The Book of the Erinyes

Just a quick post to let you all know that I’ve been doing a few new lino prints and my first ever woodcut for the Book of the Erinyes.

Click on the thumbnails for larger images and to leave comments:

In early January I’m planning to print a number of Broadsides as related side-projects of the Book of the Erinyes.

As well as being appropriate to the whole atmosphere of the artwork, I’m also drawn to the often scurrilous history of Broadsides, from the 16^th century to the mid-19^th century. Their ephemeral nature—and the fact that they have been marginalised by some as “low” culture—means that we know far less about them than we should.

Anyway, I thought some of you might also be interested in what I’ve managed to discover:

Broadsides—sometimes called Broadsheets—are large sheets of paper printed on one side only, designed to be pasted onto public house walls or sold by street-vendors (traditionally for one penny).  They ranged from 13″ × 16″ (“foolscap” size) to over 5 feet in length.

They were the medium of choice for street literature from the 16^th century to the 19^th century, and were probably the very first “mass-media”. They fell out of use when Newspapers dropped in price enough to be affordable by common people.

According to the National Library of Scotland:

For almost 300 years until the mid-19^th century, broadsides filled the place occupied today by the tabloid press.

Originally they were single sheets of paper, printed on one side only, designed to be read unfolded and posted up in public places.

At first they were used for the printing of royal proclamations, acts, and official notices. Later they became a vehicle for political agitation and what is now known as ‘popular culture’, such as ballads and scaffold speeches.

Ballads were a popular subject for broadsides (and seem to be the most documented subject), but they covered a wider variety of material including:

• political comment & satire
• advertisements for merchandise
• news (frequently macabre) and recent history
• almanacs (annually-published tables of information about particular dates in the year)
• elegies
• poems

…often crudely illustrated with woodcuts (and later with engravings).

In her book A Culture of Fact: England, 1550-1720, Barbara J. Shapiro confirms the appetite for the macabre and sensational in the Broadsides:

…broadsides tended to report the unusual, the “monstrous,” and the sensational.  Strange animals, unusual weather, “monstrous” human or animal births, criminal behavior, or accounts of witchcraft were among the most common items of broadside “news” hawked on the streets of London.  Like the modern tabloid, these broadsides emphasized crime, violence, and wonderful cures. The sensational or “strange but true” were staples of broadside news and newsbooks.

In Printing and Parenting in Early Modern England, Douglas A. Brooks states:

For a penny, customers could purchase a religious primer, an account of the King of Scotland’s murder, a prayer for Queen Elizabeth, a description of a town-leveling fire, an epitaph of a London alderman, the complaint of a sinner, the ‘fantasies of a troubled man’s head’, or a political ‘flyting’ of a disgraced courtier—all inscribed in ballad verse and printed on a single sheet of paper.

The use of broadsides for advertising merchandise seems to have started with publishers printing broadsides listing their books.

I haven’t managed to find much information about advertising broadsides until the mid 19^th century. There exist quite a few collections of American advertising broadsides from the 1840s onwards – the Duke University collection (link below) is a good example.

I am presuming that this apparent lack of advertising broadsides until the mid 19^th century is actually because these items have not been preserved.

While Ballad Broadsides have long been collected—diarist Samuel Pepys collected over 1800 of them!—I suspect that advertising broadsides were considered as disposable as the many cheaply-printed flyers for double-glazing or takeaway food that are posted through my letterbox every day.

However if anyone does have any scans of, or information about, advertising broadsides from the 17^th or 18^th centuries then do please let me know.

Bibliography & Links

Related Books:

• Preston, Cathy L., and Preston, Michael J. (Editors). The Other Print Tradition: Essays on Chapbooks, Broadsides, and Related Ephemera. London: Routledge, 1995. Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk
• Shepard, Leslie. History of Street Literature: The Story of Broadside Ballads, Chapbooks, Proclamations, News-sheets, Election Bills, Tracts, Pamphlets, Cocks, Catchpennies and Other Ephemera.  Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1973.  Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Websites:

• The history of the broadside. From The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes, Volume 7 – Cavalier and Puritan, XVI. The Advent of Modern Thought in Popular Literature.
• The Word on the Street – Broadsides at the National Library of Scotland
• Broadsides (Special Collections, University of Glasgow)
• An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera (Rare Book and Special Collections Division, US Library of Congress)
• American Advertising Broadsides – from Duke University’s Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library
• Broadsides from the Colonial Era to the Present at the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina Thomas Cooper Library’s Digital Collections

As I’ve been working on The Book of the Erinyes I’ve been trying to work out who it’s likely to appeal to.

The problem is that it doesn’t fit comfortably in any one area. It sits between art and craft, between bookbinding and book art, between mainstream and underground. It’s art made in the interstices.

Personally I find interstitial art to be more interesting, but as an artist it makes it very hard to find existing markets in which to promote it.

When you’re trying to sell or promote artwork (or indeed anything) the first thing you need to understand is your potential audience, because this usually dictates how and where you market your artwork. There are many existing routes you can use if your work fits neatly into a genre or discipline, but if your work floats between established definitions then it’s far more difficult.

This chain of thought led me to the Interstitial Arts Foundation, which was founded by a group of literary, visual, musical, and performance artists for the purpose of developing and promoting interstitial art. There’s quite a lot to digest on their website, and I’ve only read a fraction of it so far, but I recommend it as a very interesting collection of ideas.

However I’m still left with the problem of how to get The Book of the Erinyes “out there” – how to raise awareness of it so that I can sell some copies of the limited edition handmade book and of the various other related artwork (I’m planning an unlimited paperback print-on-demand version, and various limited edition postcards, not to mention a free ebook version).

My personal view (and, please, if you have a different view, leave me a comment below) is that The Book of the Erinyes might appeal to two key audiences:

1. Book Arts/Bookbinding Arts – a more traditional arts audience, albeit still in a grey area between the more fine-art area of Book Arts & Artist’s Books, and the more craft-orientated area of Bookbinding. And of course it also involves Letterpress printing, which is another separate area!
2. Arty & Weird – this is my working name for a sub-cultural strand that seems to cross various boundaries, but can be broadly defined as those people who have an interest in art combined with one or more of the following interests:
   • graphic novels (particularly those by people like Warren Ellis and Neil Gaiman, and the Hellblazer series),
   • goth or alternative music sub-culture,
   • films by David Lynch or Terry Gilliam,
   • books by the likes of Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, and Jeff VanderMeer.

   I promise I’ll try to think of a better name for this imperfectly-defined audience  – if one already exists please let me know!

So, having worked out who I think might be interested in The Book of the Erinyes I now have to find ways to reach them.

And this is where you, dear reader, come in. I’m soliciting suggestions and ideas as to how to reach my target audiences.  Please leave me a comment below if you have any ideas.

EDIT: Thanks to the Interstitial Arts Foundation for citing & discussing this post.

I’m making very good progress with the Letterpress part of the Book of the Erinyes at the moment – I’m managing to fit in 2 sessions of work at Brighton Independent Printmaking each week, and I’m really on a roll.

Proof prints for chapters 6 and 7 below (click through to see larger versions & leave comments):

I thought I’d share a very short video I put together from some clips of me printing out a page of the Book of the Erinyes.

At some point in the not-too-distant future I’ll put together something a bit better, but in the meantime:

Just a quick announcement that I’ve replaced the “Artwork” page on this site with a great little gallery script called Plogger. I’ve uploaded all the artwork so far, and will keep adding to it over the coming weeks.

Anyway, check out the new artwork pages and see what you think.

Yesterday I spent the day in London doing a whistle-stop tour of a few exhibitions as background research for the Book of the Erinyes.

Bookbinding at the V&A

First stop was the V&A in South Kensington to see a small display of Fine Bindings for the Man Booker Prize 2009 designed by the Society of Designer Bookbinders.

It’s only a small display (6 books) but it’s well worth seeing these bindings “in the flesh” as they’re great. The display can be found in Room 74 (20^th Century section) of the V&A until 21^st March 2010, and admission is free.

The binding illustrated here is by Rachel Ward-Sale. More information about all six bindings, their binders, and the techniques & materials used can be found on the Society of Designer Bookbinders website.

Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Corruption

After the V&A I headed up to Soho to see Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Corruption at the Lazarides Gallery in Greek Street – an exhibition of political comic book and graphic novel work by artists and writers including Dave McKean, Pat Mills, Peter Kuper, Janek Koza, Dan Goldman, and pop culture figures Lightspeed Champion and V V Brown.

I’m particularly fond of Dave McKean’s artwork—especially the magnificent Sandman covers—so it was great to see some of his larger-scale collages close-up.  His artwork on display was about the widespread corruption surrounding AIDS relief to villages in China.

Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Corruption is on until 28^th November 2009 at the Lazarides Gallery, Greek Street, London.  Admission is free.

I’ve been putting some hours into the Letterpress side of the Book of the Erinyes recently, and have made a fair bit of progress.

Yesterday evening I managed to print out the text for the first section (there’s only one page of text per section).

I’d spent an evening the previous week meticulously setting most of the type (shown inked up and sitting on the press, below), which just left me to finish it off this week and start printing.

After a handful of adjustments for typos or overly-worn letters I was lucky enough to get a decent print on the first real attempt.

In some ways it’s strange – I could type and print the text for this page on my computer in less than five minutes, so why spend six hours slowly picking each individual letter, arrangingthem, inking it up, running test prints…?

The answer is in the finished result.  If you’ve ever seen a piece of letterpress-printed type you’ll have noticed the way the metal letters slightly indent the paper and the shine of the oil-based ink (it sparkles just a bit when it catches the light).

The Book of the Erinyes is being printed on a heavy (220gm) cartridge paper, which is probably the thickest paper I can get away with putting through the press. The body text is 12pt Goudy Old Style, with larger sizes of the same font being used for headings.

The combination of letterpress printed type and a good quality paper makes the finished page really enjoyable to handle and hold.  I was thinking of scanning a copy, but a scan just can’t catch the tactile qualities of the paper or the look of oil-based ink sitting on the surface of it.

One of the fashions of the “Gothic Revival” during the mid-1840s to 1860s was for “monastic” style bindings that imitated the Medieval wooden book covers.

Rather than reproducing these in wood, the Victorians (presumably for reasons of cost and mass production) recreated this style with  Plaster of Paris and a filler (possibly papier-mâché and antimony?), which was then formed in a rigid frame usually made of metal. Another source suggests they were made from “fibrous plaster and paper pulp reinforced with metal”.  I suspect some more research is needed on my part!

The technique was  patented by the British firm J. Jackson & Son.  Print runs of over 1000 were needed to offset the expense of producing the complex molds, according to bookbinding historian Bernard Middleton.

From what I can find out, the technique seems to be especially associated with the British illustrator and illuminator Henry Noel Humphreys (1810-1879).  Humphreys was influenced by his study of medieval manuscripts during a stay in Italy as a young man.

The finished results have been described as resembling “nothing so much as cast iron” (Bookbinding in the British Isles: sixteenth to the twentieth century, Part 2. London: Maggs Bros. Ltd., 1996)

Some Examples of “Papier Mâché” Bindings

English Bible, 1849

Black papier mâché of a Victorian Gothic Revival design in imitation of carved wood, featuring arches entwined with flowering vines in the central panel of each cover; covers bevelled. Spine with “Holy Bible” at top and surface of same also encrusted with vinework. Gilt roll on board edges and gilt dentelles on turn-ins; all edges gilt and gauffered in a diamond and dot design. Brass clasp, part missing. Binding attributed to D. O. Smith of London, as per McLean who illustrates an identical binding on an 1851 Bible from the same publishers.

More details at The Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Company

Parables of Our Lord, edited by Henry Noel Humphreys, 1847.

Parables is Humphreys’ first printed illuminated book in a papier-mâché binding. The publisher recorded that 2,000 copies of Parables were printed in 1847, of which 1,000 were sold to D. Appleton in New York with a changed title page. Longman’s printed a second edition in the same year. Each of the four corners has a wreath containing the head of an angel, a lion, an eagle or an ox, representing Gospel authors Matthew, Mark, John and Luke. Stylized oak leaves occupy the top and bottom central rectangles. The central figure is a sower within a wreath around which two ribbons are wrapped on a staff. “Scripture Parables” appears on the ribbons in raised Gothic letters.

More information at University of Rochester Libraries Rare and Special Books Collection.

The Coinage of the British Empire, by Henry Noel Humphreys, 1855.

The central design of this papier-mâché binding is the royal coat-of-arms as it appeared on the reverse side of the gold sovereign of Henry VIII. The binding is signed “H R”, for William Harry Rogers.

More information at University of Rochester Libraries Rare and Special Books Collection.

A record of the Black Prince, by Henry Noel Humphries, 1849.

The carved cover is taken from one of the compartments of the Prince’s tomb at Canterbury, slightly altered by the addition of a label where the title was inserted and by the extra adornment of the mouldings. The turn-ins are blocked in gold. The design is identical for both covers. Two decorated raised borders are separated by a border of bosses. The central rectangle is filled with symmetrical medieval decorative motifs. The coat of arms of the Black Prince is on the centre. The title words are within a ribbon, which is above and on each side of the coat of arms.

More information at Memorial University Digital Archives Initiative.

One of the elements of the handmade Book of the Erinyes will be the use of marbled paper – sometimes on the outside cover, and sometimes on the endpapers/inside cover.

As with all the parts of the book, I’m determined to make it all myself, so I bought myself a copy of Techniques for Marbleizing Paper by Gabriele Grünebaum.

First I made an alum solution, using 6 teaspoons of Alum in 450ml of water. The alum solution works as a mordant – it fixes the marbling colours onto the surface of the paper. After bringing the solution to the boil then letting it cool, I sponged it liberally onto a number of sheets of paper then left them overnight to dry.

The next day I prepared the marbling size, using 6 teaspoons of Carragheen Moss Powder dissolved in 4 pints of hand-hot water, and left it to cool before starting some experiments, following the patterns in Gabriele Grünebaum’s book.

I decided to use Acrylic Inks – they don’t require any dispersing agent to be added for marbling, and the pigments are strong enough to retain a good strong colour even when spread across the surface of the size.  The ones I bought come with pipettes in the lids of the bottles, which made the process even easier.

I was fairly pleased with the results, but I’m obviously going to have to get a lot more practice to control the process.

Nonpareil pattern:

Nonpareil pattern:

Wavy Combed: