The Road of Excess

To commemorate William Blake's 250th birthday, the British Library have a new exhibition called 'Under the Influence' (until March) and have just added Blake's notebook to their Turning The Pages flash site (top right). The first image above is spliced from screencaps (click to enlarge) and the 2nd image is just a single screen capture.

Press Release:"The centrepiece of the exhibition is Blake's notebook, which he used to record sketches and draft his poems for over thirty years. The dense, closely-filled pages provide a fascinating insight into Blake's compositional process, and allow us to follow - line by line, correction by correction- the genesis of some of his best-known work, including poems such as London and The Tyger. To commemorate the 250th anniversary of Blake's birth, the British Library has used its award-winning Turning the Pages technology to create an interactive version of the manuscript."

More from The Independent.

The Hornbook: Ceci n'est pas un livre?!

The hornbook was an educational device for children that came into use in the 15th century. Originally, paper was a scarce and expensive commodity so a piece of wood (usually, but other materials were used) shaped like a bat held a sheet on which the alphabet, letter pairs and a religious verse was written. To protect the paper (or vellum) a sheet of thin transparent cow horn was placed over the top or sometimes the page was painted with varnish. A hole was often put through the handle so the book could be tied to the child's belt. Links: i, ii, iii, iv mostly appropriated from x, y, z.
















German doctor and chemist, Andreas Libavius produced one of the most important early books on chemistry, ironically titled 'Alchemia' first published in 1597. I say ironic because 'Alchemia' was as much an investigation (and part debunking) of the previously secretive world of alchemy as it was the first book of practical chemistry.

“In this work, Libavius sought to wrest the initiative from the Paracelsians by exhaustively articulating chemical technique and practice: he undercut their claims to unique illumination by ranging encyclopedically over the literature on the chemical arts; and he rescued prescription from the secretiveness of the adept by bringing chemistry into the light of day and placing it within a historical tradition of established discourse” [Owen Hannaway: 'Laboratory Design and the Aims of Science' IN: 'Isis', 1986]

I've obviously posted the more allegorical type images (no doubt reproduced from elswhere) but the first part of the book has copious illustrations of analytical chemistry/alchemy equipment (for instance).
The whole book 'Alchemia' is online at Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de Médecine or an abbreviated version is available from Bibliotheca Antiqua at Aboca Museum.
See also: University of Illinois; The Galileo Project; Bibliopoly.

'A Merz Sonata' 1985 by Debra Weier
(accompanying poetry by Jermome Rothenberg)

'Five Luminous Towers - A Book to be Read in the Dark' by Carol Barton, 2001.

The above 4 images come from the excellent 'The Book as Art' turn the pages site at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC (the actual exhibition closes 4 February).

And thanks to Suzanne G for the reminder about the University of Texas History site - 'Pop-Up and Moveable Books: A Tour Through Their History'.



'Allegory of Spring' by Henrik Goltzius (and Jacob Matham) 1589. This print comes from Art and Architecture: the online collections of the Courtald Institute of Art ; quickly becoming one of my favourite 'random fishing' sites - it has an excellent collection with incredibly useful browsing metatdata categories. [I'd just nabbed this image as a self-reminder to go searching for more Goltzius whose work I really like]



I'm not sure who the book artist is, but the image comes from a selection (.mov format) of books/artist books on display from the Booklyn Artists Alliance. Some really nice work in there.

'Design for illusionistic ceiling decoration', attributed to Andrea Pozzo,
probably late 17th century. The image comes from Art and Architecture.

'Illusionistic Architecture for the Vault of San Ignazio' by
Andrea Pozzo 1685-1690 at the National Gallery of Art.

Interior view of Goldener Hall in the Augsburg Rathaus (town hall)
by architect Elias Holl, 1615-1620, also at Art and Architecture. (photos/more)

The ink text below the gouache painting translates as:

"In the year 1527 the comet was seen with many streaks like long spears, and in among them, many visages and daggers, all colored in pale red, and in between many enormous flames of bright and fiery hue, and here and there the visages appeared, bearded and hairy in gray as of clouds and as if in flowing water streaked with blood, glittering and sparkling, as if everything were in confusion – the whole hideous of appearance, so that some who had seen it died thereof"

The image comes from Catalogue XVII of Master Drawings from Thomas Le Clair Kunsthandel in Hamburg (early 2005, I think). The 7Mb pdf download is worth it as there are numerous esoteric and beautiful sketches available with well researched background material.

From the catalogue: "Comets and similar astronomical phenomena have, since antiquity, produced an astonishing wealth of descriptive and interpretive literature. Always seen as portending evil, their appearance regularly provoked fear and trepidation in the populace. In the early sixteenth century written records were increasingly accompanied by pictorial imagery, as in woodcut or engraved broadsides. These records
frequently contain predictions of wars, plagues and similar catastrophes, with the populace called upon to do penance."

Rather than being a comet, the painting (probably from a Swabian album of works) is actually a record of a 3 hour appearance of an aurora borealis, considered to be of such significance at the time, that a whole book and numerous illustrations were devoted to it.
See: 'NASA - Comets in Ancient Cultures' via Mefi.











All the above images were made from spliced screencaps from a new addition to the Library of Congress's 'Culture and History of the Americas'. Flash and html versions of 'De Americaensche Zee-rovers' by Alexander O. Exquemelin, 1678 are available. The book [The American Buccaneers] is an eye-witness account of the major adventures of privateer/pirates who stalked the waterways from the Caribbean Islands to Central and South America during the 17th century.

I guess this was meant as a fold out/cut up/colour-in page for children. My vague
recall is that it's an accurate portrayal of an Amsterdam street in the 17th century.

Scene from Amsterdam.

[Sorry, I've forgotten where both of these images were found - an Amsterdam
archive or image database with a simple URL that now eludes me]

I have never heard
That, e'en when the gods held sway
In the ancient days,
E'er was water bound with red
Such as here in Tatta's stream

'Ariwara no Narihira Ason: 825-880, famous as a poet and a lover,
probably exiled because of an affair with the Empress'

From the '100 poems by 100 Poets' series of Japanese poems compiled in the 12th century. Katsushika Hokusai produced 89 colour/b & w woodblock illustrations in the first half of the 19th century to accompany the poems. [via Plep]

Other things...

• Restoration of a 19th century treasure: "The Pictorial Webster's".
• Claude Mediavilla Design & Calligraphy. [via Design et Typo]
  
• Etched on Devon's Memory - around Devon with early topographical prints [via Michael: a new multilingual portal to digital collections from European cultural institutions]
• A Year in Comics by John C Ralston (previously).
• Jonathan from The Maproom has a new project: "FRN is a blog about trains in all their forms — historical and modern, freight and passenger, real and model — and the people who are crazy about them."
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Timeline of Art History (thanks Bruno)
• Bibi is back on deck both at Bibi's Box and the Dodo blog.
• TASI (Technical Advisory Service for Images) is another portal, this time to image collections.

Penman Scrapbooks

Why do birds feature so prominently in penmanship exercises? IAMPETH (The International Association of Master Penmen, Engrossers and Teachers of Handwriting) recently added two scrapbooks to their rare books on calligraphy and penmanship holdings. The dated examples were from around 1900. {Large images are available} [Some of the above images were cleaned up and trimmed slightly - click for enlarged versions]

The Motifs of Understated Architecture II

[click to enlarge]


Wendel Dietterlin (1550-1599) was born in Konstanz in southern Germany but moved to the (then) autonomous Strasbourg district where he obtained citizenship during his twenties. Much of the online information seems sketchy both because of scarcity and also dubious translations.

Dietterlin is said to have trained as a painter under Philipp Memberger in Konstanz and may have received building/architectural instruction in Suttgart. His major trade appears to have been fresco painter but he was obviously well schooled in the art of engraving.

Beyond that I think I'll leave the commentary to Harry Francis Mallgrave : 'The Millard J. Millard Architectural Collection, III: Northern European Books (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1998) p. 25ff., nos. 28-29' [link or here] -

“One of the most interesting and important architectural works of sixteenth-century northern Europe is the ‘Architectura von Ausstheilung, Symmetria und Proportia der fünff Seulen’ of Dietterlin... [Dietterlin’s] artistic fame and influence was unparalleled in Germany in the first two decades of the seventeenth-century, and in this respect and others, his significance, especially in his dissemination of Renaissance decorative forms in Germany, parallels and even transcends that of Vredeman in the Netherlands.... What makes Dietterlin’s decorative style so unique and important for architecture is twofold: first, the very high artistic quality of the 203 engraved plates; and second, the way in which the painter (as he identifies himself on the title-page) attempts to interpret the Vitruvian and Serlian tradition of classical architecture in a private, lively, and imaginative style that was, as one of his earlier biographers phrased it, ‘almost impressionistic,’ if not a forerunner to the German baroque.

Dietterlin, in effect, mediates or filters the tradition of Vitruvius or Serlio through such column books as that of Blum, but even here important distinctions or departures are already in evidence.... Each of the five books is devoted to one order and iconographic theme based on the Vitruvian explanation of its origin. Each book begins with plates relating the order’s basic geometry or proportions, before passing to its decorative appurtenances with a lively if not sometimes nightmarish sensitivity. Terror and dementia are sometimes the impressions evoked by these images, as Dietterlin combines architectonic, human and animal forms with a pre-Piranesian sense of fantasy and humor that is unparalleled within the architectural literature of this time. There is scarcely a distinction in his forms between what is organic or inorganic, as walls, portals and windows breathe with empathetic life. Humanist architecture for Dietterlin is entirely corporeal, moving, and animate.... The technical or artistic execution of the plates also elevates the book above any other northern treatise of the sixteenth century, but this achievement is so self-evident to the reader that it is scarcely worth noting.”

• 'Architectura von Ausstheilung, Symmetria und Proportia der fünff Seulen' [Architecture of Exhibition, Symmetry and Proportion of the Columns] by Wendel Dietterlin was issued in parts in 1593/4 but was expanded to include more than 200 illustrations for simultaneous publication in Latin, German and French in 1598 and is online in its entirety at Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg. (the '+' button at the bottom of the illustration pages will open a slightly larger version as a pdf -- I don't think in this case it helps at all)
• See also Part I - I've posted about 20% of the book illustrations in total. Although I tended to save the most bizarre pictures, as is my want, it is a fair representation of the book - the overwhelming majority of the illustrations are of a similar eccentric flavour.
• Artnet.
• Classical order at wikipedia.
• Small biography of Dietterlin (an ancestor of Albert Schweitzer).
• "Sir Banister Fletcher's A History of Architecture" 1896 - this site has pdf background articles on a number of architectural topics : 'The Architecture of the Renaissance and Post-Renaissance in Europe and Russia' is well worth reading if you have an interest.
• Imaginary Design on Dietterlin and Hans Vredeman de Vries.
• The Fontainebleau School: misteraitch: I + II; University of Navarre
• Previously related: Hugues Sambin & Joseph Boillot.