two projects from the class, two hand-made books of original work from Ashley and Norma. Ashley’s, on top, has an image of her grandparents on the dust-jacket, and Norma’s, below, was designed to reflect the colours of the Kalahari desert, the region described in the brief memoir within. Beautiful work; I am so proud of them!
Some bookish cartoons
from Tom Gauld at The Guardian that touch on some of our discussion, if only peripherally:
Mini-book-binding workshop
in Fredericton at the NB College of Craft and Design:
The Art of Book Making
Instructor: Denise Rowe
Saturday February 23, 9am – 4pm
From the website:
Spend a relaxing day making a personal, handmade Coptic-stitched bound journal. We will design and make unique front and back covers. There will be lots of folding; sewing, some gluing, and we will learn a few neat booky terms along the way.
COURSE COST: $85 + HST (ONE 6 HOUR CLASS) to be paid in order to register
plus
MATERIAL COST: $20.00 to be paid to the instructor the day of the workshop.
This would only be a taste compared to the six-week NSCAD course that Norma described, but it might be a good taster for anyone wondering if they wanted to commit to a longer course.
[Image: example of coptic binding, Wikipedia]
Two courses for Winter term
Just watched
a fascinating film on Netflix from the Coen brothers called The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Highly recommended. Of interest to us because it is an “anthology” film — six separate stories — and each is framed by turning pages in an old-fashioned illustrated book with tissue-paper covering the illustrations. Each story riffs on various myths of the “old west” (from a settler perspective).
Blog prompt
If you are looking for something to blog about this week, perhaps you might consider this situation at a university in the UK, in light of the chapter we are reading on censorship: “University alerts students to danger of leftwing essay: Prevent critics slam Reading for labelling ‘mainstream’ academic text as extremist.” Eleni Courea. The Guardian (11 November 2018).
Swiss Army Book
Hope you are all enjoying a productive reading week! Here is an interesting item: M. L. Van Nice, Swiss Army Book, 1990.
Two things
- Schedule updated for the rest of the term.
- For your post-Halloween reading pleasure: “How New Printing Technology Gave Witches Their Familiar Silhouette,” Kat Eschner, Smithsonian.com (October 30, 2017): how the image of the witch with the pointy hat and broom was spread by popular print culture in the 17thc.
[Image: A woodcut from a 1720 history of “witches and wizards” (Wellcome Library)]
And a third thing
Some exciting on-line projects, and two videos on medieval book-making and manuscripts:
Online collections
- Behold 3,000 Digitized Manuscripts from the Bibliotheca Palatina: The Mother of All Medieval Libraries Is Getting Reconstructed Online
- Oxford University Presents the 550-Year-Old Gutenberg Bible in Spectacular, High-Res Detail
- Discover Europeana Collections, a Portal of 48 Million Free Artworks, Books, Videos, Artifacts & Sounds from Across Europe
- The Harvard Classics: Download All 51 Volumes as Free eBooks
Videos
- How Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beautiful, Centuries-Old Craft
- The Art of Making Old-Fashioned, Hand-Printed Books
[Image from Behold the Beautiful Pages from a Medieval Monk’s Sketchbook]
Two things
- The schedule has been updated.
- Here are some photos of weird and wonderful books with links to articles in Open Culture, a rich, highly recommended site:
Book that opens six ways: http://www.openculture.com/2014/09/wonderfully-weird-ingenious-medieval-books.html
Dutch book, 1662, documents “every colour under the sun”: http://www.openculture.com/2014/07/dutch-book-from-1692-documents-every-color-under-the-sun.html
Europe’s oldest, intact book: http://www.openculture.com/2018/09/europes-oldest-intact-book-preserved-found-coffin-saint.html
Book bound in human skin: http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/old-books-bound-in-human-skin-found-in-harvard-libraries.html
Holding words 