The Book of the Erinyes

I was lucky enough to be on a busi­ness trip to New York again last week, and I so had the oppor­tun­ity to visit the Cen­ter for Book Arts.

The Cen­ter is a great resource — they have a decent-sized Let­ter­press stu­dio with sev­eral proof presses, an equally well-resourced Bind­ery area, an exhib­i­tion space (illus­trated here in a photo from their web­site), and enough space left over for a small shop selling hand-bound chap­books, broad­sides, and exhib­i­tion catalogues.

But the main pur­pose of my visit was to see The Col­laged Accor­dion — an exhib­i­tion of Star Black’s large-scale accor­dion books that merge found texts & pho­to­graphs and ephemera.

Star’s  col­laged accor­dion books are intric­ately layered with a fine sense of tex­ture and the indi­vidual prop­er­ties of the found images and mater­i­als. They com­bine echoes of Joseph Cornell’s boxes with a sens­ib­il­ity for the subtler tex­tures and pos­sib­il­it­ies of paper.

I wish I could have spent a lot longer at the Cen­ter, but unfor­tu­nately I had to fly back to the UK that same day and had far too much to do.

If you get the chance to go to New York then the Cen­ter is def­in­itely worth visiting.

Cen­ter for Book Arts: main web­site | Blog | Face­book Page | Twit­ter | Flickr | You­Tube

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

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.

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.

I’m lucky to be on a work trip to New York at the moment, and this morning—my bodyc­lock still work­ing on UK time, and the rain pour­ing down—I man­aged to grab some time to visit the Mor­gan Lib­rary and Museum on Madison Avenue, not far from my hotel.

The Mor­gan began as the private lib­rary of fin­an­cier Pier­pont Mor­gan hous­ing his col­lec­tion of illu­min­ated, lit­er­ary, and his­tor­ical manu­scripts, early prin­ted books, and old mas­ter draw­ings and prints.

The main focus of my visit to this insti­tu­tion was to see—first-hand—a Guten­berg Bible (the Lib­rary owns three of them!) prin­ted in 1455 by Johannes Guten­berg, the inventor of the print­ing press and mov­able type.

The visit was a fant­astic mine of inspir­a­tion, from the won­der­ful lib­rary itself (illus­trated here — photo by mach­bel, found on Flickr, licensed under Cre­at­ive Com­mons, used with thanks), to the vast array of old books (includ­ing some great Books of Hours), the Guten­berg Bible itself, and a fant­astic col­lec­tion of art­work encom­passing per­sonal favour­ites such as Joseph Cor­nell, Egon Schiele, and Jim Dine, as well as pre­par­at­ory sketches and draw­ings by old masters.

I left the gal­ler­ies and went to the Lib­rary shop feel­ing very pleas­antly over­whelmed, my head over­flow­ing with ideas and inspir­a­tion for the Book of the Erinyes.

In the shop, in addi­tion to a couple of post­cards, I bought a copy of Mini­ature Books: 4,000 Years of Tiny Treas­ures — a won­der­ful, richly illus­trated, book explor­ing the world of books that are less than 3 inches high.

I don’t actu­ally have a huge interest in mini­ature books, but the bind­ings illus­trated in this book are won­der­ful — I think the cre­at­ors decided that they could have more fun with small books.

They range from tra­di­tional leather bind­ings to bind­ings made of mother-of-pearl (pop­u­lar as a deluxe bind­ing in the 19^th cen­tury), gold-thread on silk, tor­toise­shell, cop­per, vel­vet, gold, sil­ver fili­gree, palekh lac­quer (a Rus­sian folk craft), polycar­bon­ate, and enamel. Some are plain, oth­ers gilt-tooled, embed­ded with emer­alds, amethysts or pearls, embossed, embroidered, engraved, or dec­or­ated with tiny enamel portraits.

The wealth of cre­ativ­ity dis­played in this book is amaz­ing, and will cer­tainly prove invalu­able as inspir­a­tion for bind­ing the Book of the Erinyes.

My friend Michael Kemp just poin­ted me at an inter­pret­a­tion of the Fur­ies that I hadn’t seen before — Slavko Vorkapić’s excel­lent mont­age sequence for the 1934 film Crime Without Pas­sion (writ­ten and dir­ec­ted by Charles MacAr­thur & Ben Hecht).

Slavko Vork­apić (1894–1976) was a Serbian-American film dir­ector and editor, but per­haps bet­ter known as a Spe­cial Effects Technician.

Filmreference.com has an entry for him which men­tions this fant­astic sequence:

When work­ing with film­makers of an adven­tur­ous frame of mind, Vork­apich seized the oppor­tun­ity to intro­duce expres­sion­ist ele­ments into his work, and some of his most ima­gin­at­ive effects occur in the mont­ages he devised, work­ing closely with cine­ma­to­grapher Lee Garmes, for Hecht and MacArthur’s Crime without Pas­sion.

The open­ing cred­its show three winged Fur­ies dart­ing through the canyons of New York to seize at ran­dom upon their vic­tims; when crooked law­yer Claude Rains shoots the dan­cer who is black­mail­ing him, the Fur­ies emerge from a drop of her blood as it falls in slow-motion and wheel venge­fully out into the night, feast­ing their eyes on the viol­ence of the city.

I just love the way the Fur­ies are visu­al­ised in this mont­age.  Spectacular!

Just for the record, the Fur­ies were played by Dorothy Brad­shaw, Fraye Gil­bert, and Betty Sund­mark.