An offcut from a 100-year-old piece of paste paper. A little treasure from Wyvern Bindery.
For centuries, bookbinders have used leftover binding paste to make decorative papers. With a little pigment added, this glue becomes an expressive and versatile medium for mark-making, etching, stippling, scratching and painting.
These pages are reproductions from the Mira calligraphiae monumenta, a ‘Model Book of Calligraphy’ created over 30 years by two men who never met.
In 1561-62 the calligrapher to the court of Emperor Ferdinand I of Hungary and Croatia, Georg Bocskay, created the original folio of over 128 contemporary and historical scripts. 28 years later, Emperor Ferdinand I’s grandson, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II commissioned Flemish illuminator Joris Hoefnagel to illustrate the calligrapher’s work.
In a classic tale of one-upmanship, Hoefnagel’s approach was to demonstrate the superior power of images over written words. The court of Rudolf II and his father Maximilian II were among the principal centres of 16th Century botany. Therefore Hoefnagel had access to some of the rarest native and imported flowers and plants at the time. However, not all of Hoefnagel’s illustrations are of real specimens. A lot of the insects in the manuscript are unidentifiable or imaginary.
The resulting manuscript was a visual feast. I love that the texts - mostly prayers and psalms, and the images have nothing to do with each other, and are both serving to vie for your attention.
Nature Illuminated, first published for the Getty museum in 1992, describes the various calligraphic letter forms and scripts used in the Mira calligraphiae monumenta. Bocskay employed a variety of unusual techniques to show off his virtuosity, including backwards slant italics, mirror writing and micrography - writing too small to be read by the naked eye. Can we make graphic design and typography this mad now please?
A few weeks ago I took part in a live drawing session at Sadler’s Wells while the English National Ballet took their daily company class. It’s distinguished as ‘live’ rather than ‘life’ drawing because the dancers are not modelling, or there to be drawn, it is a dynamic, fast-paced class to warm them up for the evening’s performance.
The dancers started by stretching out on the barre, running through their rudiments and finally leaping and pirouetting across the stage. I wasn’t drawing by the end of the class because it was just such a privilege to watch.
My resulting sketches are mostly quick captures of movements, taking between one and ten seconds and without looking at the page.
Are you allowed to take photographs of books in bookshops? Every time I go to Hay-on-Wye in Brecknockshire, Wales, I can’t help but document all of the most appealing book covers. I get in a bit of a font frenzy.
There is something about Hay that is so seductive and ancient, in a similar way to Lewes in Sussex. Browsing in shop windows with the Brecon Beacons or in Lewes’ case the South Downs silently waiting for you notice them in the background. It seems quite surreal. The complete antithesis to a shopping centre.
Here is a book I couldn’t leave in the bookshop as it’s so mad. ‘Aphrodisiacs in your Garden’ by Charles Connell (I can’t find anything about him online), published in 1965 and illustrated by Quentin Blake, nonetheless.
Who knew?!
Needless to say there isn’t much science in here but a lot of amusing anecdotes by certain ‘Mr K’s and ‘Mr G’s. Also worth noting is the fact that the man is always drawn in full gardening get-up, whilst his female companion seems to prefer sowing her seeds in the nude.
Her face!
Here are some of my favourite covers from this trip:
Perhaps my favourite find - a little hand-painted note tucked in a book. Are those UFO’s above the swan?
