Themselves are only mystic books

For Valentine’s Day I’m sharing one of my favorite poems — John Donne’s Elegy XIX: To his Mistress going to bed.  This is its second appearance in print, from the third edition of his poetry published in 1669.

The poem, denied a license for publication in the first edition, was printed first in an anthology in 1654 before taking its place alongside his other works in 1669.  Visit Texas A&M’s Digital Donne website to see the entire text, as well as other early Donne books and manuscripts.

None of Donne’s poetry was printed before his death in 1631, but pieces such as this one did circulate widely in manuscript.  You can read more about that, and see some manuscript examples, in a fascinating short essay at the Folger Library: John Donne’s “To His Mistress Going to bed” As an Open Source.

Elegy XIX: To his Mistress going to bed

Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defie,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tir’d with standing though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heavens Zone glittering,
But a far fairer world incompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th’ eyes of busie fooles may be stopt there.
Unlace your self, for that harmonious chyme,
Tells me from you, that now it is bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envie,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beautious state reveals,
As when through flowry meads th’hills shadows steales.
Off with that wyerie Coronet and shew
The haiery Diadem which on your head doth grow:
Now off with those shooes, and then softly tread
In this loves hallow’d temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes, heaven’s Angels us’d to be
Reveal’d to men: thou Angel bringst with thee
A heaven like Mahomets Paradice, and though
Ill spirits walk in white; we easly know,
By this these Angels from an evil sprite,
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
Licence my roaving hands, and let them go,
Before, behind, between, above, below,
O my America! my new-found-land,
My Kingdom’s safest, when with one man man’d.
My Myne of precious stones: My Emperie,
How am I blest in thus discovering thee?
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be,
Full nakedness! All joyes are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth’d must be,
To taste whole joyes. Jems which you women use
Are like Atlanta’s ball: cast in mens views,
That when a fools eye lighteth on a Jem,
His earthly soul may court that, not them:
Like pictures or like books gay coverings made,
For lay-men are all women thus arrayed.
Themselves are only mystick books, which we,
(Whom their imputed grace will dignifie)
Must see revealed. Then since that I may know;
As liberally, as to thy Midwife shew
Thy self: cast all, yea, this white lynnen hence
There is no pennance due to innocence:
To teach thee I am naked first, why than
What needst thou have more covering then a man.

Death and the Press

While writing about the Danse macabre in a recent post I remembered this, the oldest known illustration of mechanical printing.  It’s from a chapbook version of the Danse macabre printed in Lyons in 1499, at the very end of the incunabula period.

By this time printing has spread across Europe and the structure of the wooden press and the workflow of the printing house are well established.  On the left of the woodcut sits the compositor, filling his tray with letters from the case.  Beside him, resting on the bench, is the forme which holds the type tightly together during printing; this one looks like it holds two pages, making a folio-sized book.  The page sticking up is the copy that he works from.

In the middle are the two pressmen, one waving an ink ball.  These were made of treated, stuffed leather and the inker worked with one in each hand to spread the special, greasy ink on the assembled type.  The third man would have operated the press itself, pulling on the wooden bar to lower the heavy platen, squeezing the paper onto the inked forme.  The detail here is very good—the large wooden screw in the top of the press is clear and the press stone, which holds the forme and slides in and out for easy access, is visible.  The press is also accurately shown as being stabilized via beams attached to the ceiling.  The image on the right is a stationer’s shop, which were sometime attached to printing houses.

On a side note, one has to feel for the poor inker: with his colleagues dead and work at a standstill he’s loosing a day’s wages.  No wonder he’s yelling.

Of course, printing hadn’t been invented when the Danse macabre became popular in the late fourteenth century.  The inclusion of new technology into an old illustrative tradition shows that book designers were innovative even when copying older manuscript forms.  And I imagine that it was a fun bit of self-referential black humor to the printers, known for being a bawdy, jovial lot.

This wasn’t the last time death would appear allegorically in the printing house.  The illustration below is from a Danse macabre published at Lyons in 1568, nearly seventy years later, though the date of the woodcut itself is uncertain as they were often reused.  It’s a copy of the 1499 image, and though this artist was less talented, he seems to have been as familiar with the print shop as was his predecessor.  He has included details that are unclear or not visible in the older woodcut, such as the second ink ball, the platen, and the forme on the press stone; and he’s made the halfway finished forme next to the compositor four-pages (quarto-sized) rather than copying the two-page forme above.

Just a note:  The 1499 woodcut is very well-known, but I discovered the second through a short article titled ‘An Early Picture of a Printing Press’ by William M. Ivins in the Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. 19, 1924.

Typecasting on Film

Via Typoretum, short films featuring Stan Nelson of Atelier Press, part of a planned 30 min documentary on letterpress printing called Out of Sorts.  These four shorts are extremely well-done, making it easy to see and understand what’s happening in the fairly complex process of type production.  The assembly of a mold from its component parts, which I’ve never seen on another video, is worth its metaphorical weight in gold.  And the tempering segment is quite exciting— another fine example of why books are not as safe and boring as they’re made out to be.  I’ve listed the films in chronological order below (just keep in mind that the first starts a bit abruptly with the tempering of the matrix rather than its initial creation).  I’m looking forward to seeing more clips and the completed film.

1: Striking and tempering matrices

2: Assembling a 72 pt. mold

3: Casting type

4: Dressing type

Do You Know This Fish?

Yesterday I took the afternoon off and splurged a bit.  I have a decidedly nerdy passion for antique technology, much of which fits neither my collecting budget nor my living space.  One of the exceptions* is old type, which meets all the right criteria—small and inexpensive but with a satisfying tactility and lovely smell of grease and ink.  (Oh, and it’s sort of related to what I study for a living.)  These are my first purchases; I’m afraid it may become a habit when I have money again.

* I also enjoy fountain pens, scientific/engineering tools, and cameras.

I’d had my eye on Moby Dick here for months.  Now you are mine!  (Note to self: purchase white ink.)

Spotting this Penguin logo in the crowded case was one of my favorite moments in antiquing ever.  Now I can put it on everything I own.

Then there’s this:

Yes, yes it is a very dapper fish wearing a top-hat, monocle, and tail-coat.  With a cane in his fin.

The bizarre thing is that it seems so familiar, yet I can’t place it.  Is it a character from an old advertising campaign?  Or maybe it’s just that I’ve seen so many other dressed-up fish in cartoons and illustrations.  (He’s also reminiscent of Mr. Peanut.)  If anyone wants to help me out here… you know the drill.

Museum Day

I had two essays due on Wednesday, so for a break I took Thursday off and went to the Science Museum and the V&A.

Half of the main hall of the Science Museum is taken up by a wonderful gallery called ‘Making the Modern World‘ that showcases important technologies and inventions from 1750 to the present.  Some of the things I was particularly taken with included a working model of a belt-driven workshop, Watson and Crick’s DNA model, the first difference engine, the first atomic clock, glass created by the Trinity nuclear test, and a Jacquard loom with punch-cards.  I was a bit disappointed, though, that there were no examples of printing technology on display, especially since the nineteenth century was such an innovative period for the industry.  Upstairs, though, is a walkway overlooking the main gallery, and lining it are models, like this one:

A scale-model of the Timson MK III Litho Wun-Up from 1976.

(Sorry for the blurriness.)  So, not exactly revolutionary, but kind of cool anyway.  Especially that mid-century avocado green; how could you go wrong with that?

Next stop was the V&A where I wandered, completely lost, through galleries for several hours (and this wasn’t even my first visit).  Here are the bookish highlights.  First, in the twentieth-century design room, this awesome, wildly impractical bookshelf that I believe has been featured in a number of blog posts about unique bookshelves:

Next, a display on the 40th anniversary of the Booker Prize, including short-listed and winning novels from the collection of Peter Straus.  (Again, apologies for the quality, my camera does not do well in low light.)

Look what I did; I made an E!

Thanks to a discussion on the SHARP mailing list I’ve finally been able to see the lovely Stephen Fry Gutenberg documentary, which was uploaded to YouTube recently.  Though I did quibble with some oversimplified pronouncements (historians: it’s just what we do), I really enjoyed it, especially Fry’s infectious joy while cutting a type punch or handcrafting paper.  The show is available in 6 ten-minute segments and looks pretty good in full-screen.  Here’s the first bit, which takes place in the British Library!

Imposition

I arrived in London last Sunday and the following day began induction week for my MA.  So far I’m loving it.  We had classes each day last week, including lectures in basic book history and excellent introductions to Senate House Library, the British Library and the St. Bride Printing Library.

I really enjoyed our guest lectures: Alan Cole of the Museum of Writing (part of Senate House Library) brought in a variety of writing artifacts, including a Sumerian pictograph tablet inscribed with a very early transitional form of A.  We even got to try our hand at writing with traditional instruments: reed pen on papyrus, Roman styli on wax tablet, and quill pen to paper.  Friday was spent at St. Bride’s, where Nigel Roche held an excellent session on the history and technology of printing and demonstrated the hand-casting of type.  Then we practiced composing lines of type and printing on an antique hand press.

I found the hands-on sessions extremely gratifying.  No matter how much you read, some concepts will be easier to grasp in person, particularly the production of type.  In that vein I present Nigel’s guide to understanding imposition—the layout of individual pages on each sheet of paper sent through the printing press.

What you need:

Step 1:  Turn the paper to landscape orientation and fold horizontally:

Step 2:  Turn the newly folded page to landscape orientation and fold again in the same way:

Step 3: Now you have a little booklet.  Rotate it so that the spine is held in your left hand and the loose edges are at the bottom.  Like so:

Step 4: Number the pages, including the opposite sides:

Step 5:  The last page should be #8.  Unfold the paper and look at the order of pages. Notice that the folds have created eight individual pages (four per side), making this book the size known as quarto.  (Of course, our example is smaller than a typical quarto.)

Also note that adding the page numbers across equals one more than the total number of pages. 1+8=9; 4+5=9, and so on.  This pattern will always be present no matter what size book is being produced.  For instance, a larger folio has one fold and four individual pages, and the page numbers always add up to five.

Finally, each side of the page has its own name: the side with page 1 is called the outer form.  The opposite side, with page 2, is called the inner form.  The entirety of the form would be composed together (with pages 1 and 8 pointing in the opposite direction from pages 4 and 5) and printed in one pull.  Once everything has been printed and ordered the pages are trimmed so that they’re no longer connected at the top.  In the early modern era the finished stack of pages was often sold unbound, allowing the customer to have the book bound to his or her own specifications.

Book History Timeline

Fellow SHARPist Dr. Paul Dijstelberge has discovered a nifty timeline creation website called Dipity which he’s used to start a fantastic printing and book history timeline.  He’s added a lot of content, including images, text and Google maps, and has invited other book historians to request editor status.  I’m looking forward to contributing in the weeks to come!

Egypt and the Engraving Machine

The man above, Nicolas-Jacques Conté, was the inventor of the modern pencil and the world’s first engraving machine.  I’ve been reading about him in Napoleon and the Scientific Expedition to Egypt, an online exhibit from the Linda Hall Library (all the images in this post are from the LHL.)

Conté was one of Napoleon’s 150 savants, intellectuals charged with the study of Egypt’s culture and natural history during the French invasion, which began in 1798.  Conté was known as a mechanical genius (he was put in charge of the expedition’s balloon corps,) but had originally been a portrait painter in pre-Revolutionary France.  As a cultural observer in Egypt he made detailed studies of local trades and technologies, and he became responsible for publishing the expedition’s scientific record, the Description de l’Égypte, after his return to France in 1802. (Though he died in 1805 before the project was completed.)

The Linda Hall exhibit explains the necessity for mechanical engraving in producing the Description:

The first edition of the Description de l’Égypte eventually included 837 copperplate engravings, most of them impressively large elephant folios and some of them even bigger, double-elephant folios that were twice as large.  A single plate might require hundreds of engraved lines to faithfully portray, for example, the cloudless Egyptian sky.  The sky had to appear dark at the top and fade gradually to a pale expanse at the horizon… It stretched the limits of human ability, and the time to complete a single plate by traditional methods could be up to six months.

Conté’s machine (pictured below in an engraving from the Description) made it possible to quickly create long, uniform lines in a variety of depths.  This cut production time down from months to days for each plate, though it still took 20 years for the entire work to be completed due to the vast amounts of material and the difficulties of compiling and organizing all of it.

I’ve been reading about this engraving machine all over the internet and I’m still not 100% positive about how it worked, though it looks simple enough.  I’m also curious to know if it was embraced in Europe and whether it had an impact on engraving in general.  I don’t know much about engraving, though, so it’s hard to say.  (Come to think of it, I have lots of unanswered questions like, ‘what happened to make the eye patch necessary?’)

The next image is the example page, showing the different engraving patterns the machine was capable of producing (click for a larger version):

And here’s a complete engraving, demonstrating how the machine was able to give texture and depth to the sky (click for a larger image):

I particularly liked this quote, from a 2006 NY Times piece, about the engravings:

The versatile Conté met the challenge of the images’ imposing scale and fine detail by inventing an engraving machine that yielded a more subtle spectrum of grays relatively easily…. Perhaps this facilitated the almost preternatural fusion of subject and medium that distinguishes these prints. The geometry of ancient Egyptian architecture, illuminated by harsh Egyptian light, could not have been better suited to the eerie formalities of the engraving technique and its miragelike effects.

If you’ve found this interesting I definitely recommend checking out the entire exhibit.  The content is very satisfying, with lots of commentary and images, and I was totally enthralled reading about a bunch of nerds on an extended scientific adventure (quite often the artists would paint other savants painting Egyptian artifacts!)  The engravings in the Description are some of the most enduring images of Egypt created by Europeans, and I couldn’t even count the number of times I’ve seen one in a history book or documentary, so it’s very nice to have the whole story.

You can also view the entire Description online via the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.  The presentation is somewhat unfortunate, but the images are nice and can be enlarged.

William Morris Society Update

The William Morris Society has announced a redesign of its website, with the addition of event schedules and full-text articles from the Journal of William Morris Studies.  They’ve also started a blog, News From Anywhere, which looks like it will be a great resource for those interested in William Morris, the Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts and Crafts Movement.

At the Society webpage you can see more examples of Morris’s work, read his biography and explore his social and political thought.

• Kelmscott Press Colophon, William Morris Society