Covered in Silk & Satin: Embroidered Bookbindings

Among the decorative and fine bindings held by Melbourne UL Special Collections are two examples of fabric/ textile bindings with embroidered decorations.

Embroidered book covers were popular during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, though earlier examples, such as the fourteenth-century embroidered binding on the British Library’s Felbrigge Psalter (Sloane MS 2400), do survive.

Textile bindings were produced primarily by professional embroiderers, but were also made by individual female owners. They were very much in vogue in England during the first half of the seventeenth century, particularly as covers for small devotional books, such as this copy of The Book of Common Prayer (London, 1629) that measures just eleven centimetres in height. The cover is made of white satin over blue silk, with birds and flowers embroidered with different coloured silk set within frames of gold thread, with gold thread borders on the spine and both sides.

Along with silk and satin, velvet was another popular textile for book covers. The Special Collections copy of L’Office de la Vierge Marie pour tous les temps de l’anee (Paris, [1636?]), bound with Pierre Coton’s Dévotes oraisons pour tous chrestiens et catholiques (Paris, 1637), is in a contemporary green velvet binding, heavily embroidered with floral motifs in silver thread and sequins, bordered on three sides by silver wire.

Resources
Much has been written on embroidered bindings. The British Library’s English Embroidered Bookbindings webpage provides a brief history of the subject and includes a select bibliography for further reading. One of the texts listed, Cyril Davenport’s English Embroidered Bookbindings (London, 1899), can be read on-line.

In addition to the resources noted by the BL, one can add the relevant sections in Bernard Middleton’s A History of English Craft Bookbinding Techniques (London, 1978; pp. 121–124), David Pearson’s English Bookbinding Styles, 1450–1800 (New Castle [DE], 2004; pp. 20–22), and Marianne Tidcombe’s Women Bookbinders, 1880–1920 (New Castle [DE], 1996; pp. 77–90).

Embroidered bindings can also be found throughout social media. They have been blogged about elsewhere (e.g. The Collation, Echoes from the Vault); there are pages in Pinterest (page 1 and page 2) and on Flickr (University of Glasgow Library); and one binding has even made its way onto YouTube compliments of the Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University.

Further examples can be seen on the Princeton University Hand Bookbinding website, and over 120 specimens can be found in the British Library’s Database of Bookbindings.

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The Booke of Common Prayer (London: Imprinted by Bonham Norton and John Bill, 1629), bound with The Whole Booke of Psalmes (London: Imprinted [by Felix Kingston] for the Company of Stationers, 1630)

L’Office de la Vierge Marie pour tous les temps de l’anee (Paris: Robert Denain, [1636?]), bound with Pierre Coton’s Dévotes oraisons pour tous chrestiens et catholiques (Paris: Marin Vaugon, 1637)

Pacific Voyages: A Book That Sailed with Cook

[First, a bit of shameless promotion. This post was published earlier today on the revived Library Collections blog of the Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne. This is where all my work related blog posts will first go up, along with posts by other library collection departments. Although I will also post them here in an effort to reach as wide an audience as possible, I would ask anyone so inclined to please subscribe to Library Collections and share the link with friends. For readers on Twitter, University of Melbourne Special Collections has established an account @UniMelbSpC where you can stay up to date on events, blog posts, and other news. We will also be launching a Facebook page and a Flickr account, which I'll announce on Antipodean Footnotes. Stay tuned!] 

Among the volumes held by University of Melbourne Special Collections concerning British exploration of the Pacific, the book with the greatest link to the subject has nothing at all to do with it at least in terms of its topic. It is a medical text called An Introduction to Physiology (London, 1759), a compilation of lectures for students by the Scottish physiologist and instructor Malcolm Flemyng (ca. 1700–1764).

The book’s importance as an object relative to Pacific exploration is evident in a contemporary note written on the front pastedown:

'This Book went round the World in the Endeavour in 1768 /69 /70 &71 ~'

The note is in the hand of William Perry, who carried the book with him when he signed on as surgeon’s mate aboard HMB Endeavour for the first of Capt. James Cook’s three Pacific voyages. Perry was later appointed to the position of surgeon upon the death of William Brougham Monkhouse on 5 November 1770, and is recorded in Cook’s journal for 7 November as being ‘equally well if not better skilled in his profession’.[1]

Title-page with Perry's ownership inscription

Flemyng’s Physiology would have served Perry well in dealing with the array of illnesses and injuries that befell the crew. Needing to access information quickly, Perry’s marginal notes amount to a running index of the first 179-pages, with the occasional commentary thereafter elucidating certain concepts and citing works that by the late 1760s had superseded aspects of Flemyng’s text. One such annotation includes an anatomical rendering of the human eye:

Annotations by Perry with drawing of human eye

Books would not have been an uncommon sight on the Endeavour. Cook had his atlases and travel narratives; Joseph Banks’s library is well attested; and some officers or literate crewmen surely had personal bibles or prayer books.[2]

While much is known about some of the titles consulted by Cook and the accompanying gentlemen scientists who sailed with the Endeavour, actual physical copies that have survived are extremely scarce. According to Matthew Fishburn of Hordern House, this scarcity is likely due to ‘hard usage, and the fact that with the probable exception of some of the grander atlases/ maps and natural history books, many of the books on board would have been quite utilitarian. It is little more than chance survival’.

‘Exceptionally scarce’ and ‘chance survival’ are apt phrases. Fishburn continued by noting that Perry’s copy of Flemyng’s Physiology is the only book from the Endeavour voyage ever sold by Hordern House in its twenty-eight year history. In fact, with the exception of John Hawkesworth’s account of the first voyage carried by Cook from Cape Town to St. Helena during the second voyage (1772–1775), the firm knows of no other books surviving from any of Cook’s voyages that have come onto the market.[3]

Such scarcity, when coupled with the book’s direct association with one of the most famed voyages of the eighteenth century, makes this copy of Flemyng’s Physiology one of the most important and treasured items held by Special Collections.

What became of Perry?

According to W. E. Snell’s article ‘Captain Cook’s Surgeons’, Perry served as surgeon aboard four other ships before retiring in 1782 to his native Chiswick, where it is presumed he continued to practice medicine.[4] He enjoyed a long life, dying in Hillingdon, Middlesex, at the age of 80 on 25 April 1827.

Perry’s copy of Flemyng’s Physiology was purchased by Special Collections from Hordern House in 2005 with funds from the Library Endowment Trust. It was previously in the collection of the American collector David Parsons.[5]

References
[1] J. C. Beaglehole (ed.). The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyage of Discovery, 4 vols. in 5 (Cambridge: Published for the Hakluyt Society at the University Press, 1955–1974), 1:437.

[2] For more about some of the titles consulted by Cook, Banks and the artist Sydney Parkinson, see D. J. Carr’s ‘The Books That Sailed with the Endeavour’, Endeavour, new series, 7:4 (1983): 194–201. Perry’s copy of Flemyng’s Physiology was unknown to Carr and therefore went unaccounted. Banks’s books that travelled with him were incorporated into his personal library upon his return to England, and are held by the British Library.

[3] The Parsons Collection: Rare Pacific Voyage Books from the Collection of David Parsons; Part I: Dampier to Cook. (Sydney: Hordern House, 2005), no. 86.

[4] W. E. Snell. ‘Captain Cook’s Surgeons’. Medical History 7:1 (January 1963): 46–47.

[5] For more on the formation of Parsons’ collection, see his article ‘The Pleasures of Collecting Books on Cook and Pacific Exploration’, published in Cook’s Log 30:2 (2007): 7–9.

Update: Australian & New Zealand Rare Book Summer School

The application form/ flyer for the 2014 Australian & New Zealand Rare Book Summer School is now available. There is also an online application form.

Classes will run from 10 to 14 February. Please see my earlier post for course descriptions.

The sessions on architectural books and natural history illustration will be held in the State Library of Victoria. Caren Florance's class on hand-press printing will be taught at the Ancora Press studio, Monash University (Caulfield campus). 

Applications will close on Friday 16 December 2013. Courses will proceed if sufficient applications have been received by Friday 6 December 2013. 

For further information, please email: rbss[@]slv.vic.gov.au.

University of Melbourne Acquires Germaine Greer's Archive

News broke a few hours ago that the University of Melbourne has acquired the archive of one of its leading alumni, the notable academic and feminist, Germaine Greer.

According to the write-up in The Guardian:

'The archive, including manuscripts of Greer's books, her diaries and correspondence with some of the most significant intellectuals and politicians of the past century, fills more than 150 filing cabinets and spans the years from her student life in Melbourne, Sydney and Cambridge to the present day. It includes early notes for and a synopsis of her groundbreaking bestseller The Female Eunuch, as well as diaries and letters to her lovers, family and friends ... The correspondence files include letters from the novelist Margaret Atwood, activist Abbie Hoffman, film director and actor Warren Beatty (who was at one time Greer's lover), art critic John Berger, former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto, film director Federico Fellini, former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi, writer and television personality Clive James, feminist writer Dale Spender and many more'.

The University of Melbourne Vice-Chancellor Professor Glyn Davis said the university will ship, catalogue and digitise the archive, which will be exhibited at the university.

The archive is expected to arrive in Melbourne in July 2014. Proceeds from the $3m purchase will go to the Friends of Gondwana Rainforest.

Announcement and 'About the Archive' on the University of Melbourne, University Library, website.

Preserving Blaeu's 'Archipelagus Orientalis'

[A look at the conservation work being done on the National Library of Australia's copy of Joan Blaeu's map, the Archipelagus Orientalis, sive Asiaticus (1663), acquired by the NLA earlier this year. The map, as noted in the post below, is just one of four surviving copies known.]

[Reposted from the NLA's Behind the Scenes blog]

Opening on 7 November, our summer blockbuster Mapping Our World: Terra Incognita to Australia features one of the Library’s recent major map acquisitions – Archipelagus Orientalis, sive Asiaticus (Eastern and Asian archipelago), 1663 by Dutch master cartographer Joan Blaeu (1596-1673).

This remarkable wall chart – one of only four surviving copies in the world, is in an exceedingly fragile state, but conservators from the Library’s Preservation Branch have embarked on a meticulous and time-consuming preservation treatment to stabilise it for display. Fortunately, the areas of greatest interest, illuminating the story of the Dutch discovery of Australia – the mention of the first sighting of Tasmania and the text naming the continent – are intact and clearly visible.

We produced this video to highlight the significant preservation work that is underway:

If you would like to make a financial contribution to the preservation of the Blaeu map, you can make a tax-deductible  donation online or download and return the donation form. You can learn more about the preservation effort on our webpage dedicated to the map.

We are pleased to release this video under a Creative Commons licence that makes it available for everyone to share and re-use. Because of that, we have been able to upload the video to Wikimedia Commons which allows it to be used directly within Wikipedia articles – notably on the biography of Blaeu himself. We would like to especially acknowledge the Wikipedian in Residence at the National Library of the Netherlands for translating the captions to this video into Dutch.

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Read more about the map and its acquisition.

Eyewitness Letter to the Capture of Ned Kelly Surfaces After 133 Years

The Victorian bushranger Edward 'Ned' Kelly is one of nineteenth-century Australia's most well known and controversial figures. His exploits in Victoria and southern New South Wales, which culminated in the siege at Glenrowan (late June 1880) where Kelly and members of his gang donned make-shift body armour to deflect police bullets, have seen Kelly labelled an outlaw and murderer by some and folk hero by others.

Now, after 133 years, a letter containing an eyewitness account of Kelly's dramatic capture during the siege has been donated to the State Library of Victoria by the descendants of its author – Scotsman, Donald Gray Sutherland.

What makes this letter particularly interesting is that it offers a new perspective. According to the historian Alex McDermott, unlike previous accounts, which were written either by government officials or Kelly sympathisers, Sutherland was 'an everyday bank teller from Oxley, a little town near Glenrowan, and [was] not on the side of the Kellys and ... not on the side of the police'.

[From the State Library of Victoria website]

The letter addressed to Sutherland’s family on 8 July 1880 proclaims ‘… the Kelly’s are annihilated. The gang is completely destroyed…’. It continues describing Kelly’s famous armour and the gunshot wounds that finally brought him down.

‘He was wounded in 5 or 6 places, only in the arms and legs – His body and head being encased in armour made from the moule (sic) boards of a lot of ploughs. Now the farmers about here, have been getting their moule boards taken off their ploughs at night for a long time but who ever dreamed it was the Kellys and that they would be used for such a purpose. Ned’s armour alone weighed 97 pounds. The police thought he was a fiend seeing their rifle bullets mere sliding off him like hail. They were firing into him at about 10 yards in the grim light of the morning without the slightest effect. The force of the rifle bullets made him stagger when hit but it was only when they got him in the legs and arms that he reluctantly fell exclaiming as he did so I am done I am done.’

Sutherland enclosed a lock of hair from Kelly’s horse with the letter, noting in the postscript, ‘The hair enclosed is from the tail of Ned Kelly the famous murderer and bushranger’s mare. His favourite mare who followed him all around the trees during the firing. He said he wouldn’t care for himself if he thought his mare safe.’

Sue Roberts, CEO and State Librarian described the donation of the letter as extremely generous and a significant addition to the Kelly story.

‘This letter is a very personal account of events that have become part of Australia’s folklore. We are delighted that Mr Sutherland’s family chose the State Library of Victoria as caretaker for this remarkable document. It will join Ned's armour, Jerilderie Letter and other important items in our Kelly collection – one of the largest and most significant in the world.’

The letter will be on display in the State Library’s Changing Face of Victoria exhibition from Monday (14 October). It is also available online with a full transcript via the State Library website.

Panel Discussion on 'Beautiful Books'

The Wheeler Centre has uploaded video of the 2013 Melbourne Rare Book Week opening night panel discussion 'Beautiful Books':

http://wheelercentre.com/videos/video/beautiful-books/

'Passionate bibliophiles – including a collector, a designer and a twenty-first-century book-maker – will explore changing perspectives on what makes a book beautiful … and what makes us treasure it long after its shelf life.

With Des Cowley, Rare Printed Collections Manager at the State Library of Victoria, designer W. H. Chong, and booki.sh founder Virginia Murdoch. Hosted by Steve Grimwade.

In the midst of the e-revolution, where we’re as likely to download as to leaf through a book, the idea of the book as an object of beauty is being lost. Or is it?'

Melbourne Rare Book Week ran from 18 to 28 July.