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.

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.

As the pace has star­ted to pick up on the Book of the Erinyes pro­ject I decided it was time to get some much-needed book­bind­ing practice.

I’d sewn together a col­lec­tion of blank sig­na­tures a week-or-so ago and tipped on the end­pa­pers, but I was feel­ing some­what nervous about the case binding.

Today I took the plunge and put together my first case bind­ing, and attached it to the sig­na­tures to pro­duce a fin­ished book.

I was fairly pleased with the res­ults — although the edges of the pages are very uneven from where I’d had to cut them with a knife since I don’t have a guil­lot­ine or a plough for trim­ming the pages properly.

I’ve been teach­ing myself book­bind­ing, and there have been three books which have been a great help:

• Hand Book­bind­ing — A Manual of Instruc­tion by Aldren A. Wat­son, Dover Pub­lic­a­tions Inc.
• Hand­made Book­bind­ing Tech­niques by Josep Cam­bras, A & C Black.
• The Book­bind­ing Hand­book by Sue Dog­gett, Search Press.

I’d recom­mend all of these three books to any­one think­ing of teach­ing them­selves hand bookbinding.

The Hand­made Books DVD from Shep­herds was also an invalu­able help — although the books men­tioned above are excel­lent, watch­ing the tech­niques being demon­strated lets you fully under­stand the process.

So my first book is bound and I’ve learnt a lot about all the neces­sary tech­niques that I can use on the Book of the Erinyes.  I’ve got at least a couple of months until the text and pho­to­graphs for the Book of the Erinyes will be ready, so I’m going to do a few more prac­tice pieces using blank paper over the com­ing weeks.

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.

One of the things I’ve star­ted con­sid­er­ing is how to bind the 30 to 50 cop­ies of the Book of the Erinyes.

I decided right from the start that they’d all be indi­vidu­ally hand-bound and I would try dif­fer­ent bind­ing mater­i­als across the lim­ited edition.

I’ve been on hol­i­day on the Greek island of Naxos for the past couple of weeks and, while tour­ing the souvenir shops I spot­ted some sketch books/journals for sale that were bound with dried vine leaves.

This seemed like a great idea to steal — espe­cially for a Greek sub­ject like the Erinyes.  So I quickly col­lec­ted and pressed a dozen vine leaves and brought them back with me.  I like the idea of some of the cop­ies of the Book of the Erinyes being bound in dried Vine Leaves—a par­tic­u­larly Greek motif—is par­tic­u­larly appeal­ing, espe­cially since the vine leaves were spe­cially col­lec­ted on a Greek island by the artist (no expense is spared scour­ing the world for mater­i­als for my art!).