostly vibes, but I’ve dipped my toes into illumination and guilding
I think they usually use several layers of thick glass for these floors, so even if you dropped a coffee mug on the glass and it broke, there should be several more layers under it that should still be plenty strong to support your weight. Also I don’t think glass experiences bending stress the same way metal does, where it gets most of its damage from impact fractures. Meaning you can bend glass a lot and it won’t change, but if you introduce micro fractures it can weaken considerably. So an engineer would probably consider the first sheet of glass as sacrificial.
Been a long time since I read about this stuff though, would love input from someone better read.