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Tag Archives: woodcuts

Book of the Week — Home Thoughts from Abroad

29 Monday Apr 2019

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Albion press, Arab treadle platen, Basingwerk parchment, Beetham, Bodoni roman, Christian Barnes, Cumbria, engravings, Robert Browning, Simon King Press, woodcuts


And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge—
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower
Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

Home Thoughts from Abroad
Robert Browning (1812-1889)
Beetham, Cumbria: Simon King Press, 1984

Simon King opened his press in 1981 with an Arab treadle platen and two Albion presses. One of his first projects was a series of single poems, illustrated with his own woodcuts. Edition of 250 numbered copies. Rare Books copy is no. 91.

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Ioyfvll newes out of the new-found vvorlde [order]

03 Tuesday Jul 2018

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American, Americas, apothecaries, armadillos, Atlantic, Bonham Norton, Book Arts Program, bookseller, botanists, Bristol, British, calf, cancer, cassava, cigars, cocoa, common cold, cure, De Jonge Amerikaan, disease, docks, English, entrepreneur, Europe, ginger, gold, handmade, herbs, Indians, Inquisition, iron, John Frampton, Jonathan Sandberg, London, medicine, merchants, minerals, monks, Native American, nephrite jade, Netherlands, New World, Nicolás Bautista Monardes, nicotain, papermaking, papers, paradise, physician, plant, poison, print culture, quinine, rhubarb, sasparilla, sassafras, Seville, silver, smoking, soldiers, Spanish colonies, syphilis, tobacco, tobaco, trade, vernacular, woodblock, woodcuts


“This is the substance which I haue gathered of this hearb, so celebrated and called Tobaco for that surely it is an hearb of great affirmation for the excellent vertues that it hath…”

Ioyfvll newes out of the new-found vvorlde
Nicolás Bautista Monardes (ca. 1500-1588)
London: E. Allde, by the assigne of Bonham Norton, 1596
Third English edition

Translated by John Frampton (fl. 1577-1596) from several treatises first published in 1565 by Nicolás Monardes, the son of a bookseller, and a distinguished physician of Seville. Monardes, who never traveled to the Americas, wrote several treatises  on healing, medicine, and trade with the Spanish colonies on the Atlantic. He learned most of what he wrote about from spending time at the Seville docks, where he gathered information from sailors, soldiers, merchants, monks, royal officials, and even women.

Monardes described the cultivation and use of quinine, sassafras, cassava, rhubarb, ginger, and sasparilla. He wrote about cocoa, armadillos, minerals and metals (iron, silver, nephrite jade), and diseases like syphilis.

He wrote a lengthy description of an American plant introduced to Europe, calling it “tobaco” or “nicotain,” which he claimed was an antidote to poison. He wrote of more than twenty conditions, including the common cold and cancer, that could be cured with the use of tobacco.

“The Indians of our Occidental Indias, doo use the Tobaco for to take away the wearinesse, and for to make lightsomnesse in their Labour, which in their Daunces they bee so muche wearied, and they remaine so wearie, that they can scarcely stirre: & because that they may labour the next day, and returne to do that foolish exercise, they receiue at the mouth and nose, the smoke of the Tobaco, and they remaine as dead people: and being so, they be eased in such sorte, that when they be awakened of their sleepe, they remaine without weariness, and may return to their labour as much as before, and so they doe alwaies, when they have need of it: for with that sleepe, they do receiue their strength and be much the lustier.”

John Frampton, a Bristol merchant, had been imprisoned by the Inquisition. He translated several Spanish texts about the New World while in confinement. The British looked upon the New World as long-lost paradise with its vegetative bounty and ancient wisdom regarding human ailments, beneficial not just for its precious metals but for its plants. Being published in the vernacular, first in Spanish, then in English, meant that common readers, along with botanists and apothecaries, bought the publications. Frampton, ever the entrepreneur, re-titled the work “joyful news,” counting on brisk sales of the book and the trade in plants from the Americas. The “trade” print culture disseminated new data targeted toward popular practicality but also imagination, circulating news of an “other” ready reality just waiting ’round the bend. Such was the miracle of discovery, such was the miracle of plants, such was the miracle of print.

Illustrated with twelve woodcuts depicting herbs and plants. Rare Books copy bound in 19th century calf, ruled in gold.


De Jonge Amerikaan
Netherlands, ca. 1800
NE1154 J66 1800z

Woodblock depicting a Native American in a feather headdress and loincloth smoking a long clay pipe in a coastal setting with two ships behind him. Around this scene are a crown, trident, winged-staff, cigars, snuff jar, tobacco leaves and baled tobacco. It is likely that this woodblock was printed on paper used for tobacco wrappers, a practice that began as early as 1660 in Holland, one of the world’s great shipping centers.

Below are three prints made by Jonathan Sandberg using the woodblock, demonstrating different papers, including a paper handmade by students in last spring’s papermaking class offered by the Book Arts Program.



On July 1, 2018 The University of Utah went tobacco free and said farewell to its last cigarette.

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Book of the Week — De Magnete magneticisqve corporibvs et de magna magnete tellure; Physiologia noua, plurimus & orgumentis, & …

20 Tuesday Feb 2018

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Cambridge, De magnete, Earl of Leicester, earth, electricity, England, Francis Bacon, Galileo, geographic poles, Greeks, iron, Isaac Newton, James I, Johannes Kepler, lodestone, London, Lord Burghley, magnet, magnetic lodestone, magnetic poles, magnetism, mariners, navigational tools, P. Short, physician, Queen Elizabeth I, Robert Boyle, Robert Dudley, Royal College of Physicians, Royal Physician, science, William Cecil, William Gilbert, woodcuts


“Non ex libris solum, sed ex rebus ipsis scientiam quaeritis.”

Gvilielmi gilberti colcestrensis, medici londinensis, de magnete magneticisqve corporibvs, et de magno magnete tellure; phsiologia noua, plurimis & argumentis, & experimentis demonstrata
William Gilbert (1540-1603)
Londini: excvdebat P. Short, 1600
First edition
QC751 G44 1600

This the only published work of William Gilbert, an attorney’s son who studied at Cambridge before practising as a physician in London, where he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1573 and its president in 1600. Through his contacts at court, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester; and William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Gilbert was made Royal Physician to Queen Elizabeth I in 1601, an appointment renewed by James I on his accession in 1603. Swank surroundings, but Gilbert earned his reputation from the publication of this book after eighteen years of dedicated labor.

In the six books of De magnete, William Gilbert discussed the history of magnetism. Although the magnetic lodestone had been used by the ancient Greeks, Gilbert argued that the Earth was a natural magnet, and the Earth’s magnetic poles are relatively near the geographic poles. As a result of this argument, mariners were better able to use the lodestone as an effective navigational tool. Considered the first great scientific book published in England, its importance is due to Gilbert’s reliance on experimental methods of research, a crucial development in the field of science.

While Gilbert was chiefly concerned with the properties of magnetism, he also wrote about the attractive effect of electricity. Because of this discussion he is considered the founder of electrical science. The English term “electricity” was not coined until 1646, but, in this book, Gibert wrote “Electrica, qua attrahunt eadem ratione ut electrum.” Gilbert’s experiments proved that the earth’s core is iron, and that the earth rotates daily — some twenty years before Galileo described the same.

De magnete describes Gilbert’s invention of the “Versorium,” the first instrument designed for the study of electric phenomena.

Johannes Kepler, Frances Bacon, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, and Galileo were all greatly influenced by this book.

The text is filled with eighty-eighty woodcuts, four of which are full-page, a folding plate, and decorative initials and head- and tail-pieces. Rare Books copy lacks folding plate.

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Book of the Week — Glasshouse

30 Tuesday Jan 2018

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Assam, botanical gardens, botany, British, British East India Company, Brooklyn, Camillia sinensis, exploitation, glasshouses, global commodities, India, Joseph Banks, Kozo, orchid, orchid hunters, Sakamoto, Sarah Nicholls, science, tea, woodcuts, Zerkal Ingres


“[Joseph] Banks reported in 1788 to the British East India Company that the climate in parts of northeast India was perfect for growing Camillia sinensis, the bush that produces tea leaves. The plant turned out to be indigenous to the Assam area, which eventually became a core producer of tea for the British market. Widespread worker exploitation was common on tea plantations throughout the 19th century…”

Glasshouse
Sarah Nicholls
Brooklyn, NY: Sarah Nicholls, 2016
N7433.4 N53 G53 2016

From the artist’s statement: “…a look at the history of greenhouses, a technology made to cultivate foreign plants in a controlled environment, originally in service to empire…In an era before the chemical industry, plants were the source of most economic advantage, so the cultivation of new kinds of plants taken from other areas of the world became important to Europeans. Botanical gardens were research facilities, not just collections of pretty flowers.


“Orchid hunters made their living traveling to remote locations to find the widest range and the rarest of breeds, to be shipped back to shipped back to Europe and sold at a profit as a luxury good. Hunters were competitive and secrective: they would strip bare entire populations of orchids to keep flowers from getting into their competitor’s hands and often traveled alone to prevent disclosing their favorite spots.”

The book has two sections: the first discusses the development of greenhouses as a technology, and the rise of botany as a science. The second looks at specific kinds of plants that became important as global commodities. Images are printed from multi-color woodcuts; they are meant to give the impression of walking through a greenhouse…I used translucency as a technique to mimic the effect you get as you pass through glass rooms full of plants. Longer passages of text are printed on overlays which are like the didactic captions you get in a botanical garden display.

Imagery is printed from woodcuts on Sakamoto, waxed kozo and Zerkal Ingres, based on original photographs…”

Sarah Nicholls’ work combines language, image, visual narrative, and time. She has written a collection of self-help aphorisms, published a series of free information pamphlets, and recently completed a field guide to extinct birds. She teaches printmaking and book arts at Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design.

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Book of the Week — Los Espanoles pintados por si mismos por varios autores

27 Monday Nov 2017

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bookseller, critics, cultural identity, engravers, essayists, French, Gaspar y Roig, Ignacio Boix, journalists, literary, Madrid, nationalist, personality, publishing, romaticism, Spanish, woodcuts, writers


El Ama del Cura

“Dear reader, it will not have escaped your insightful sensitivity that you are the friend to whom I have written from the beginning.” — Jose Maria Tenorio, loosely translated by Luise Poulton

Los Espanoles pintados por si mismos por varios autores
Madrid: Gaspar y Roig, 1851
DP48 E76 1851

This compilation of pieces, written by the most notable Spanish writers of the time, was published by bookseller Ignacio Boix, a central figure in the Madrid publishing world. The collection was first printed in two volumes between 1843 and 1844, and reprinted in 1851 in a single volume for the Illustrated Library of publishers Gaspar and Roig. Writers included journalists, essayists, critics, and a few anonymous characters, such as “The Solitary,” and “Curious Speaker.” The increasing diversity in the Spanish literary voice during this period of nationalist romanticism is highlighted in this collection, which focuses on Spanish personality and cultural identity. The collection is illustrated with woodcuts, a technique at which Spanish engravers became particularly adept during this period. The whole project was based on the French publication, Les français peint par eux-mêmes (The French painted by themselves), printed in 1849-42.


El Escribano


La Gitana


La Cigarrera

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Book of the Week — Prologue to the Tales of Caunterbury

21 Monday Aug 2017

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Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, Bishop Fell, C. St. John Hornby, Chelsea, Cicely Barclay, Clarendon Press, Diamond Jubilee, Doves Bindery, errata, Fell, Geoffrey Chaucer, gilt dentelles, gilt tooling, Margie Le Lacheur, matrices, Maunciple, morocco, Oxford, Queen Victoria, Squire, T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, The Ashendene Press, The Tales of Canterbury, typefaces, University of Oxford, W. Skeat, William Caxton, woodcuts, zinc cuts

PR1868-P8-S5-1898-Horseman
“For hym was levere have at his beddes heed
Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed,
Of Aristotle and his philosophie,
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie.
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
But al that he myghte of his freendes hente,
On bookes and on lernynge he it spente,
And bisily gan for the soules preye
Of hem that yaf hym wherwith to scoleye.
Of studie took he moost cure and moost heede.”
— Geoffrey Chaucer

Welcome, scholars!

Prologue to the Tales of Caunterbury
Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400)
Chelsea: The Ashendene Press, 1898
PR1868 P8 S5 1898

This is the ninth publication of the Ashendene Press and the first illustrated work from the Press. It was printed by C. St. John Hornby and his sisters with the assistance of Cicely Barclay for private circulation only, amongst their friends and neighbors. The text is that of the Clarendon Press edition of The Complete Works of Chaucer edited by Dr. W. Skeat, Oxford, 1895. An Errata page, bound in at the front, announces “the lamentable mistake of the Printers the portrait of the Maunciple has been set in the place of the Squire and vice versa,” along with a second “the” on page 13, line 15. The colophon states that the printing began in July and was finished “in December of the year of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria 1897.”

Illustrated with twelve zinc cut reproductions of the woodcuts used in William Caxton’s 1483 edition of The Tales of Canterbury. Typefaces are Fell, cast, as a note “To The Gentle Reader” says, “from the matrices given in about the year 1670 by Bishop Fell to the University of Oxford.”

Rare Books copy bound by Miss Margie Le Lacheur, a student of T. J. Cobden Sanderson, in full green morocco with gilt tooling consisting of a blossom, leaf, and vine pattern on the front cover and spine, gilt dentelles, and boards ruled in gilt. Gilt letters “L” and “M” at the top and “L” and “E” at the bottom of the front board and rear boards. The inside of the back board, in gilt, indicates “M.L – 1900.” Apparently, the book was bound by Lacheur for a family member. All edges gilt. Lacheur was employed by the Doves Bindery. She exhibited at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1899. Only three other bindings by Lacheur are known.

Edition of fifty copies, signed and dated by the printer. Rare Books copy is no. 25.

PR1868-P8-S5-1898-Cover

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Book of the Week — Bashārat Yasuʻ al-Masīḥ kamā kataba Mār Mattay waḥid min ithnay ‘ashar min talāmīdhihi

19 Monday Jun 2017

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Accademia del Disgno, Aleppo, Alessio dra Saggeto, Antonio Tempesta, Antonius Sionita, arabesque, Arabic, Armenian, Bashārat Yasuʻ al-Masīḥ, bi-lingual, Book of Hours, borders, Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, Christian, College of Sapienza, colophon, Eastern Orthodox Church, Europe, European, Flemish, Florence, font, French, frescoes, gilt, Giorgio Vasari, Giovanni Battista Raimondi, Gospels, Hebrew, Hungarian, Ibrahim Muteferrika, illustrations, Islam, Islamic, Istanbul, Joannes Stradanus, Latin, Leonardo Parasole, mathematics, Matthew, Medici, military, Mohamedan, morocco, movable type, Muslim, Near East, Orientalist, Ottomon Empire, Palazzo Vecchio, peace, Persian, political, Pope Gregory XIII, printing, religious, Robert Granjon, Romae, Roman Catholic Church, Roman type, Rome, Santi di Tito, science, scripture, sprinkled calf, stamps, Sultan Ahmed III, sword, Syrian, translation, typographer, Typographia Medicea, Vatican, Villa Farnese, Waqf, woodcuts

BS315-A66-1591-title
“Ne arbitremini quod ego uenetim ut mitterem super terram pacem; non ueni ut mitterem pacem, sed gladium (“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.)” — Matthew 10:34

Bashārat Yasuʻ al-Masīḥ kamā kataba Mār Mattay waḥid min ithnay ‘ashar min talāmīdhihi
Romae: in Typographia Medicea, MDXCI
Edicio princeps
BS315 A66 1591

Bashārat Yasuʻ al-Masīḥ, the first printed edition of the Gospels in Arabic, is the first production by the Typographia Medicea press, a printing house established by Pope Gregory XIII and Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici in order to promote and distribute Christian scripture to the Near East. Two issues of this work were printed, apparently simultaneously. One had Arabic-only text and was printed in an edition of 4,000 copies. The other, here, was printed in Arabic with interlinear Latin, in an edition of 3,000 copies. The Arabic-only edition has the date 1590 on the title-page, but 1591 in the colophon. Allegedly, a few of the bi-lingual copies were published with a preliminary leaf stating, “Sanctum Dei evangelium arab.-lat.” No known copies of this half-title are known to exist and this leaf may never have existed.

With a Latin translation ascribed to one Antonius Sionita, the book was edited by Giovanni Battista Raimondi (1540-ca. 1614), an esteemed Orientalist and professor of mathematics at the College of Sapienza in Rome. Raimondi travelled extensively in the Near East and was knowledgeable, if not fluent, in Arabic, Armenian, Syrian and Hebrew. His fame rests with the editorship of the Typographica Medicea. He and French typographer Robert Granjon, who created the Arabic font used in this work, were both recognized then and now for the earliest and best attempts to print Arabic in Europe.

Illustrated with 149 woodcuts, printed from 68 blocks, engraved by Leonardo Parasole (ca. 1587-ca. 1630). The artist, Antonio Tempesta (1555-1630), studied under Santi di Tito and Flemish artist Joannes Stradanus at the Accademia del Disgno. Tempesta later worked with Stradanus and Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) on the interior decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Tempesta then travelled to Rome, where he fulfilled several commissions, including frescoes for Pope Gregory XIII in the Vatican and panel paintings for the Villa Farnese. Many of the woodcuts are signed with the initials “AT” (Antonio Tempesta) and “LP” (Leonardo Parasole). The illustrations in Bashārat Yasuʻ al-Masīḥ are excellent examples of Tempesta’s work, noteworthy for their clear composition and narrative of the episodes depicted.

Be that as it may, the illustrations may have played a part in the failure of this book to reach, let alone convince, its intended Islamic audience. Islam forbade religious illustration and these may have made the Gospels appear less than sacred, if not sacrilegious, to Arab Muslim readers.

To be fair, the Christian church had a long tradition of presenting their message with religious illustrations. As far back as the sixth century, Pope Gregory defended the value of such imagery, arguing that pictures were useful for teaching the faith to the unconverted and for conveying sacred stories to the illiterate. According to Bede, St. Augustine introduced Christianity to the heathen King Ethelbert of Kent, upon landing on the British Isles, by presenting a picture of Christ painted on a wooden panel. He then began to preach.

The Pope seems also to have denied the fact that more Christians lived in the Ottoman Empire than in any other European state. The first printed book in Arabic was a Book of Hours, probably intended for export to Syrian Christians. But these Christians were adherents to the Eastern Orthodox Church, not the Pope’s Roman Catholic Church. Christianity was hardly unknown in the predominantly Muslim Ottoman and Persian Empires. The Ottomans were, however, Christian Europe’s major military and political concern.

In addition to printing the Gospels in Arabic, Ferdinando de’ Medici charged Raimondi with printing “all available Arabic books on permissable human science which had no religious content in order to introduce the art of printing to the Mohamedan community.” Despite the superb quality — textually, typographically, and artistically — of its work, the Medici press was an economic failure and went bankrupt in 1610. The fact is that Raimondi displayed little understanding of Islamic culture. Although Raimondi’s selection of publications was not aimed at European scholars, his choices stimulated a study of the Near East in Europe.

It would be more than a century after the Medici Press closed that Ibrahim Muteferrika, a Hungarian convert to Islam, was given permission by Sultan Ahmed III (1673-1736) to open his printing house in Istanbul, in 1729. This was not the first printing press established in the Near East, but it was the first Eastern press to print in Arabic using movable type.

Arabic and small roman type text within double-ruled borders. Colophon and printer’s note to reader in Latin. Colophon decorated with large woodcut arabesque.

Rare Books copy bound in full, eighteenth century, sprinkled calf, with a gilt spine containing two burgundy morocco labels, and decorative gilt borders on the covers. The first leaf is shaved and reinserted on contemporary paper. This leaf contains four Waqf stamps, indicating the authentication of the Arabic translation. As in most copies, our copy lacks a title page. A former owner’s penciled inscription, “Alessio Dra Saggeto/en Aleppo 1871,” is on the free front end paper. Another signature, in ink, is at the top of the back free end paper.

For more on the woodcuts, see Field, Richard S. Antonio Tempesta’s Blocks and Woodcuts for the Medicean 1591 Arabic Gospels, NE662 T45 F54 2001, in the rare book collections.

BS315-A66-1591-colophon

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Book of the Week — Athanasii Kircheri Societatis Iesu Magnes; sive, de arte magnetica

05 Monday Jun 2017

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animals, arrows, Athanasius Kircher, electromagnetism, Emperor, engravings, F. Valentini, Ferdinando IV, God, Greek, Hapsburg, hydraulics, Jesuit, lodestone, longitude, love, magnet, magnetism, Mars, Martin Martini, medicine, music, plants, rare books, Roman Catholic, symbol, tides, toys, universe, woodcuts, zodiac

QC751-K58-1654-title
““The highest mountain, the oldest books, the strangest people, there you will find the stone.” — Attributed to Athanasius Kircher

Athanasii Kircheri Societatis Iesu Magnes; sive, de arte magnetica
Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680)
Romae: sumptibus Blasii Deuersin, & Zanobii Masotti Bibliopolarum typis Vitalis Mascarditypis V. Mascardi, MDCLIV (1654)
Third and final edition
QC751 K58 1654

Athanasius Kircher learned Greek and Hebrew at the Jesuit school in Fulda. He continued his scientific studies at Paderborn, Cologne, and Koblenz, taking orders in 1628 as a Jesuit priest. He traveled to Paris, fleeing fighting in Germany, and settled in Rome in 1634. His rigorous scientific curiosity was girded by a mystical conception of natural laws and forces. His methodology ranged from scholastic to hands-on experimentation. He once had himself lowered into the crater of Vesuvius to observe its features soon after an eruption. He was a prolific writer, publishing forty-four books. More than 2,000 of his manuscripts and letters survive. He assembled one of the first natural history collections, housed in a museum after his name in Rome, and later dispersed throughout various institutions.

The third edition of Magnes sive de arte magnetica is the first to appear in folio format. It is virtually a new work, rewritten and expanded from the first edition (1641). This edition is Athanasius Kircher’s largest, most complete, and definitive treatise on magnetism and electromagnetism (a term coined by Kircher in this work), which he conceived as a universal force of nature. Kircher compiled measurements of magnetic declination from several places around the world as reported by Jesuit scholars. One of these, Martin Martini, suggested to Kircher the possibility of determining longitudes by the declination of a magnetic needle, a possibility which Kircher then introduced to the scientific community.

In this work Kircher included discussions about the magnetism of the earth and heavenly bodies, the tides, the attraction and repulsion in animals and plants, and the magnetic attraction of music and love. He addressed the practical applications of magnetism in medicine, hydraulics, the construction of scientific instruments, and toys. Above it all, God remained the central magnet of the universe.

QC751-K58-1654-Obelisk
Glass spheres contain wax figures incorporating magnets, which can be affected by the large magnet in the base of the obelisk. On the globes are letters and signs of the Zodiac to which the figures point. By manipulating the handle in front of the table skirt, the operator could rotate the central magnet and cause the figures to answer questions or spell out words. The Greek inscription on the ribbon at the top of the obelisk is the Hermetic axiom, “Nature rejoices in Nature.” — p. 275

Illustrated with thirty-two full-page engraved plates and more than one hundred and fifty ornamental woodcuts throughout the text. Title-page printed in red and black. Rare Books copy has odd little hand-inked drawings by a past owner throughout.

QC751-K58-1654-Portrait
The portrait of Ferdinando IV, reigning Hapsburg Emperor, to whom Magnes sive de arte magnetica is dedicated, contains magnetic needles in the shape of arrows, a lodestone, the eye of God, the orb and cross corresponding to the ancient symbol for Mars, and other, even more esoteric, symbols. This engraving embodies the doctrine of Roman Catholic monarchy as a divine institution, and the emperor and his empire as the microcosmic reflections of God and his universe. Ferdinando IV died the year this edition was published, at the age of 21. — Engraving by F. Valentini

QC751-K58-1654-Sunflower
Sundial in the form of a sunflower — p. 508

QC751-K58-1654-pg593
In southern Italy, most commonly in Apulia, dancing the Tarantella cured the tarantulla bite. — p. 593

Recommended reading:

Glassie, John. A Man of Misconceptions: The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change. New York: Riverhead Books, 2013
CT1098 K46 G53 2013, General Collection, L2

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Book of the week — Unnoticed Like a Bird

09 Monday Jan 2017

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Bertha Georgie Yeats, Betty C. Bowen, Centaur, flax, Jana Pullman, Macmillan Publishing Company, Madison, Mary Sprague, Nideggen, rare books, Ray Gloeckler, Richard J. Finneran, Sekishu Natural, Singletree Press, The Three Hermits, Western Slope Bindery, William Butler Yeats, Wisconsin, woodcuts

pr5902-a3-1987-spreadclosed

“The Three Hermits”

Three old hermits took the air
By a cold and desolate sea,
First was muttering a prayer,
Second rummaged for a flea;
On a windy stone, the third,
Giddy with his hundredth year,
Sang unnoticed like a bird:
‘Though the Door of Death is near
And what waits behind the door,
Three times in a single day
I, though upright on the shore,
Fall asleep when I should pray.’
So the first, but now the second:
‘We’re but given what we have earned
When all thoughts and deeds are reckoned,
So it’s plain to be discerned
That the shades of holy men
Who have failed, being weak of will,
Pass the Door of Death again,
And are plagued by crowds, until
They’ve the passion to escape.’
Moaned the other, ‘They are thrown
Into some most fearful shape.’
But the second mocked his moan:
‘They are not changed to anything,
Having loved God once, but maybe
To a poet or a king
Or a witty lovely lady.’
While he’d rummaged rags and hair,
Caught and cracked his flea, the third,
Giddy with his hundredth year,
Sang unnoticed like a bird.

Unnoticed Like a Bird: Poetry by William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
Madison, WI: Singletree Press, 1987
PR5902 A3 1987

Illustrated with woodcuts by Mary Sprague.

From the colophon:
“Unnoticed Like a Bird is the result of a year-long collaborative effort by Mary Sprague and Betty C. Bowen. The cover stock was made of flax by Jana Pullman.

pr5902-a3-1987-cover

Mary handprinted the illustrations on Sekishu Natural. The text is Centaur printed on Nideggen. With thanks to Ray Gloeckler…”

Jana Pullman, bookbinder, book artist, and papermaker, supervised the Repair Unit for the General Collection at the Marriott Library, The University of Utah, where she also taught conservation and bookbinding workshops. Her Minnesota-based bindery, Western Slope Bindery, is named after her geographic origins in Utah.

Further, from the colophon:
“These poems are reprinted with the permission of Macmillan Publishing Company from The Poems of W. B. Yeats: A New Edition edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright 1916, 1919, 1933, by Macmillan Publishing Company. Copyrights renewed 1944, 1947, 1961 by Bertha Georgie Yeats.”

Edition of thirty-five copies. Rare Books copy is no. 17.

pr5902-a3-1987-threehermits

pr5902-a3-1987-title

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We recommend — Saints at Devil’s Gate: Landscapes along the Mormon Trail

21 Wednesday Dec 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Recommended Exhibition, Recommended Reading

≈ Comments Off on We recommend — Saints at Devil’s Gate: Landscapes along the Mormon Trail

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Angelina Hawkins, Ann Agatha Walker Pratt, art, artist, book, Brigham Young, Byron C. Andreasen, catalog, Church History Museum, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, drawings, editor, emigrant, England, English, engravings, exhibition, France, Frederick Hawkins Piercy, Hampshire, James Linforth, Jersey, John Burton, journals, landscapes, Laura Allred Hurtado, Liverpool, London, Mary Pugh Scott, Millenial Star, Mormon, Mormon Trail, New Orleans, newspaper, Orson Pratt, paintings, Paris, portraiture, Portsea, proselytizing, Royal Academy of Arts, Saints at Devil's Gate, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake Valley, ship, Suffolk Street Gallery of the Society of British Artists, The Church Historian's Office Press, Utah, Wallace Stegner, woodcuts

siantscover

“For aren’t we all on a journey that tries our faith, tests our courage, makes us vulnerable, and at times defeats us and blisters our soul?”
— Laura Allred Hurtado

Saints at Devil’s Gate: Landscapes along the Mormon Trail
Laura Allred Hurtado and Byron C. Andreasen
Salt Lake City, UT: The Church Historian’s Office Press, 2016

Catalog to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City. The exhibition is free and open to the public and runs through August 2017. An online exhibit is also available at history.lds.org.

ps3537-t316-g36-1964-cover

“…if courage and endurance make a story, if human kindness and helpfulness and brotherly love in the midst of raw horror are worth recording, this…is one of the great tales of the West and of America.”
— Wallace Stegner, quoted in the Curator’s Essay.

e166-p65-titlee166-p65-kanesville

Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley Illustrated with Steel Engravings and Wood Cuts from Sketches…
Frederick Hawkins Piercy (1839-1891)
Liverpool: F. D. Richards; London: Latter-Day Saints’ Book Depot, 1854
First edition
E166 P65

“Frederick Piercy was the eighth of nine children born in Portsea, Hampshire, England. He joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on March 23, 1848, and a year later, he married Angelina Hawkins, also a convert. When Piercy was twenty and his wife was expecting their first child, he left for a short mission to Paris, France. In addition to proselytizing, he produced artwork and can be considered a predecessor to the Paris art missionaries who came years later.

“Piercy was an artist know for portraiture and landscapes, and he exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts and at the Suffolk Street Gallery of the Society of British Artists in London prior to leaving for the Salt Lake Valley. In 1853, then twenty-three years old, Piercy left England aboard the emigrant ship Jersey, which was headed for New Orleans. He and James Linforth, an editor for the Mormon newspaper Millennial Star, published a collection of engravings and woodcuts made from Piercy’s drawings, paintings, and journals in the book Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley. Instead of remaining in Utah like many others, Piercy returned to England shortly after his trip. By April 1857, after refusing to return to the Salt Lake Valley at the behest of both Brigham Young and Orson Pratt, Piercy and his wife left the Mormon faith.”
— Laura Allred Hurtado

e166-p65-slce166-p65-gsl

moon
— New Beginnings, John Burton, 2016 oil on canvas, from Saints at Devil’s Gate

“I never shall forget the last day we traveled, and arrived in the Valley… When my eyes rested on the beautiful entrancing sight — the Valley; Oh! how my heart swelled within me, I could have laughed and cried, such a comingling [sic] of emotions I cannot describe…No doubt our valley looks astonishingly beautiful to the strangers who come here now, but it cannot evoke the same emotions as it did to us, poor weary tired, worn out, ragged travelers.” — Ann Agatha Walker Pratt

“Behind us now are the heart aches and many thousands of silent tears that fell on the long unknown trail.” — Mary Pugh Scott
–from Saints at Devil’s Gate

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