Birds part I

If you look carefully you’ll begin to notice birds in all sorts of medieval manuscripts, used as anything from decorative flourishes to representations of the divine.  In this series of posts I’ll explore a variety of bird imagery, beginning today with ornamental figures and moving on to birds as symbols of power.  In the next post, birds of morality, philosophy, and religion.  (As usual, click the images to go directly to the sources.)

Our first examples come from Huntington Library HM 65, a copy of Ptolemy’s Almagest made in southern France in 1279.  This is an astronomical text, so the birds and other animals in the margins are purely decorative.  Like acanthus leaves and running hares, these birds are a familiar visual trope of the period.  Out of all the medieval birds they’re probably my favorites.

Sometimes birds illuminations aren’t just decorative but refer to the text.  Harvard University’s Houghton Library MS Typ 0446 is a 13th-century Latin Bible.  On one page we see a decorative bird perched on an illuminated initial, but in Exodus a stork appears with a frog in its beak—a reference to the plague of frogs.

Birds also grace the bindings of books.  These clasps date from 14th-century Germany.  Columbia University X242.1.S.

Bird in a blind stamped binding, bound between 1510 and 1519 by a Dutch binder named John Reynes who was active in London.  Huntington Library HM 36336.

The margins of manuscripts were a kind of no-man’s land where artists could explore subversive fears and fantasies.  The creepier aspects of birds are apparent in these grotesques from the pages of a 16th-century Dominican gradual.  University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center HRC 013.

But manuscript birds were just as likely to have a humorous character.  The Macclesfield Psalter, for instance, depicts a man riding a ‘hobby duck’.

A charming bird sneaks a bite from a penwork initial, from the University of Notre Dame, Hesburgh Library MS 12.  You are what you eat, after all.

Birds were also common as heraldic devices and symbols of authority.  This lovely 13th-century wax seal featuring a bird on a branch is affixed to a “Quit claim by Gwenllian, widow of Madoc ap Seycil to the monks of Abbey Dore of her widow’s third of the 4 1/2 bovates of land on Grosmont hill which Madoc gave to them for his burial for her soul and the soul of Madoc.”  Lawrence, University of Kanses, Kenneth Spencer Research Library MS 191:13.

The Luttrell Psalter is famous for its idealized depiction of English manor life.  Here a peasant feed chickens and a man uses a slingshot to drive crows from the newly tilled fields.  In this case the birds are a significant part of the manuscript’s meta-narrative: depicting its patron Geoffrey Luttrell as a benevolent and pious lord presiding over a bountiful estate.

Another way that birds embodied power and status was via falconry scenes — depictions of the nobility engaging in one of their favorite pastimes.  You could argue that owning a falcon was the medieval equivalent of driving a super car or owning a yacht, and wealthy book patrons would have enjoyed seeing this high status activity reflected in the pages of the luxury texts they commissioned.   Below is the illumination for the month of May from the Fecamp Psalter, created in France circa 1180.

Ptolemy with a falcon, from Der Naturen Bloeme, a 14th-century Flemish bestiary, KB KA 16.

Two examples of falconry from British Library Yates Thompson 13, a 14th-century English book of hours: the first is part of a calander page for the month of May.

Readers in Art

The very cool Art Inconnu blog features ‘forgotten, little-known, and under-appreciated art’, and two recent posts have highlighted images of readers – check out Reading Part 1 and Part 2.  [via BibliOdyssey]

Binding Websites

At the beginning of the semester we had a really good class on the history of bookbinding, and since then I’ve been looking around for related websites to share here.  Binding, like typecasting, is an aspect of book history that’s difficult to grasp based solely on written descriptions and photos.  And unfortunately, a lot of websites provide nice images but assume previous knowledge on the part of the reader.  The Princeton University Firestone Library, however, has an excellent online exhibit, Hand Bookbindings: Plain and Simple to Grand and Glorious.  After an introductory set of images it begins with The Early Codex and Coptic Sewing and continues with detailed discussions of changes in binding practice over time, the importance of specific book structures, and international binding trends.  The site features lots of wonderful pictures of antique books and has a great user interface that allows easy magnification of any part of the image.

More binding sites:

• The International Dunhuang Project has a fascinating, in-depth page on the history of Chinese bookbinding with lots of good pictures and instructive diagrams.
• The University of Iowa has an extensive gallery of educational binding models.
• From the University of Alabama, a very colorful exhibit called The Art of Books: Publisher’s Bindings Online, 1815-1930.  Be sure to check out the galleries.
• The British Library has a searchable database of bindings, along with a fun gallery that displays 25 random images.
• Featured in one of my previous posts, a 1961 film on the profession of bookbinding.

Please feel free to share if you know of any other good binding sites!

• Endymion: A poetic romance, by John Keats.  London: Taylor and Hessey, 1818.  Princeton University, Firestone Library.

Books in Painting

The Moneylender and His Wife (1514) by Quentin Massys/Metsys.  I recently saw this painting at the Renaissance Faces exhibition at the National Gallery.  According to the Louvre website the book represents spiritual duty, and the woman is being distracted by from it by the man’s activities, which represent worldly desires.  At first glance I thought it might be a book of hours, but the text is wrong, so my next guess would be a book of saints’ lives.  There were quite a few paintings in the exhibition featuring readers or individuals holding books, as well as two illuminated pieces, one a miniature by Simon Marmion (I wish I could remember the names of some of the other works so I could post them).  Otherwise, the exhibit was just meh.  But I did some googling and ran across a book that sounds interesting, The Look of Reading: Book, Painting, Text.  I’ll try to pick it up at the library tomorrow.

Two other recent exhibits (that I enjoyed more) are Cold War Modern at the Victoria and Albert Museum (running through 11 January) and Darwin: Big Idea at the Natural History Museum (to 19 April).

Diamonds in the Rough

I’ve spent a lot of time on the Tube lately, and have become enamored of the Poems on the Underground.  When you happen onto one it’s like all the noise stops for a minute.

The program began in 1986, and three sets of poems are presented each year.  Check out the current set (scroll down a bit), visit the archive, or try a random poem of the day.

Books of Hours

The following two images are from MS Type 443, an illuminated, late 15th century book of hours in the digital collection of Harvard’s Houghton Library.*

The book of hours originated in the 13th century.  One of the most common forms of late Medieval illuminated manuscript, it was a religious text for laypeople, often women.  Many of these volumes were important works of art and indicators of social status, though less elaborate versions were available for those of moderate means, especially following the development of mass book production in the 1400s.  These books provided a framework for Christian devotion throughout the year by organizing psalms and prayers, the choice of which could be adapted to different tastes.  Most books of hours include calendars and seasonal or zodiacal themes like those below.  And like MS Type 443, most books of hours were written in Latin.

October, carrying grain:

November, gathering acorns:

From the catalog description of MS Typ 443:

The text is written in a gothic rotunda book-hand in one column.
Each page has an outer border panel in tempera and gold in trompe-l’oeil style. Many pages have full borders in this style. There are also 7 miniatures, 14 historiated borders, 28 historiated initials, and 24 calendar illustrations in tempera and gold. (At least 23 further miniatures originally in the ms. are now missing.) The illuminators include the Master of the Houghton Miniatures (named for this ms.), the Ghent Associates of the Master of Mary of Burgundy, the Louthe Master or Simon Marmion, and the Master of the Dresden Prayerbook.

Trompe-l’oeil, meaning “to deceive the eye,” is a style of painting which utilizes perspective and shading to create the illusion of three dimensions on a flat surface.  I’ve seen it in other online books of hours, but used here it is especially lovely and delicate (it’s what drew me to the volume in the first place). Do check out the links to the illuminators above, it’s really fascinating stuff.

Looking at these pages I also became curious about the structure of the book and the text itself.  Unfortunately, my Latin and palaeography skills aren’t quite up to the task, but I found two websites with more information:

— The Frick Fine Arts Library at the University of Pittsburgh has a very nice page detailing the structure of a typical book of hours, featuring examples and images from one of their holdings, the Frick Book of Hours.

— Medievalist.net, run by Glenn Gunnhouse of Georgia State University, is fantastic.  It includes an introduction to books of hours and an entire book of hours in Latin and English, side by side, plus a calendar of saint’s days, an entire YouTube channel, and list of online resources for Medieval art.

For general information on Medieval illumination check out these sites:

— Highlights of Digital Scriptorium.  This database provides access to manuscripts from a number of institutions, and has made available many wonderful images.

— Continuing their tradition of excellent web tutorials, the British Library has a great site on illuminated manuscripts.  It’s split into an into an introduction and five time periods, from pre-800 AD up to 1400-1600. Lots of nice images here, too.

— The National Library of the Netherlands features images and information related to several types of manuscripts, including highlights like “fabulous animals,” “death by unnatural causes,” and “devils and demons.”  (The images on this site are supposed to enlarge when you click them, but maybe there’s something wrong with my browser, becuase it’s not working.)

*Special thanks to the Houghton Library for allowing me to use these images and adding the attributions.

Links

Tons of links this week!

— So, the Olympic opening ceremony!  The very beautiful first half of the show featured ancient Chinese paper and printing technology, including a giant LED scroll, human calligraphy, a troop of dancers dressed as Confucian disciples carrying bamboo scrolls, and a truly amazing homage to movable type.   (I certainly never thought that I would hear an NBC announcer talking about “movable printing.”)  Unfortunately I, and it seems no one else, can find any video online.  So check out this BBC page for photos (they captured more of the book history stuff than NBC or CNN).  If you want to take a shot with video here’s the Wired guide to watching the Olympics online.

— Hoefler & Frere-Jones point out the intensely beautiful work of typographer and graphic designer Janno Hahn.  Do check out the gallery on Hahn’s website.  I will probably make some desktops for my computer from these images.

— Acephalous discusses the 1934 obscenity case that was decided in favour of Ulysses.

— PhiloBiblos and Upward Departure report on the sentencing of Richard Delaney, an electrician who stole £89,000 worth of rare materials from the Birmingham University Library.  Apparently the guy claimed he was going to read and then return them?!  Terrible.

— Morbid Anatomy shares some wonderfully creepy images from The Dances of Death Through the Various Stages by Hans Holbein the Younger reproduced as copperplate engravings by Dabid Deuchar in 1803.

— Satirical maps of World War I at BibliOdyssey.

Bookride continues a great series called “Where Do You Get These Books?”  This week’s installment is on the perils and pleasures of Book Towns.

— Book Patrol farewells skilled marbler Ann Muir.

— The Exile Bibliophile gets the prize for discovering the best toy ever.  If only I had several hundred extra dollars lying around.

— Hoefler & Frere-Jones also point us to an awesome pencil collection website.  I have to stop looking before I drool on the keyboard.

— The New York Times presents a sideshow titled “Book Ads: The Golden Age, 1962-1973.  Via Quillblog.

Medieval Graphic Design

Yale’s Beinecke Library hosts an interesting online exhibit titled The Speculum Theologiae in Beinecke MS 416. The project was completed by undergraduates in 2006 as part of a seminar titled “The Medieval World of Umberto Echo’s Name of the Rose,” taught by Brian Noell.

According to the exhibit, Speculum Theologiae were common teaching and meditation tools of the Middle Ages, used primarily by monks and the clergy. They combined religious and moral statements with concrete diagrams in order to foster an understanding of the ways in which various concepts were connected.

The exhibit gives an excellent overview of this teaching tool and how it fit into the broader Medieval culture. Each of the ten pages of the manuscript is analyzed in detail, with a full explanation of the diagram’s symbolism and religious meaning. All the pages have been scanned beautifully and each has a corresponding image in which the original text has been replaced by an English translation. (Thanks to the translation of the Tower of Wisdom I now know that I’m doing everything wrong. Apparently I don’t think about death enough.)

Below you can see one of the images, the Tree of Vices, which I liked a lot. I can’t help but be reminded of scientific charts used to illustrate the descent of species over time, and that leads me to wonder whether designs of this type may have influenced later graphic arts and scientific illustration.

No Touching, Please

One occasionally gets the impression that certain book bloggers at The Guardian are stretching to find something to write about.

In her most recent post, Molly Flatt complains about the Victoria & Albert Museum’s new exhibit, Blood on Paper: The Art of the Book, calling it ”a beautiful morgue, where ranks of stylised books sit behind glass like crisp butterfly corpses pinned to velvet.”  The problem?  You’re not allowed to touch the items on display.

Of all the criticisms I’ve ever heard of a museum exhibition this has to be the silliest.  Flatt seems to think that there is absolutely no value to be gained from simply looking at book art.  She backs this assertion by claiming that she saw people trying to touch the sculptures in the exhibit.  What she fails to explain is why book sculptures are any different than non-book-related pieces of sculpture.  Of course people want to touch them, and I’m sure it would add quite a lot to the experience, but no one complains when they can’t finger the Pietà.

Does she think that people should just be allowed to handle these books and artworks as much as they want?  Thousands of visitors each day?  What a nightmare to have to monitor all those people and books to ensure that nothing was damaged or stolen, not to mention the simple wear that would occur with even the most well-behaved patrons.  It’s almost unthinkable.   Thus, the only option aside from glass and roping-off is to not display the pieces at all.  What would you prefer? 

Ms. Flatt also praises Stephen Fry in the recent Gutenberg documentary.

Thank heavens for Stephen Fry. Watching him finger a perfectly preserved original Gutenberg Bible in his programme about the German’s groundbreaking press was quite possibly the most moving TV moment of the year so far. “It isn’t a fragile little thing, like an ornament,” he whispered, all quivering, deep-throated joy. “After all, it was made to be used more than once a day… it’s a useful object’.

Fry is right about the Bible; it was originally meant to be a useful object.  But what Flatt ignores is that in the intervening years it has developed important cultural meaning and, in handling it, Fry is a lone researcher in a highly controlled setting.  No one would ever put a Gutenberg Bible, or any other rare book, on display in such a way that it could be touched by the general public.  Yet I’ve never heard anyone complain about the New York Public Library’s Gutenberg being kept behind glass like a stuck butterfly.  Most people think it’s awesome that it’s on display at all.

Flatt’s next argument is that, instead of visiting this exhibit to understand book art, the reader should pick up a paperback:

The contemporary book’s art lies in its practical, mass-produced nature; it is a social miracle we rarely notice because it fits our everyday lives so perfectly. The cheapness, lightness and uniformity of the humble modern paperback make it the heir to Gutenberg’s miracle – not the V&A’s elaborate, exclusive artistic tomes.

I love paperbacks and the way they’ve made reading material accessible.  I’m a huge fan of Penguin.  But Flatt doesn’t acknowledge that the experiences of reading a paperback and of seeing unique, visionary artwork in a museum are both valuable, if in different ways.  They each have something to contribute to our intellectual awareness, each their pros and cons.  Why can’t we fit both into our lives as bibliophiles?

Are books meant to be touched, held and leafed through?  Of course.  Is it frustrating for a book lover to walk through an exhibit of amazing books and not be able to handle the objects?  Absolutely.  But as adults we understand why we’re not allowed to do that, and know ahead of time that we will be using only our eyes to enjoy the art on display.  If you want more interaction you should buy a copy of your own, or find a friendly librarian or archivist, if the book is available and not unique like some of the works at the V&A.  But it’s hard to justify disparaging an entire exhibit based solely on the fact that you can’t handle the material.

PS: When I visit the glassed-in Book of Kells during my vacation in September I’ll be sure to feel thoroughly disgusted with the experience.

History of the Birds of New Zealand Part II

I wrote recently about discovering naturalist Walter Buller and his lovely History of the Birds of New Zealand. To find out more, I made an interlibrary loan request for his biography, Walter Buller, the Reluctant Conservationist by Ross Galbreath, and it finally arrived two weeks ago from the Library of Congress. This was really exciting in and of itself because I’ve never borrowed from the LOC before. The downside is that you have to use their books within the library, so I spent a couple of weeks worth of lunch hours reading it.

It was definitely worth it. Galbreath does a great job telling Buller’s life story and setting it within the social, political and scientific contexts of the time. In fact, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in general New Zealand history. It contains a wealth of information about European colonization, including relationships between settlers and Maori, the shady land deals that occurred on a huge scale, and the settlers’ shifting attitudes toward land, nature and the colonial relationship with Britain. The only thing to be aware of is that the author presupposes a familiarity with New Zealand history, including Maori words and cultural concepts that are not well known outside the country.

Best of all for the book historian, Galbreath includes lots of information on the production and distribution of Buller’s books, including a nice explanation of the differences in lithography (used in the first edition) and chromolithography (used in the second edition,) as well as a series of images showing the working process of the artist J. G. Keulemans.

You can see in the following photo some of the differences between the editions, with the more delicate and vibrant hand-colored lithograph at the top and the olive-toned (because of the type ink used in the process) chromolithograph at the bottom.

As for Buller himself, I was completely unprepared for what I found in the biography. I’d read Audubon’s diaries, so I thought I was inured to mindless slaughter in the name of science, but Buller’s sheer effrontery really blew me away. Part of it was due to the time period. Many Europeans justified the destruction of native species as “survival of the fittest,” the fittest being the introduced species and the Europeans themselves. It is clear that Buller held this view his entire life. He wrote repeatedly that New Zealand birds had no hope of survival, and rather than instituting what he saw as useless protective measures, the only logical step was to take as many specimens as possible before they were all extinct.

At the end of the 19th century, however, sentiments changed. Activists in Britain and the colonies began to see native flora and fauna as deserving of protection. This became a moral issue, with New Zealand one of the first countries to incorporate the word conservation into the vernacular.

Buller, always keen to impress the European elite, publicly paid lip service to this ideal while continuing to take rare specimens for himself and as gifts for prominent British scientists and aristocrats, often sending multiples of the same species to one person. Even after hunting bans were imposed he continued to take specimens. When an island nature preserve was proposed he offered to organize an expedition to capture live Huia on the mainland and transfer them to the island. Instead, he sent the birds to a collector in Britain and told the government that the trip had been fruitless. At this time he wrote publicly of his sadness at the loss of native species, but in private continued to argue that the birds were doomed anyway.

Galbreath argues that, ironically, it was Buller’s own books that helped change the perception of New Zealand wildlife. The beautiful and widely popular illustrations contributed toward the new perception that the country’s flora and fauna were unique and special, and should be considered a source of national pride rather than something to be replaced by European species. New Zealanders whose conservation ideals had been, in part, shaped by Buller’s work now derided his endless quest for specimens and lukewarm support of preservation schemes.

Buller’s legacy is mixed. Luckily, it was his views of conservation that passed into history, while his book A History of the Birds of New Zealand retains its status as a work of natural history and art. Its approachable text and iconic illustrations helped to shape a culture of preservation that is still an important aspect of New Zealand society.  I’d definitely recommend both the History of the Birds of New Zealand and Ross Galbreath’s excellent biography to anyone with an interest in natural history and the conservation movement.