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Tag Archives: light

We recommend — Appendices Pulled from a Study on Light

24 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Recommended Reading

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acanthus, Anglo-Norman Litany of Saints, April, Boise, border, burnished gold, Cami Nelson, chrysalis, color, Connecticut College, Craig Dworkin, Elizabeth Peterson, eye, Finger Lakes, fragment, France, Geoffrey Babbitt, gilded, gold pavé, gutters, heliotropic, Hobart & William Smith Colleges, Idaho, ink, ivy, Jerry Root, Julie Gonnering Lein, Karen Brennan, Kathryn Cowles, leaf, lift, light, littera gothica textualis, littera gothica textualis formata, Luise Poulton, Marriott Library, National Poetry Month, New York, New York City, Office of the Dead, Paisley Rekdal, Paris, pasture, poet, rare books, rinceaux, scribe, Shira Dentz, Special Collections, Spyten Duyvil, street lamp, tendrils, The University of Utah, thunder, Tom Stillinger, transport, vellum, Vespers, vines


“a trace unnameable — place
holding the child
to the first frost,
the street lamp, the pasture — ”

Appendices Pulled from a Study on Light
Geoffrey Babbitt
New York City: Spuyten Duyvil, 2018
PS3602 A224 A6 2018 (General Collection, Level 2)

“This is Geoffrey Babbitt’s first book. His poems and essays have appeared in North American Review, Pleiades, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, Notre Dame Review, TYPO, Tarpaulin Sky, The Collagist, Interim, Western Humanities Review, and elsewhere. Raised in Boise, Idaho, he studied at Connecticut College and earned his Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of Utah. Geoffrey currently coedits Seneca Review and teaches at Hobart & William Smith Colleges in the Finger Lakes region of New York, where he lives with poet Kathryn Cowles and their three daughters.”

Geoffrey acknowledges the help of many friends, colleagues and faculty from the University of Utah including Luise Poulton, Karen Brennan, Craig Dworkin, Julie Gonnering Lein, Cami Nelson, Paisley Rekdal, Jerry Root, Tom Stillinger, Shira Dentz, Elizabeth Peterson, and others.

Congratulations, Geoffrey!


MS Fragment: 4 — Date: ca. 1375 — Origin: France (possibly northeastern) — current location: Marriott Library, University of Utah, Special Collections, Rare Book Division — Materials: Ink, and burnished gold on vellum — Illustration: Detail — Size: 7 1/8 in. x 5 7/16 in. — Section: Anglo-Norman Litany of Saints — Script: littera gothica textualis formata

“vines scritched, chrysalis
onto vellum leaf–all
lost color, stolen thunder
–spiritual curl
of the vine tending
ultimately toward–tattered edge
curling from the gutters…”


MS Fragment: 8 — Date: ca. 1425-1450 — Origin: France (possibly Paris) — Current Location: Marriott Library, University of Utah, Special Collections, Rare Books Division — Materials: Ink, and burnished gold on vellum — Size: 7 1/4 in. x 5 3/16 in. — Illustration: Detail, border — section: Office of the Dead, Vespers — Script: littera gothica textualis

“lit border
buoys — acanthus
place setting
scribe sets — rinceaux
sprays, gilded ivy leaf,
bryony tendrils, gold pavé
fleur-de-lis — heliotropic
buoyancy — motor cells in
the pulvinus synthesize
bouncing light, con-
vert eye movement, displace
page’s gravitropic
polar auxin transport —
downwarding becomes lift”

April is National Poetry Month.

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Book of the Week — A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism

22 Monday May 2017

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Aberdeen, Albert Einstein, Cambridge, Cavendish Laboratory, Cavendish Professor of Physics, Clarendon Press, Edinburgh, electricity, Galileo, Hawai'i, Henry S. White, James Clerk Maxwell, King's College London, light, magnetism, Marischal College, Mauna Kea Observatory, Newton, Oxford, physics, radio, Richard Feynman, satellite, Saturn, television, Voyager

QC518-M46-vol1-fig1
“The fact that certain bodies, after being rubbed, appear to attract other bodies, was known to the ancients. In modern times, a great variety of other phenomena have been observed, and have been found to be related to these phenomena of attraction.” — James Clerk Maxwell

A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1873
First edition, first issue
QC518 M46

James Clerk Maxwell was born in Edinburgh. At age 25 he became Professor of Physics at Aberdeen University’s Marischal College, where he began to study the composition of Saturn’s rings. In 1859, he published “On the Stability of Saturn’s Rings.” A century later, the Voyager space probes confirmed many of Clerk Maxwell’s conclusions.

QC518-M46-vol1-fig3

In 1860, Clerk Maxwell moved to King’s College London. In 1871 he returned to Cambridge where he helped establish and design Cavendish Laboratory and became the first Cavendish Professor of Physics. In 1873 he developed his four equations which played a key role in Albert Einstein’s work on his theory of relativity. “The special theory of relativity owes its origins to Maxwell Equations of the electromagnetic field,” wrote Einstein, who later equated Faraday with Galileo and Maxwell with Isaac Newton.

Clerk Maxwell’s work forms the basis of much of modern technology, including radio, television, satellite communications and cell phones. Twentieth century physicist Richard Feynman wrote, “From a long view of the history of mankind — seen from, say, ten thousand years from now — there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell’s discovery of the laws of electrodynamics.”

QC518-M46-vol1-fig7

The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), built in 1987, is in Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii.

QC518-M46-vol1-fig11

QC518-M46-vol1-fig13

Treatise is Clerk Maxwell’s most detailed and comprehensive work, advancing ideas that would become essential for modern physics.

Treatise “extended Maxwell’s ideas beyond the scope of his earlier work in many directions, [demonstrating] the special importance of electricity to physics as a whole. He began the investigation of moving frames of reference, which in Einstein’s hands were to revolutionize physics; gave proofs of the existence of electromagnetic waves that paved the way for Hertz’s discovery of radio waves; worked out connections between the electrical and optical qualities of bodies that would lead to modern solid-state physics; and applied Tait’s quaternion formulae to the field equations, out of which Heaviside and Gibbs would develop vector analysis” (Norman).“Maxwell most clearly prefigures 20th-century physics” (Simmons).

QC518-M46-vol2-fig18

Copies of the first issue have been found both with and without a publisher’s catalog bound in Volume II (the text of which contains an issue point). Rare Books copy bound with catalog in volume 2 and errata in volume 1.

QC518-M46-vol2-fig20

My thanks to Dean Henry S. White for bringing this classic to my attention. ~ LP

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Book of the Week — Remember the Light

08 Monday May 2017

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8th century, acrylic, Arches BFK, bamboo, Barcham Green Mill, bas-relief, California, Coleman Barks, concertina guards, copper, Dante, debossing, earthquake, egg tempura, Egypt, etchings, Florence, gouache, Goudy Engraved, Italy, Japanese, Jelaluddin Rumi, laced-cords, laser print, Laura Wait, Leonard Cohen, letterpress, light, mantras, Mary Laird, Michael Burke, Murshid, Nefertiti, ostrich, polymer plates, Quelquefois Press, relief roll etching, religion, Rosicrucian Museum, San Jose, sepia, Somerset, Sufi, sumi, Tibet, Valley of the Kings, Wisconsin, wooden board binding, Xerox

Yellow
“Thus shall ye think of this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer’s cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.”
— Buddha Shakyamuni

REMEMBER THE LIGHT
Mary Risala Laird
Quelquefois Press, 2007

Artist’s statement in an email to the curator: “My best friend was diagnosed with non smokers lung cancer in 2005 and given 3 months to live. I asked myself what I would want to do if given the same. I had always wanted to make an artist book. So I spent two years letting an edition of 7 Remember the Lights come to fruition. I chopped up some etchings I made called Earthquake, the one of 1989 when I moved to California from Wisconsin.

Earthquake

And put another relief roll etching (when Murshid sings) in the back of the book, writing over it with acrylic matte or glossy, mantras of the world religions. The Mantras are written throughout the book. I incorporated 7 quotes on Light, and 6 poems I wrote when I went to Tibet with a Sufi group in 1986. The title page has a plate from the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose. Another one from them appears as the image of the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, which is printed twice in grey, right side up and upside down, doesn’t matter where we are in space. Little holes of light, like Leonard Cohen suggested, let in the light, in this case by using Japanese hole punches. I had always wanted to add color to my traditional book making. So I brushed gouache on the pages with cotton balls. I also loved using colored pencils and straight lines to connect the pages, as well as printing blocks of wood used in printing, making them type high so the wood grain would shine through. Lobsong’s Mother’s page has a sumi painting I did of Japanese ink, of bamboo; I had a polymer plate made and printed it pink, because it is a color I don’t often use and I wanted to experiment.

LobsongsMother

I had fun drawing ladders into my etchings, connecting things, like thoughts, of planes of consciousness.
And stringing along the trajectory of human experience, you know, birth, life, death birth, life, death.

Life

In the signature where I have iconized my mother, and also did Xerox of her and me, I used end signatures I had left over from an edition of poems from a Rumi book I printed for Coleman Barks.
I like using Xerox and commercial papers in conjunction with the hand made papers (blue green) I made in Wisconsin many years ago.

Faces

I had learned a blanket stitch from Michael Burke and used that around the hole I cut with the hand showing through (One Handed Basket Weaving/Jelaluddin Rumi. Versions by Coleman Barks.)

Stitch

On the colophon page I started each line with a cap, spelling out my name, vertically as you read down.

Colophon

And hiding at the end of book is another poem about being on retreat in a hut, with an etching printed relief rolled and worked into, based on a courtyard in Florence, Italy, from a sepia print I inherited from my Grandfather who got it there in 1896.

The stories go on. My friend lived 5 years longer.”

Colophon: “Resurrected and transmogrified etchings form the basis for this Infinitesimal edition, primarily printed letterpress. Actual copies: Seven, using Dante and Goudy Engraved. Text papers include Arches BFK, and Somerset. Endpapers & concertina guards: Nefertiti, Long ago made by hand at Barcham Green Mill, and hoarded by me Awaiting the right project! Overprinted relief-roll etchings When Murshid Sings and Earthquake, may include laser-print, egg tempura, Assorted colored pencils, polymer plates, Xerox, cut-outs, sewing & Reticulated energy patterns. The laced-cords wooden board binding You are holding, is based on an 8th c. model. Hand-planed covers, Laboriously covered with deer or goatskin, are fitted with brass Ornaments. Thanks to both Laura Wait & Michael Burke, models of Undying inspiration. Copies are hand numbered.” Rare Books copy is no. 2.”

Artist’s addendum to colophon: “Maple and cherry covers are not covered. Bas-relief of right and left hand, carved into the front and back covers.

Hand

Books come enclosed in drop spine boxes. Trays are black calf or goatskin lined with white deer or golden elk skin. Outer covers: there are two purple ostrich and two of teal ostrich; two more of lime green bovine; and one in lime green goatskin.

Cover

Leather straps match the outer covers, and attach to brass hand-filed knobs on the fore-edge. A copper disc is inlaid on the front cover, a debossed crescent moon at its base. My Opus.”

Photographs by Scott Beadles

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Book of the Week — Opticks or, a Treatise of the Reflections…

02 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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color, copper engravings, Isaac Newton, Leibniz, light, London, Opticks, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, rainbows

qc353-n55-title

“God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportions to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them.”

OPTICKS OR, A TREATISE OF THE REFLECTIONS…
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
London: Printed for S. Smith, and B. Walford, 1704
First edition, first issue
QC353 N55

Isaac Newton’s theories and experimentations on color and light grew out of his undergraduate studies. He introduced some of his ideas detailed in Opticks in an article he wrote for the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1671. When Newton presented his concepts about the behavior and characteristics of light, particularly that white light is composed of a spectrum of colors, he posed a number of questions intended to stimulate further research. Opticks explains such phenomena as rainbows and contains two treatises supporting his side of the dispute with Leibniz that it was, indeed, he who discovered calculus.

“In a Letter written to Mr. Leibnitz in the Year 1676, and published by Dr. Wallis, I mentioned a Method by which I had found some general Theorems about squaring Curvilinear Figures, or comparing them with the Conic Sections, or other simplest Figures with which they may be compared. And some Years ago I lent out a Manuscript containing such Theorems, and having since met with some Things copied out of it, I have on this Occasion made it publick, prefixing to it an Introduction and subjoyning a Scholium concerning that Method.”

Nineteen copper-engraved folding plates. This first issue was published anonymously, with only the initials “I.N.” at the end of the Advertisement.

 

qc353-n55-fig8

 

qc353-n55-fig13

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Book of the Week — Petri Gassendi Institutio Astronomica…

07 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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Tags

astronomy, Copernicus, crystalline, England, English, Galileo, Jacobi Flesher, Johannes Kepler, Jupiter, light, moon, moons, mountains, Pierre Gassendi, sphere, stars, telescope, textbook, Tycho Brahe, university, valleys, woodcuts

qb41-g2-1653-orbits

“…senseless atoms, playing and toying up and down, without any care or thought, and from eternity trying all manner of tricks, conclusions and experiments, were at length (they know not how) taught, and by the necessity of things themselves, as it were, driven…so that though their motions were at first all casual and fortuitous, yet in length of time they became orderly and artificial, and governed by a certain law, they contracting as it were upon themselves, by long practice and experience, a kind of habit of moving regularly; or else being, by the mere necessity of things, at length forced so to move, as they should have done, had art and wisdom directed them.”

PETRI GASSENDI INSTITUTIO ASTRONOMICA, JUXTA…
Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), etc.
Londini, typis Jacobi Flesher, 1653
QB41 G2 1653

qb41-g2-1653-title

French polymath Pierre Gassendi worked on atomic theory, physics, and the philosophical implications of the work of Greek philosopher Epicurus (ca. 330 BCE), which he used as support for his opposition to an Aristotelean world view. Gassendi was one of the first to coin the term “molecule,” defined as two or more atoms joined together. Much of his published work was written to counter the philosophical views of Rene Descartes.

Using telescope lenses provided to him by Galileo Galilei, Gassendi made numerous astronomical observations that helped establish the validity of Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. In 1631, he observed Mercury transit in front of the sun, thus providing strong evidence for the Copernican model. Gassendi denounced astrology as having no empirical support.

This is the first edition of this collection and the first publication in England of all three works contained within.

Institutio astronomica was first published in 1647. It was divided into three sections: the first discussed the “theory of the spheres,” the second described astronomical theory, and the third discussed the conflicting ideas of Tycho Brahe and Copernicus. The work was used as a textbook, particularly in English universities, for years. That the second edition, here, includes Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius and Johannes Kepler’s Dioptrice makes the publication historically significant.

Sidereus nuncius (first published in 1610 – this is the third edition, the first English edition of any of Galileo’s works) announced Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s moons. Sidereus nuncius was Galileo’s publication of his first observations through a telescope he developed in 1609. Galileo observed the moon as a spherical, solid body complete with mountains and valleys, contradicting the tradition of the moon as a crystalline sphere. He observed thousands of stars hidden from the naked eye. He discovered four moons surrounding Jupiter, in different positions at different times. With these observations Galileo accepted the Copernican theory.

qb41-g2-1653-shadowsurface

qb41-g2-1653-constellation

Dioptrice (first published in 1611 – this is the second edition) explained the manufacture and workings of the telescope, a necessary component in the acceptance of what the telescope revealed. Kepler discussed the laws governing the passage of light through lenses.

Contains four woodcut plates and woodcut diagrams throughout the text. Each work has its own title-page. The main title-page is printed in red and black. University of Utah copy binding contemporary calf, ruled in blind.

qb41-g2-1653-globe

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