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Tag Archives: vellum

Donation adds to Latin hymn fragments: “He himself shall come and shall make us saved.”

02 Saturday Mar 2019

Posted by rarebooks in Donations

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13th century, abbreviations, Advent, altar, angel, Christ, clefs, climacus, commentary, custos, Emmanuel, Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, fragment, Gregorian, Hebrew, hymn, illuminated, Isaiah, Italy, James Svendsen, Joseph, Latin, Lord, manuscript, Marriott Library, Mary, mass, Matthew, melisma, Middle Ages, neumes, New Testament, New York City, offertory, Old Testament, prophecy, punctum, qualism, readings, rests, Spain, St. Jerome, The University of Utah, transcription, translation, vellum, Vulgate


(ip)se veniet et salvos no-
s faciet. Co. ecce virgo
concipiet et pariet fili-
um et vocabitur no-
men eius hemanuel.
Off(ertoriu)m prope
es tu domine et omnes

He himself shall come and shall
make us saved. Behold a virgin
shall conceive and bear a son
and his name shall be
called Emmanuel. You are near, O Lord, and all

This page made of vellum (prepared calfskin, sheepskin or goatskin) was produced in the late Middle Ages, probably between the 13th and 15th centuries in Italy or Spain. It was purchased in New York City in 1974 for $25 by Professor James Svendsen, who donated it to the University of Utah Marriott Library in 2018. Dr. Svendsen provided the transcription, translation and commentary.

“The texts from the Old Testament are written in the Latin of the 14th c. Vulgate attributed to St. Jerome. They utilize the musical notation of Gregorian Chant with two clefs (fa/do), rests, custos, neumes etc. The most frequent neumes (names of notes sung on a single syllable) are the punctum, melisma, qualism, climacus etc. The five-line staff & custos (the Latin word for “guard” and a small note at the end of a line indicating the next note) are products of 13th century Italy, replacing the earlier four-line staff, and provide a terminus post quem for the manuscript. There are four illuminated letters (E, P, B, O) at the beginning of initial words. The abbreviations CO. (for collectum) and OFFM. (for offertorium) indicate when the hymns would be sung during the mass: the collect before the readings and the offertory when gifts are brought to the altar.

These particular hymns were sung during the mass on the 4th Sunday of Advent and on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The first two relate the prophecy of Isaiah and thus emphasize the main theme of Advent, a time preparing for the birth of the Christ child, who is called Emmanuel meaning “God with us” in Hebrew. The prophecy in Isaiah 7, 14 is fulfilled in the New Testament when the angel of the Lord appears to Joseph and explains that Mary has conceived and will bear a son (Matthew 1, 21-23).”

We are grateful to Dr. Svenson for this wonderful gift.


Viae tuae veritas
initio cogno-
vi te de testimoniis
tuis quia in eternum tu
es. V(ersus). beati immacula-
ti in via qui ambulant in lege
domini r(esponsum). Osten-
de nobis domine (misericordiam tuam)

your ways are truth.
From the beginning I knew
you from your testimonies
that you are eternal. Blessed are the immaculate
on the way who walk in the law
of the Lord. Show
us, O Lord, (your mercy)…

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Boards: A-Book-Part-You-Never-Think-About-But-Is-Super-Important-Anyway

30 Thursday Aug 2018

Posted by scott beadles in Uncategorized

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Antoine Augereau, barf board, Benjamin Eliot, boards, book, bookbinders, bookmaking, Boston, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Colonial America, conservators, Coptic, delaminate, Deseret News, exhibition, felts, fibers, fore-edge, Jim Croft, Jonathan Sandberg, medullary ray, Old Ways of Making Books, paper, paper mill, papermaking, Paris, pasteboard, rare book collections, Samuel Willard, scabbard, scaleboard, Scott Beadles, screen, Simon de Colines, vat, vellum, water, waterleaf, wood, wooden boards, workshop

Judge a book by it’s cover all you want. That cover just keeps on doing what it does best: protecting the book’s text. Covers allows a book to continue to convey information by taking the wear and tear of everyday use. Through the years different materials have been used to cover books.



Coptic Binding
Uncatalogued

Wood. Early books were most commonly covered with wooden boards. Rare Books has several manuscripts with Coptic bindings. These books are well-used, with uncovered wooden boards that are polished by handling, but they are often broken and then repaired with linen thread. The wood is sometimes cut similarly to modern lumber, in a straight line across the log. In the picture below you can see the curve of the tree’s growth rings. Wood is porous and expands and contracts as it takes on or loses moisture from the air. It will expand unevenly around that natural curve, warping and sometimes even cracking the board. The strongest wood boards are cut in a very different way.

Imagine you are looking down on the round end of a log. If you cut this log radially from the center as if it was a pie, two useful things happen. First, boards cut like this (called a quarter cut) resist warping because the grain of the wood is running straight up your board, instead of curving through it. Looking at the boards from the top you see little to none of the curve of the tree’s rings. This board will warp very little as humidity changes. Second, there is a structural feature in wood called the medullary ray. These rays go through the wood from the core out to the bark. They are perpendicular to the main grain of the wood, forming a remarkably durable natural plywood. Many Coptic boards break because they are made with wood that does not have prominent medullary rays.

In the above image, notice the faint curve of the grain near the middle of the left board.

In the image below, we can see the medullary rays and the tree’s grain weaving together. The lighter lines are medullary rays, the darker lines are the tree’s grain creating a strong internal structure.


Handmade book
by Jonathan Sandberg from raw materials
at Jim Croft’s “Old Ways of Making Books” workshop



He kaine diatheke
Paris: [Antoine Augereau for] Simon de Colines, [29 November or 22 December] 1534
BS1965 1534

Pasteboard. All this picky woodwork added complications to the bookmaking process. When bookmakers discovered that they could just paste together paper proofs, misprints, or offcuts to make functional boards, it became common practice to do just that. This has made for interesting discoveries as modern conservators re-bind historical books and find that their boards are made of interesting or rare texts.



Deseret News
By Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Volume 6. March 1856-March 1866
Uncatalogued

Waterleaf. Around the mid-sixteenth century, very soon after pasteboard began to be used, another technique for making boards was developed. If you are familiar with historical papermaking, or you’ve seen our recent paper exhibition, Paper is Fundamental, you know that paper was made by drawing suspended fibers out of a vat of water on a screen, which was then rolled onto a stack of felts. Paper makers found that if they took these raw, wet pieces of paper and compressed them together, it formed a variant of pasteboard that was less likely to separate between pages, or delaminate. Pictured here is a bound volume of the Deseret News from 1856. The very worn board is beginning to delaminate which gives us a great view of individual “pages.” Because the board is never printed on directly and almost always covered, papermakers could include fiber that would normally be unacceptable for papermaking. Here you see small pieces of cloth and thread. Historical bookmaker Jim Croft calls this kind of board “barf board” because of the jumble of reject fibers that go into its production.



The Peril of the Times Displayed
Samuel Willard
Boston : Printed by B Green & J Allen sold by Benjamin Eliot 1700
BX7233 W4292 P47 1700

Scaleboard. The first paper mill in Colonial America wasn’t established until 1690. Rather than using expensive, imported book boards, bookbinders often used thin scales of wood in their place. These scaleboards, originally called scabbards, were much too brittle for the task of protecting a book, but when covered in paper or leather they made perfectly usable covers. This book was printed in Boston in the year 1700. The leather is now peeling away, allowing us to look at the wood scale beneath. The end grain of the board is visible at the fore-edge and spine of the book, instead of the traditional head and tail. It may be quarter-cut, the end grain shows only a slight curve. The board is a little warped, but the book has been through a lot, and scaleboard wasn’t expected to do the same heavy structural work as early wooden book boards were.

~Contributed by Jonathan Sandberg, Rare Books Assistant, with photographs by Scott Beadles, Rare Books Specialist

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Book of the Week — Clavis Historia Thuanae

07 Monday May 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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archivists, curia, Edict of Nantes, Edward Gibbon, England, French Enlightenment, French Revolution, Geneva, Germany, heresy, humanism, Index of Prohibited Books, Jac, Jacques Auguste de Thou, Jacques Dupuy, Keeper of the Royal Library, librarians, Parlement, philosophes, Portugal, Protestant, rare books, Roman Catholic, scholars, Spain, vellum, Voltaire, William Pitt

Clavis historiae thuanae: id est, nomenclature…
Jacques Dupuy (1591-1656)
Ratisponae: Sumtibus J. Z. Seidelii, 1696
Editio altera
D228 T552

Originally published in Geneva in 1634, this revised edition includes the word “Clavis” as the beginning of its title. The title translated into English reads: Nomenclature of Proper Names in the Historical Work of Jacques Auguste de Thou. Thou (1553-1617) was a historian whose fame and acclaim lasted well into the nineteenth century. His “History of His Own Time” (Historiarum sui temporis libri CXXXVIII) was added to the Index of Prohibited Books in 1609 for its humanist bent.

In spite of the ban and the humanism, his work received praise across the Roman Catholic/Protestant spectrum from Spain and Portugal to England and Germany. It was read by the curia it condemned and was a favorite of the Philosophes of the French Enlightenment. Voltaire referred to the “truthful eloquence” of Thou several times in his works. William Pitt quoted Thou, “the great historian of France,” in the early years of the French Revolution, and historian Edward Gibbon referred to Thou as the “authority of my masters.”

Thou was a leading member of Parlement. A Roman Catholic, he nonetheless counted many Protestants as his friends and helped negotiate the Edict of Nantes. He was appointed the Keeper of the Royal Library. His own library contained nearly 6,000 volumes, vast even by the standards of a private library-owning upper class. His “History” appeared in parts between 1604 and 1610. But the work was considered heresy in that it failed to condemn all Protestants outright. For this he fell from royal and papal favor.

The other indexer of Thou’s history was Jacques Dupuy, one of the many archivists and librarians who organized meetings of scholars at Thou’s home and, here, organized his book.

Rare Books copy bound in vellum, using loose leaves from another work. Pages are in double column format.

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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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Curtis Census

10 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Publication

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American Indians, copper plates, Curtis Census, drawing, Edward Curtis, etchings, ethnography, field notes, French Impressionists, glass negative, glass positive, gravures, gum prints, handpress, J. Willard Marriott Library, Japanese handmade silk tissues, Mississippi, negatives, nineteenth century, painting, papers, photographer, photogravures, Pictorialism, platinotypes, printing process, rare books, rice paper, Scott Beadles, Seattle, sepia inks, Tim Greyhavens, Tissue, Van Gelder, vellum, watermark

Rare Books is pleased to announce the launch of the Curtis Census, a website produced by Tim Greyhavens for the global community. The J. Willard Marriott Library is one of the institutions that holds an entire set of Edward Curtis’ The North American Indian.

From Tim’s website: “Published by Edward Curtis from 1907 to 1930, The North American Indian was planned to be a limited edition of 500 sets. Due to the extremely high cost of the publication and the prolonged publication cycle, it’s thought that no more than 300 complete or partial sets were finally printed. This census will determine, as accurately as possible, the actual number of complete or partial sets that were printed and their present locations…Although The North American Indian is one of the great publications of all time, there is no definitive answer about how many sets were originally published. Curtis did not keep a master subscription list, and different documentation about the project provides conflicting information.”

Congratulations, Tim, on a great project.

Click here for the website’s biography of Edward Curtis. Curtis was born in 1868. 2018 is the 150th anniversary of his birth.

Click here for the website’s excellent article on Curtis’s The North American Indian.

Visit Rare Books to look at this remarkable set of photogravures.

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN
Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952)
Seattle, WA: E. S. Curtis, 1907-30
E77 C97

A collection of 2,232 photogravures of American Indians taken between 1890 and 1930 and published between 1907 and 1930. A massive project, professional photographer Edward Curtis’ intention was to document every major tribe west of the Mississippi, portraying what he perceived to be a vanishing culture. While he was neither the first nor the last person to photograph the American Indian, he was surely the most prolific. His monumental publication presented to the public an extensive ethnographic study of numerous peoples.

The North American Indian consists of twenty portfolios of photogravures and twenty volumes of field notes bound with smaller gravures. A photogravure is made from a printing process utilizing a copper plate that is made from a glass positive which itself is made from a glass negative. The plate is hand wiped with sepia inks. Excess ink is removed and the plate is forced onto paper with a handpress, capturing all the etched details on the plate. The photogravure produces a soft, atmospheric appearance similar to that achieved by French Impressionist painters. This photographic process, along with drawing and painting on negatives, platinotypes and gum prints, was popular at the end of the nineteenth century. The movement, known as “Pictorialism” was a way for photographers to add personal vision and expression to their works.

The portfolio gravures were printed on three different papers, Van Gelder, a watermarked paper, Vellum, a rice paper, and Tissue, Japanese handmade silk tissues. Forty of the original sets were printed on Tissue, the rest equally split between Van Gelder and Vellum.

Images selected and scanned by Scott Beadles.

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Book of the Week — Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

01 Monday May 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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Arts and Crafts Movement, C. R. Ashbee, Campden, Endeavor, Essex House London, Essex House Press, Gouscestershire, Guild of Handicraft, John Ruskin, Kelmscott Press, typeface, vellum, William Morris, William Wordsworth

PR5860-A1-1903-spread1

“Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Campden, Glo: Essex House Press, 1903

In 1886, C.R. Ashbee established the Guild of Handicraft at Essex House London. Around the same time, Ashbee created the Essex House Press. The Essex House Press published its first book in 1898. The work of the press was very much a part of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Ashbee continually linked the aims of the press with those of John Ruskin and William Morris and described the object of the movement as “making useful things…making them well and…making them beautiful.”

The critics, however, were not so sure about the work of Essex House Press, calling it “articraftiness.” Later booklovers came to admire much of its work. Some of the presses and some of the workmen for Essex House Press came from the Kelmscott Press after its demise in 1897 following the death of William Morris.

Ashbee designed his own typeface called “Endeavor” for the press. In 1902, the press moved to Glouscestershire. The Essex House Press closed in 1910, having produced more than seventy titles.

Frontispiece by Walter Crane (1845-1915), painter and designer, known especially for his illustrations for children’s books. As an apprentice wood-engraver, he studied the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He associated himself with the Pre-Raphaelites and the English Arts and Crafts Movement, working with William Morris and the Kelmscott Press.

Printed on vellum. Initials hand calligraphed, some with gilt. Edition of 150 copies. University of Utah copy is no. 138.

PR5860-A1-1903-spread2

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Now is the night one blue dew.

26 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

American History Printing Association, antiquarian, booksellers, Carol Sandberg, Carolee Campbell, cousins, Essex House Press, Fairfax, floriated initials, Gaylord Schanilec, Jack Stauffacher, James Agee, Jerry Kelly, John Keats, Joni Kay Miller, Kathleen Thompson, London, Los Angeles, Luise Putcamp jr, Melrose, Michael R. Thompson Rare Books, Michael Thompson, Mississippi, music, poems, poetry, poets, Robin Price, Rover Art Books, Third, Universal Books, vellum, Walter de la Mare, William Shakespeare, Zeitlin & Van Brugge

PS3501-G35-H3-1964-cover

“…do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou has not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!”
— John Keats from Ode on a Grecian Urn

In Memoriam — Kathleen Thompson

Kathleen Thompson of Michael R. Thompson Rare Books worked for several Los Angeles antiquarian booksellers, including Universal Books, Royer Art Books, and Zeitlin & Ver Brugge, before entering into a partnership with her husband, Michael Thompson, and Carol Sandberg in 1985. Hers was often the first face one encountered when visiting their shops on Melrose, Fairfax, and Third. We remember Kathleen for her warmth, sense of humor, thoughtfulness, and intelligence.

I had the pleasure of many conversations with Kathleen over the phone and by email. I will miss her soft Mississippi meter, which, thank goodness, she never did lose, even though she swore she had. We wrote to each other about cousins, music, poets and poems. Here are a few of her favorites.

PR2841-A2-E55-pg153
THE POEMS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
London: Essex House Press, 1899
PR2841 A2 E55

Printed in black and red. Illustrated with floriated initials and one full-page drawing. Bound in vellum with ties. Edition of four hundred and fifty copies. Rare Books copy is no. 274.


Z250-V47-2006-3panel
VERSE INTO TYPE THE APHA POETRY PORTFOLIO
American Printing History Association
S. l.: American Printing History Association, 2006
Z250 V47 2006

Seventeen gatherings contributed by fifteen different presses in a variety of typefaces, colors, formats, papers, all letterpress printed, some illustrated. Contributors include Carolee Campbell, Jerry Kelly, Robin Price, Gaylord Schanilec, Jack Stauffacher, and others. Issued in blue cloth clamshell box with paper label. Edition of two hundred copies.


And this from Walter de la Mare:

All That’s Past

Very old are the woods;
And the buds that break
Out of the brier’s boughs,
When March winds wake,
So old with their beauty are–
Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
Roves back the rose.
Very old are the brooks;
And the rills that rise
Where snow sleeps cold beneath
The azure skies
Sing such a history
Of come and gone,
Their every drop is as wise
As Solomon.

Very old are we men;
Our dreams are tales
Told in dim Eden
By Eve’s nightingales;
We wake and whisper awhile,
But, the day gone by,
Silence and sleep like fields
Of amaranth lie.

PR1309-C485-N85-1925-CoverPattern


And this from James Agee:

Knoxville: Summer of 1915

(We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville Tennessee in that time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.)

…It has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street and the standing up into their sphere of possession of the trees, of birds’ hung havens, hangars. People go by; things go by. A horse, drawing a buggy, breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt; a loud auto; a quiet auto; people in pairs, not in a hurry, scuffling, switching their weight of aestival body, talking casually, the taste hovering over them of vanilla, strawberry, pasteboard and starched milk, the image upon them of lovers and horsemen, squared with clowns in hueless amber.

A streetcar raising its iron moan; stopping, belling and starting; stertorous; rousing and raising again its iron increasing moan and swimming its gold windows and straw seats on past and past and past, the bleak spark crackling and cursing above it like a small malignant spirit set to dog its tracks; the iron whine rises on rising speed; still risen, faints; halts; the faint stinging bell; rises again, still fainter, fainting, lifting, lifts, faints foregone: forgotten. Now is the night one blue dew.

PS3501-G35-H3-1964-cover


And this from the aunt of Kathleen’s “dearest old friend,” Joni Kay Miller (1945-2017):

It is peculiar mercy none can find
In this lost time where only losers dwell
Who lose the most, the ones who left behind
Wisdom and love and never knew them well
Or those who know too well and as they stay
Inherit silence and the vacant day.
— Luise Putcamp jr.


And I had the honor of being called by Kathleen “a kindred spirit, too.”
— Luise Poulton


Memory eternal!

PS3501-G35-H3-1964-cover(feature)

26 March 2017

Friends Gather for Kathleen, 26 March 2017

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Love is enough

14 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Hammersmith, handmade paper, industrial, Kelmscott Press, letterpress, Pharamond, printing, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, vellum, William Morris, woodcut

woodcut
Woodcut2

“Love is enough:
though the World be a-waning
And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,
Though the sky be too dark for dim eyes to discover
The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,
Though the hills be held shadows, & the sea a dark wonder,
And this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over,
Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter;
The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter
These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.”

LOVE IS ENOUGH, OR THE FREEING OF PHARAMOND…
William Morris (1834-1896)
Hammersmith: The Kelmscott Press, 1897

William Morris worked with prominent artists of his time to develop collaborations that redefined the artist’s relationship to the studio and the factory. Morris acheived this through a mastery of craft techniques, such as lettepress printing, and a rejection of industrial processes.

Two-page decorative woodcut border and numerous partial-page borders throughout. Two full-page illustrations by Sir Edward Burne-Jones: the frontispiece and an illustration opposite p. 90. According to the colophon this last was „…not designed for this edition…but for an edition projected about twenty-five years ago, which was never carried out.“

Love is Enough is one of only two Kelmscott Press books printed in three colors – blue, red, and black. Bound in full limp vellum with gilt spine, green silk ties. Edition of three hundred copies on handmade paper.

Pg17

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Book of the Week — De coloribus libellus

05 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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animals, color, color theory, Empedocles, Florence, Florentinae, Isaac Newton, Laurentii Torrentini, Loeb Classical Library, medicine, Neapolitan, philosopher, Piza, plants, Pseudo Aristotle, scientist, Simone Porzio (1497-1554), soul, vellum

qc495-a7-1548-title

“Those colours are simple which belong to the elements, fire, air, water and earth. For air and water are naturally white in themselves, while fire and the sun are golden. The earth is also naturally white, but seems coloured because it is dyed. This becomes clear when we consider ashes; for they become white when the moisture which caused their dyeing is burned out of them; but not completely so, for they are also dyed by smoke, which is black. In the same way sand becomes golden, because the fiery red and black tints the water. The colour black belongs to the elements of things while they are undergoing a transformation of their nature. But the other colours are evidently due to mixture, when they are blended with each other. For darkness follows when light fails. — Loeb Classical Library translation

DE COLORIBUS LIBELLVS A SIMONE PORTIO…
Pseudo Aristotele (384 BC – 322 BC)
Florentinae: ex officina Laurentii Torrentini, 1548
Editio princips

This is perhaps the earliest work on color theory, attributed to Aristotle, who took his ideas from Empedocles and went a step further, creating a base line occupied by seven colors. Aristotle’s base line was applied to all color-systems up to the time of Isaac Newton. His assumption was to represent colors as actual characteristics of the surface of bodies and not as subjective phenomena produced by the eye or in the brain as a result of the properties of light. Aristotle observed colors very accurately, as well as their contrasts. He noted, for instance, that the violet appearing on white wool appeared different when on black wool and that colors appeared different in daylight than in candlelight. Only much later were these phenomena systematically examined and explained.

This edition was translated and edited with extensive scholarly commentary by Simone Porzio (1497-1554), a Neapolitan philosopher and scientist who was a fanatical disciple of Pomponazzi. Porzio eventually gave up lecturing on medicine at Piza and his scientific studies to focus on studying philosophy. Porzio denied immortality in all forms and taught that the human soul is homogeneous with the soul of animals and plants.

Binding is old vellum with a red leather lettering piece.

qc495-a7-1548-pg23

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Book of the week – Preghiera alla vergine…

02 Monday May 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

≈ Comments Off on Book of the week – Preghiera alla vergine…

Tags

Antiochia, aristocracy, art, Cappadocia, Christ in Majesty, Christian, church, divine, dragon, Emperoro Diocletian, evangelists, facsimile, faith, folios, fresco, George of Cappadocia, Georgius, Goreme, Gothic rotunda, Gothic semi-Italic, holy, Il Bulino edizion d'arte, illuminated manuscript, illuminations, legends, Margherita, message, miniatures, Modena, monastery, monastery of Santa Maria Maddalena, mother, Olibrio, Pisanello, prayer, prefect, preghiera, rebellion, Roman, Roman Empire, Saint Anastasia, Saint Christopher, Saint George of Cappadocia, Saint Margherita of Antiocha, shepherdess, Syrian, Tiziano, torture, Turkey, vellum, vernacular, Verona, Veronese, Virgin Mary, virgine

SaintGeorge

Preghiera alla Vergine…
Modena: Il Bulino edizioni d’arte, 2007

Facsimile. This illuminated manuscript belonged to a young woman of the Veronese aristocracy. Produced on vellum in the second half of the thirteenth century, it is illustrated throughout with miniatures and consists of forty-two folios, or eighty-four pages. The first two folios are written in a Gothic semi-italic hand. The text is a prayer to the Virgin Mary and one of the oldest known prayers written in the Veronese vernacular.

The rest of the manuscript consists of the legends of Saint George of Cappadocia and Saint Margherita of Antiochia. The script for the legends is Gothic rotunda. At the end of the manuscript are two full page illuminations: Christ in Majesty surrounded by the four evangelists, and Saint Christopher.

A note of ownership indicates that the manuscript was entrusted to the Monastery of Santa Maria Maddalena in 1350. This monastery thrived between 1200 and 1300 as a harbor for young women.

Graphic miniatures illustrate the story of the tribulations of George of Cappadocia, from the time he declared to the Emperor Diocletian his Christian faith, until, after seven years of torture, he was beheaded for not recanting. The story ends with an illumination for which this legend is best known: St George astride a horse, piercing with a lance a dragon led on a leash by a princess. In 1435 the painter Pisanello used this subject on his fresco in the church of Saint Anastasia in Verona. Georgius (ca. 275-23 April 303), born of a Roman army officer from Cappadocia (present-day Turkey) and a Syrian mother, served as an officer in the Roman army.

The legend of the holy Margherita, a shepherdess of Antiochia, tells the story of the prefect Olibrio, who falls in love with Margherita. Her refusal of his advances was deemed an act of rebellion against the Roman Empire. Margherita was tortured and beheaded. Her story became a favorite subject of Christian art, in both the East (tenth century frescos adorn a church in Goreme, Cappadocia) and in the West, including a painting by Tiziano in 1550.

The manuscript is an exceptional example of early interconnection between text and illustration, as small paintings weave in and out amidst the written word. This interplay of text and image was used as an instrument in helping the viewer, if not the reader, comprehend the divine message.

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