This "Week": October 16-22

Started building the light table.  Finally!  Will post detailed info when it is complete.

Continued to experiment with other media-- conte pencil, ink, metal leaf etc.  I am still not satisfied with the results.   Some media work well on a solid cyanotic background, but not when there are images in the background (at least not yet).

Beinecke Trip 2:

More illuminated manuscripts, this time maps.  Although similar, the maps had a lot of individuality. Some were more dense with words, plants or landforms.  The backs had ink staining through, and looked eerily like skin with veins.  I saw a strong relationship between man and nature in the maps;  man trying to control nature (cities) and make sense of it (the maps), and nature controlling man (cities built around landforms or because of them). Some maps were in very good condition, and others had been repaired.  The backs of the repaired maps looked like collages, and the fronts were filled in with ink.

Atlas, Frederik de Wit, 169-?

Atlas factice of 92 maps by Blaeu, Visscher, Jansson, Hondius and others, 1556-1680:

 Rudimenta Cosmographica, Johannes Honter, 1542: 
Almost palm-sized, rich colors and metal leaf.

[Dhikr mulūk al-Furs wa-al-ʻArab qabla al-Islām]. -- [15--?]; An Arabic book on geography:

More maps, just FYI: http://thewalters.org/exhibitions/maps/exhibitions_images.html

Cyanotypes:

Blood Migration by John Metoyer:

An artist book of poems and cyanotype, kallitype, and platinum.  Beautiful other-wordly images.

http://www.21stphotography.com/JohnMetoyer/JohnMetoyer.html

http://www.johnmetoyer.com/John_H._Metoyer/Welcome.html

More Prints:

Made multiple exposures over old prints.  Also put objects  (lace, beads, plants) with the negatives on the sensitized paper...

More play/experiment (is there a difference?)

Papers

35 paper samples!  Most of the results were OK, and some were surprisingly good (extra bright, translucent etc.) and some were not (disintegrated paper, paper that wouldn't absorb the chemicals at all, etc.)

Color!

Egg tempera, gouache, oil-based color pencil, ink...  More to come.

More prints...

Played around with compositional elements of manuscripts and manuscript decoration (see negatives in previous post).  In the first, I did most of the arranging and "layering" in Photoshop.  I added photographs (hard to see) and a "blankie".  I miss the element of chance that is there when I physically layer and arrange various transparencies.  I may do another layer of exposure or stick to my original plan of adding metal leaf.

Visit to the Haas Arts Special Collections at Yale

I took photos, but do not have permission to post.  I will try to post links to artists' websites.

Contemporary Illuminated Books/Manuscripts

Tamar Messer:

Most of her work is bright and full of color (see the Book of Esther).  The exception is her Book of Lamentations-- very stark black and white linocuts.  I liked the interplay of "hand-printing" and "digital-printing".

Book of Esther

Book of Lamentations

Avner Moriah:

Moriah adapts his personal style to the style that would best suit the manuscript: the Book of Genesis is done in a more "primitive" symbolic style, and the Scroll of Esther seems to be influenced by Persian manuscripts (based on manuscripts I saw at the Met).

Book of Genesis/Beresheet

Scroll of Esther

Yael David-Cohen

The Book of Esther was unbound with etchings, chin colle, and hand written text in graphite. The paper looked like half sheets of watercolor paper.

http://www.yaeldc.co.uk/index.html

Manual of Illuminated and Missal Painting, Edwin Jewitt, 1860

Discussed color, design, pigments etc. and had reproductions of designs and calligraphy.  In discussing the designs in illuminated manuscripts, the author wrote: 

"The student may... be assured that to be true to nature will give his productions their greatest and most lasting charms... Art should always be based upon nature, and be made subservient to it, and the two so combined as to make a perfect and pleasing whole." (page 26)

Whether this applies to all art or not, it strengthened my desire to incorporate my nature writing, cyanotypes (which use nature in the process), and illuminated manuscripts.

Contemporary Cyanotype Art Books

Nora Lee McGillivray

Mapping the Great Book:

http://joshuahellerrarebooks.com/catalogue/mcgillivray-nora-lee-mapping-the-great-book

http://www.mnartists.org/work.do?rid=75377&pageIndex=3

All in cyanotype, the pages open from the center and there is a round globe-like book in the center.  The artists used all sorts of objects (even pearls?) to create the illusion of stars and planets.  There are some red markings to compliment/contrast the blue. This book is about celestial bodies and in the credits it says "This book... was printed by the Sun at 45'03' North Latitude, 93'08' West Longitude..."

Between Us and Far Away:

A long folded (accordion style) book within a "house".  Otherwise similar to Mapping the Great Book.

http://www.mnartists.org/work.do?rid=1056

Carolee Campbell

XXIV Short Love Poems, Bruce Whitman 2002

The cyanotype images are very small (1.5 inches?) and very intimate.

http://ninjapressbooks.com/lovepoems.html

More Digital Negatives

Inspired by the calligraphic designs and the various compositions in the illuminated manuscripts, I played with doodles and sketches and made designs in Photoshop.  I printed on 13 by 19 sheets.

Beinecke Library Visit 1

I saw (and held!) original illuminated manuscripts and high quality facsimiles.  There are so many things that could only be seen in person-- wine stains, ink bleeding through paper, gold leaf fading and revealing red (glue?) underneath, etc.  I also saw some cyanotype documents.
Below, are most of the manuscripts I saw.  All images were taken of manuscripts in the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Psalms, Job, Proverbs

Florence, 1467

This was small and beautifully detailed...

I was inspired by the calligraphic designs around headings.  The designs were balanced, yet were also very expressive.  No two were the same.

Links to hi-res images:

http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/brbldl_getrec.asp?fld=img&id=1002985

http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/brbldl_getrec.asp?fld=img&id=1002984

Shiviti Plaque, Morocco, 19th Century

The Washington Haggadah (facsimile), 1478:

Illustrated by Joel ben Simeon who was forced to move from Germany to Italy because of persecution and expulsions.  His later illuminations are a combination of German and Italian styles.
A link with excellent reproductions: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/features/haggadah/
Notice the layering of text because of the ink bleeding...

Haggadah, Mainz, 1726

Wine and matzo stains!

North French Hebrew Miscellany, 1278 (facsimile 2003):

Gorgeous calligraphy and micrography.  I took photos, but unfortunately don't think I could post because of copyrights.  Here is a link:

http://www.facsimile-editions.com/en/nf/

Shavuot Manuscript, Kashan, Persia, 1883:

worm holes!

Cyanotypes:

I discovered new ways that cyanotypes were used (legal, maps, anthropology?, instruction, general printing), and it was instructive to see the scale of the images.

Letters relating to the Peter Pan Gold Mining Company, including cyanotype map of Montezuma, Women's Rights and Women's Rights Fraction mining claims (1910-1911)

The cyanotype was done on standard sized paper-- probably to fit with the legal sized papers of the document.  It's an interesting map-- looks more like a diagram.

FYI:  Apparently there are mathematical reasons for standard paper sizes, but they don't hold up for book pages.  Also the ratios that work for the paper size, do not work for font sizes.  More info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size

Photographs of Indian children (ca. 1900)

These were very small and invited closer intimate looking.  Notice the key for scale.  Also, a link with higher res: http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/brbldl/oneITEM.asp?pid=2010717&iid=1049734&srchtype=CNO

Album de Corbeilles et Mosaïques Florales: Eté Hiver (ca. 1907) 

"Album of Flower Baskets and Mosaics: Summer and Winter"

This looked like a tutorial for making floral designs and drawing fruits.  It also included charts on different fruits and garden plans.  This was a wonderful discovery.

For artistic reasons, I have already begun to include "designs" in my cyanotypes, and here cyanotypes were used to create designs for seemingly practical printing purposes.  It reinforced my desire to incorporate illuminated manuscript elements into my cyanotypes.