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.

Hanukkah Illuminated: A Book of Days

A beautiful contemporary illumination "Hanukkah Illuminated: A Book of Days" - a project conceived by Ellen Frank, professor of literature and artist.

Ellen Frank’s Hanukkah Illuminated: A Book of Days is the first modern illuminated and handwritten story of Hanukkah. A devotional work of art that combines illuminated paintings with unique texts, Hanukkah Illuminated speaks in a contemporary voice while echoing the great illuminated paintings which flourished in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Words : SUIBOKUGA 水墨画‎

Hasegawa Tohaku 長谷川

Suibokuga (or suiboku; or sumi-e painting) refers to the Japanese tradition of ink drawings, that was introduced from China by Buddhist priest-artists in the late Kamakura period.

水 - water
墨 - ink
画‎ - picture


Suibokuga is "completely unconcerned with producing a literal representation. Its emphasis is completely upon the spirit. Japanese monochromes put no emphasis on scientific or rational realism. The Nanga school, especially, aims at the representation of the state of mind, using serenity as a keynote. (keyhole? - a Freudan slip?) Thus, the most prized masterpieces are those which are thought to display a noble soul rather than an exact reproduction. Suiboku is not photography or the copying of natural things, the shape and colour of which is seen with the eyes; it is the expression or the idea the artist received when he viewed the object."*(p.11, Ryukyu Saito Japanese Ink-Painting).

The artists use sumi-e ink (which is made of soot) and a soft animal hair brush. The drawings are all monochrome. The skill lies in the ability to control the balance of black and white through single brushstrokes to achieve minimalist drawings. The artist draws surfaces (no outlines); the ink runs and merges with the layer below. The strokes cannot be corrected or removed.

There seems to be some disagreement if suibokuga draws on the philosophy of Zen Buddhism (Ryuku Saito) or whether it has no relationship to it (Tsugako Shimada). From my very Christian seat here in London, it looks like suibokuga very much embraces Tao and Zen line of thought, especially the idea of intuitive understanding rather than rational representation of form. The minimal means of expression aim to capture the essence of the object.

Like a visual haiku.

Ike no Taiga 池大雅 Zhuang Zi dreaming of a butterfly

Josetsu 如拙 Catching a Catfish with a Gourd

P.S.

A Chinese painter was once commissioned to paint the Emperor's favorite goat. The artist asked for the goat, that he might study it. After two years the Emperor, growing impatient, asked for the return of the goat; the artist obliged. Then the Emperor asked about the painting. The artist confessed that he had not yet made one, and taking an ink brush he drew eight nonchalant strokes, creating the most perfect goat in the annals of Chinese painting.

* The quote comes as it is in the book. Amusing it may be, but poor wording is not my choice.

Words : CARMINA FIGURATA

... a word poem, in which figural images were superimposed onto the grids of letters, to form a religious image. The genre was popularized greatly by Porphyrius, who at the end of the fourth century produced a series of poems for the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine. 

by Hrabanus Mauru, Germany 12th c

by Hrabanus Mauru, Germany 12th c

Five Scrolls from France 14th c.

Prayer book, France 14th c.

Five Scrolls from France 13th c.

   

PS: These are NOT Greek pattern poems or Concrete poetry.
PPS Photos are from the British Library manuscript archives.

Words : EHON 絵本

E-hon chiyomigusa (Illustrated book of the thousand floating grasses) by Nishikawa Sukenobu

Kuroneko Yamato (Black Cat of Yamato) by Katsushika Hokusai

Ehon mushi erami by Kitagawa Utamaro

Ehon mushi erami by Kitagawa Utamaro

Ehon mushi erami by Kitagawa Utamaro

Seiro bijin awase sugata kagami (Mirror of Beautiful Women of the Green Houses) by Katsukawa Shunsho and Kitao Shigemasa

Ehon shungа print by Shuncho Yushido

Since about seventeenth eighteenth century Japanese have been publishing illustrated books consisting mainly of pictures and possibly a few words. Picture books. Ehon or e-hon. The books were produced using predominantly black and white prints on thin paper. Then nineteenth century brought an avalanche of printed matter, flooding the market with colour prints, produced using multiple blocks.
Ehon books were highly sought after in Europe and the USA - as a result most of them are now kept in Western collections, rather than in Japan. Well, I suppose this can be said about most of the artefacts from Asia or Africa.