The Book of the Erinyes

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’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.

Inspiration #1: The following passage from a wonderful book by Gene Wolfe called The Shadow of the Torturer where the protagonist Severian is listening to the reminiscences of the old blind Librarian, Master Ultan.

I first read this book when I was 14, back in 1984. I’ve probably re-read it 20 times since and it remains one of my favourite books:

“I was sitting there, as I said, and had been for several watches, when I came to me that I was reading no longer. For some time I was hard put to say what I had been doing. When I tried, I could only think of certain odors and textures and colors that seemed to have no connection with anything discussed in the volume I held. At last I realized that instead of reading it, I had been observing it as a physical object. The red I recalled came from the ribbon sewn to the headband so that I might mark my place. The texture that tickled my fingers still was that of the paper in which the book was printed. The smell in my nostrils was old leather, still wearing the traces of birch oil. It was only then, when I saw the books themselves, when I began to understand their care.”

His grip on my shoulder tightened. “We have books here bound in the hides of echidnes, krakens, and beasts so long extinct that those whose studies they are, are for the most part of the opinion that no trace of them survives unfossilized. We have books bound wholly in metals of unknown alloy, and books whose bindings are covered with the thickest gems. We have books cased in perfumed woods shipped across the inconceivable gulf between creations—books doubly precious because no one on Urth can read them.”

“We have books whose papers are matted of plants from which spring curious alkaloids, so that the reader, in turning their pages, is taken unaware by bizarre fantasies and chimeric dreams. Books whose pages are not paper at all, but delicate wafers of white jade, ivory, and shell; books too who leaves are the desiccated leaves of unknown plants. Books we have also that are not books at all to the eye: scrolls and tablets and recordings on a hundred different substances. There is a cube of crystal here—though I can no longer tell you where—no larger than the ball of your thumb that contains more books than the library itself does. Though a harlot might dangle it from one ear for an ornament, there are not volumes enough in the world to counterweight the other.”

Perfect!