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

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

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.

Just got back from see­ing Romilly Sau­marez Smith: Book­bind­ings for Eileen Hogan at the V&A.
It’s a small exhib­i­tion, just out­side the National Art Lib­rary, but it’s def­in­itely worth a visit.

Obvi­ously I was on the look-out for inspir­a­tion for bind­ing the Book of the Erinyes, and Romilly Sau­marez Smith didn’t let me down.

Romilly Sau­marez Smith stud­ied book bind­ing and paper con­ser­va­tion at Cam­ber­well School of Art and Crafts and went on to become the first female for­warder at Zaehnsdorf’s Bind­ery (Zaehnsdorf’s Bind­ery was taken over by Shep­herds in 1998 and the bind­ery now trades under the single name of Sangor­ski & Sutcliffe.).  In the 1990s she began increas­ingly to use metal in her bind­ings, and gradu­ally moved to mak­ing jewellery.

One of the innov­at­ive mater­i­als Sau­marez Smith uses for bind­ing is pil­low tick­ing (the strong cot­ton fab­ric used to cover pil­lows and mat­tresses). The tick­ing is col­oured with multi-layered washes of leather dye, backed with Japan­ese paper and rubbed with beeswax.  She also uses dye and wax res­ist tech­niques to great effect.

The exhib­i­tion at the V&A is on until 2^nd August 2009.  More details on the V&A web­site.

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!

A very quick post to say that you can fol­low the pro­gress of this pro­ject (and of my other pro­jects) by fol­low­ing me on Twitter.

Just go to twitter.com/lazcorp and click ‘follow’.