The Georgian Scripts: Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri, Mkhedruli. Compiled by E. Machavariani. Illustrated by Roman Makharadze, 1989. In Georgian.

მწიგნობრობაი ქართული : ასომთავრული, ნუსხური, მხედრული / შემდგენელი ელენე მაჭავარიანი ; ილუსტრაციები რომან მახარაძისა.
თბილისი : საქართველოს საბჭოთა ენციკლოპედია, 1989. 44 გვერდი, ილუსტრირებული ; ალბომური ფორმატი, 16,5 х 21,5 სმ.
გამომცემლის ნაბეჭდი გარეკანი.
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The Georgian Scripts: Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri, Mkhedruli [paleographic reference album] / compiled by Elene Machavariani ; illustrations by Roman Makharadze.
Tbilisi : Georgian Soviet Encyclopedia, 1989. 44 pp., illustrated ; oblong (album) format, 16.5 x 21.5 cm.
Publisher's printed wrappers.
Wrappers good: corner wear, light staining, a small tear near the spine. Text block very good: paper naturally cream-toned as issued, illustrations and comparative charts well preserved and clearly legible.

First edition of this compact but authoritative reference album.
A concise, richly illustrated paleographic guide to the three historical phases of the Georgian alphabet: Asomtavruli (the earliest majuscule script, 5th-10th centuries), Nuskhuri (the rounded ecclesiastical minuscule that developed alongside it from the 9th-10th centuries and remained paired with Asomtavruli capitals in church manuscripts), and Mkhedruli (the "warrior" or secular civil script that gradually displaced the earlier hands from around the 10th-11th centuries onward and evolved into the modern Georgian alphabet). Compiled by Elene Machavariani and issued by the Georgian Soviet Encyclopedia press, long the leading publisher of Georgian reference and scholarly-popular works, the album presents letter-by-letter comparative tables tracing the graphic evolution of each character across the fifth through seventeenth-eighteenth centuries, drawn from dated epigraphic monuments and manuscript sources, including the celebrated 493/494 CE Bolnisi Sioni inscription, among the earliest securely dated witnesses to Georgian writing. Each letter entry gives its name, numerical value (Georgian letters historically doubled as numerals), transliteration, and known decorative initial forms from tenth-to-thirteenth-century illuminated manuscripts, with photographic plates of stone and manuscript exemplars supplementing the typeset comparative charts. Intended as a working reference for epigraphers, manuscript specialists, and students of Kartvelology, the volume remains a useful, compact tool for dating and identifying Georgian script hands, and is of interest today both to specialists and to collectors of Georgian book design and graphic art.