→ introducing physicians' almanac binding

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

In the world of medieval English bookmaking, 15th century saw emergence of a physician's folded almanac. The book, which was produced to be carried around; where each page expanded individually to allow the medical practitioner access essential information on stars, saints and signs of Zodiac.

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

Folded almanac belongs to the late medieval period, when astrology, science and magic coexisted in medicine. Almanacs were utilitarian tools, which helped physicians check the alignments of starts before making a diagnosis or commencing a treatment. They contained calendar (with saints' days), charts as well as diagram of Zodiac Man, which indicated the parts of the body as they were ruled by the signs of Zodiac.

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

The almanacs must have been abundant in the 15th century. By the end of the 1500s, physicians across Europe were required by law to calculate the position of the moon before carrying out complicated medical procedures, such as surgery or bleeding(2).

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

By the end of the 1500s, physicians across Europe were required by law to calculate the position of the moon before carrying out complicated medical procedures, such as surgery or bleeding. - See more at: http://www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/articles/medicine-diagnosis-and-treatment-in-the-middle-ages#sthash.1o8erWVQ.dpuf

The almanacs had a "best before" date - the astronomical and astrological data was only calculated for a period of about ten years. A physician could only safely consult the manuscript during those years, after which he would need an updated version of the calculations (4).  It is thought(4), that this is the reason why so few of them survived to this day.

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

By the end of the 1500s, physicians across Europe were required by law to calculate the position of the moon before carrying out complicated medical procedures, such as surgery or bleeding. - See more at: http://www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/articles/medicine-diagnosis-and-treatment-in-the-middle-ages#sthash.1o8erWVQ.dpuf

Almanacs - like contemporary books - were portable objects: they were produced to be carried around, often hung on the belt. They were built out of individual sheets of parchment, which were folded and sewn together to create a fan-like structure that allowed each leaf to be unfolded individually(1) - not unlike maps. Almanacs’ practical function suggests that they were both ephemeral – readily discarded and replaced – and relatively inexpensive to produce with (often) crude illustrations(3). The more lavishly decorated ones (as the one from Wellcome Library shown here), suggest that their ownership extended to the wealthier patrons, who might have not necessarily practiced medicine.

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

As seen from the images, the structure is similar to the map fold: the book is contained in a small case, but each page can be expanded into the space well beyond the size of the book. My brief online research suggests, that there are a few variants of the fold, including a type of concerina. A wonderful blog post by Teffania shows her attempts to recreate the almanac structure.

Teffania's Stuff

Teffania's Stuff

Teffania's Stuff

Teffania's Stuff

Teffania's Stuff

Teffania's Stuff

Teffania's Stuff

Sources:

1 Strådal, Sara Öberg (2016), Medieval Medical Diagrams: Meanings, Audiences and Functions. In Hectoren International: A Journal of Medical Humanities. http://www.hektoeninternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=154:medieval-medical-diagrams-meanings-audiences-and-functions&catid=93&Itemid=435

2 Bovey, Alixe. Medicine, Diagnosis and Treatment in the Middle Ages. In British Library http://www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/articles/medicine-diagnosis-and-treatment-in-the-middle-ages

3 Brenner, Elma. The Enigma of the Medieval Almanac. In Welcome Library. http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2014/01/the-enigma-of-the-medieval-almanac/

4 Albright, Adrienne. Art and Science 4 – Celestial Bodies: Astrological Medicine in a Folding Almanac. In Before the Art. http://beforetheart.com/2013/07/18/art-and-science-4-celestial-bodies-astrological-medicine-in-a-folding-almanac/






Egidija

→ gold on the cover // The Great Omar + 10 contemporary foiled covers.

As we are getting ready for PAGES|Leeds with our gold embossed covers - which will house a new publication for GUTTER project - I have been looking around at gilding practice in contemporary bookmaking. 

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Fabulously rich gilded bejeweled bindings were frequently used on grand illuminated manuscripts in Middle Ages. As manuscript culture faded, so did the bindings. 

In the XXth century Sangorski & Sutcliffe emerged as the binders of exceptional extravagance, using multi-coloured leather, jeweled inlays and precious metals. The history of their most famous work The Great Omar, is as spectacular a story as the work itself.

The Great Omar was commissioned by Sotherans Bookshop. It was indicated that the cost of the book was not to be a consideration. With that carte blanche, Sangorski & Sutcliffe outdid all previous efforts: after two and a half years they created a sumptuous binding containing over a thousand jewels. The front cover was adorned with three golden peacocks, their tails made of inlaid jewels and gold, as were the vines winding around them.
When the book was finally completed in 1911, it was listed for sale at £1,000 and shipped to New York for display. Customs, however, demanded a heavy duty on the shipment and Sotherans refused to pay. The Great Omar was returned to England, where Sotherans had it sent to Sotheby’s auction, where it sold to an American named Gabriel Wells for mere £450. The first ship scheduled to transport the Great Omar sailed without the book, so it was packed safely into the very next option, a luxury liner called the Titanic. The book went down with the ship in 1912. Weeks later, Sangorski also drowned in a bathing accident off Selsey Bil.
Sutcliffe took six years to recreate a second copy from Sangorski's original drawings. As soon as the new Great Omar was completed, it was stored in a bank vault for safety. Unfortunately, the bank, vault, and book were destroyed in the bombings of World War II.
The firm passed into the hands of Sutcliffe’s nephew, Stanley Bray, in 1936. After his retirement, Stanley created the third The Great Omar, which took another fourty years. He worked to his uncle’s original specifications. This final copy lives in the British Library still today. (from Biblio and Guardian)

The place of Sangorski & Sutcliffe is taken today by designer bookbinders. Contemporary bindings look remarkably modest as compared with the above. I have discovered some very skilled bookbinders (such as Robert Wu or Sol Rébora). I have failed, however, to find jeweled lashings of gold (even though, I am sure they exist!). As a result, I have diverted to mock gold leaf, i.e. metallic foils. 
Here are my top-ten book covers:

1. F. Scott Fitzgerald anniversay book cover editions by Coralie Bickford-Smith

 

 2. by Julia Kostreva

3. by komma (a platform for presenting projects of students of the Design Faculty of the University of Applied Sciences, Mannheim)

4. Laus 2015

 5. by Keith Hayes

6. by Coralie Bickford-Smith (again)

8. by Marian Bantjes

 9. by Tadeu Magalhães

10. Laus 2012

[Egidija]

Digital scrolls (again)

My post  from collective investigations blog.

Helen Douglas at Whitechapel Art Book fair, 2014

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The Art Book Fair at Whitechapel certainly looked different from the last year: upstairs had a much happier feel, with more tables filling the space and a refreshingly (!) large number of Canadian presses. Downstairs seemed as usual - big publishers and big tables. The cafe, however, was almost gone, with it's space in-between the floors occupied by a Blurb commission Unbinding the Book [why in the cafe?), which ranged between underwhelming and truly exciting. [Anyone knows what Imprimatur is? Is it a real imprint? Or is it merely a metaphysical concept from Blurb marketing department?] On the whole - a few hits and misses later - Whitechapel Art Book Fair was an improvement from the year before. 

  

(My personal favorite at Whitechapel, however, remained Kader Attia's Continuum of Repair: The Light of Jacob’s Ladder: a magnificent bookwork or a piece of installation - the choice is yours. )

One of the highlights of the fair itself was Helen Douglas’ new book, produced as a result of her residency in Mexico, where she traveled under the invitation from Martha Hellion. Surreal and mesmerising continuous sequence of images blends foliage, architecture, fragments of Mexican papercuts and textile into a seamless panorama. A garden of Eden? {seductive}. The Mexican book is not dissimilar in the many ways to the other books that Helen has been producing since 2001, that feature her trademark Thumberlina's perspective to draw in the viewer through the boundary of paper into the enchanted photographic foliaged images beyond. One of those works is her scroll book The Pond at Deauchar, which was conceived and produced as a physical scroll and as a digital scroll.

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Helen Douglas The Pond at Deuchar

There is a well known anecdote about how Helen Douglas wanted to produce the scroll as a digital app to accommodate The Pond at Deuchar.  Apple refused the idea, because the app did not include any more functions than scrolling the scroll (!).
Eventually the app for this artist's book was born and the pond can now be enjoyed online HERE.  It is a beautiful translation from one medium to another, that maintains the original fluidity and depth of immersion. In fact, the experience of the digital scroll excels as submersion into the work due to the level of detail that zoom option provides.


For comparison, below are a few more digitised scrolls by academic institutions. 


1. A library of digitised Asian scroll paintings at the University of Chicago.

Lake Zhiyang and the Eastern Lake 1663

There is a phenomenal incentive from the Center for the Art of East Asia at the University of Chicago - they have now uploaded online a library of digitised  Asian scroll paintings. What a resource!

The Center for the Art of East Asia initiated the Digital Scrolling Paintings Project to support the teaching of classes on East Asian painting. The temporal and spatial qualities of handscroll paintings are lost in photographs of selected sections that are reproduced in books and projected in the classroom.  Although used widely in current art education and the study of these works of art, such reproductions seriously distort the nature of handscrolls by erasing their sequential and participatory viewing process. The display of these paintings in long cases in museums also is not the way in which these paintings were made to be experienced. With the assistance of the Humanities Computer Research Department, the Center developed a prototype for digital scrolling technology as an exciting tool to simulate the viewing experience and to improve understanding of handscroll paintings.

2. Dead Sea Scrolls online by Google and Israel Museum in Jerusalem. 

Dead Sea Scrolls

In 2011 Google and Israel Museum in Jerusalem uploaded the oldest known biblical manuscripts Dead Sea Scrolls online in a high-resolution format, so they become available to all and everyone (with a reliable and fast internet connection, that is).


3. A Ripley scroll from 1477

Ripley Scroll (1477)

This Ripley scroll (1477) has been scanned-in as a very VERY hi-res very long photo and uploaded online: a delightful level of detail, that can otherwise be only enjoyed with a magnifying glass. In simple terms, it is an alchemical manuscript that shows in pictorial cryptograms the production of the philosopher's stone (the elusive ingredient that produces incorruptible gold out of lesser metals; and/or the elixir of life). A very detailed description of the scroll is on BibliOdyssey (among numerous other treasures that can be found there).


4. Georgian scrolling book Trip to London at Princeton University

Artist unknown, Trip to Town (London: William Sams, 1822). 
Box embossed: E.P. Sutton & Company; 
Sangorski & Sutcliff. GA 2005.01039

 And finally, here is this charming Georgian device Trip to London that has been digitised by Princeton University. It is a box with a twelve plate scroll that contains a story about a very unfortunate  honeymoon journey to London by a recently married Mister O'Squat and the Widow Shanks. 
Here is a POST from Booktryst (June, 2013) about the scroll, including this curious snippet of information.

It is not found in Tooley or Abbey, has no copies recorded by OCLC/KVK in institutional holdings worldwide, no copies at auction since ABPC began indexing results in 1923, no copy in the collection of the British Museum, nor is it found in the annals of our sister TV series, Divorce Court. It is an incredibly scarce item, as rare as a Taylor Swift long-term relationship.

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Digital editions raise questions about... editions: what is the relationship between the digital and the material version of the book? Is it an edition in its own right? Prof. Michelle Brown spoke of digital manuscripts in the article she wrote for our Codex: Between This and That book. She suggested that digital editions should be treated as born digital editions in their own right.

The exponential increase in digital imagery available online is encouraging scholars accustomed to working on early texts in the form of printed editions to become aware of the value added and transformative experience of working directly from the primary sources, without having to travel around the world and negotiate access to materials, the rarity and fragility of which may necessitate curatorial restrictions on access to be applied – as in the case of the Beowulf manuscript itself. Manuscript curators initially anticipated that digital surrogates would lessen the demand for consultation of the original; in fact, the stimulation of interest that they provoke can often lead to even more requests to view. Scholarly scepticism is such that there is also felt to be a need to see the original for oneself, in order to test the veracity of digital versions – which indeed have their own life and should be seen as born digital e-manuscripts in their own right.

 Born digital e-scrolls in their own right, then.

[Egidija]

The original version of this post can be found in Egidija's Notebook II.

Economy of production: recycled manuscript pages from Yale Law Library.

 

from Yale Law Library flickr

Digitised scrolls: from the Pond at Deuchar to the Trip to London

Helen Douglas The Pond at Deuchar

There is a well known anecdote about how Helen Douglas wanted to produce a scroll as an app to accommodate The Pond at Deuchar.  Apple refused (!)  the idea, because the app did not include any more functions than scrolling the scroll (!).

Eventually the app for this artist's book was born and the pond can be enjoyed online HERE.  It is a beautiful conversion from one medium to another, that maintains the original fluidity and depth of immersion. In fact, the experience of the digital scroll excels as submersion into the work due to the level of detail that zoom option provides.

For comparison, here are a few more digitalised scrolls (by academic institutions, mainly):

Lake Zhiyang and the Eastern Lake 1663

There is a phenomenal incentive from the Center for the Art of East Asia at the University of Chicago - they now uploaded online a library of digitised  Asian scroll paintings. What a resource!

The Center for the Art of East Asia initiated the Digital Scrolling Paintings Project to support the teaching of classes on East Asian painting. The temporal and spatial qualities of handscroll paintings are lost in photographs of selected sections that are reproduced in books and projected in the classroom.  Although used widely in current art education and the study of these works of art, such reproductions seriously distort the nature of handscrolls by erasing their sequential anad participatory viewing process. The display of these paintings in long cases in museums also is not the way in which these paintings were made to be experienced. With the assistance of the Humanities Computer Research Department, the Center developed a prototype for digital scrolling technology as an exciting tool to simulate the viewing experience and to improve understanding of handscroll paintings.

Dead Sea Scrolls

In 2011 Google and Israel Museum in Jerusalem uploaded the oldest known biblical manuscripts Dead Sea Scrolls online in a high-resolution format, so they become available to all everyone (with a reliable and fast internet connection, that is).

Ripley Scroll (1477)

Ripley Scroll (1477) has been scanned-in as a very VERY hi-res very long photo and uploaded online: a delightful level of detail, that can otherwise be only enjoyed with a magnifying glass. In simple terms, it is an alchemical manuscript that shows in pictorial cryptograms the production of the philosopher's stone (the elusive ingredient that produces incorruptible gold out of lesser metals; and/or the elixir of life). A very detailed description of the scroll is on BibliOdyssey (among numerous other treasures that can be found there).

 

Artist unknown, Trip to Town (London: William Sams, 1822). Box embossed: E.P. Sutton & Company; Sangorski & Sutcliff. GA 2005.01039

 And finally, here is this charming Georgian device Trip to London that has been digitised by Princeton University. It is a box with a twelve plate scroll that contains a story about a very unfortunate  honeymoon journey to London by a recently married Mister O'Squat and the Widow Shanks. 

Here is a POST from Booktryst (June, 2013) about the scroll, including this very interesting snippet of information.

It is not found in Tooley or Abbey, has no copies recorded by OCLC/KVK in institutional holdings worldwide, no copies at auction since ABPC began indexing results in 1923, no copy in the collection of the British Museum, nor is it found in the annals of our sister TV series, Divorce Court. It is an incredibly scarce item, as rare as a Taylor Swift long-term relationship.