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The Lindisfarne Gospels is an extraordinary book and one of the British Library's greatest treasures. It was hand-written and decorated over 1,300 years ago by a single supremely gifted scribe-artist. It inspires awe both as a pinnacle of book design and for the fascinating story of how it came down to us in almost pristine condition. Every aspect of its design displays meticulous care, keen responsiveness to a wide range of cultural contacts, and the workings of an immense and brilliant imagination. This brand-new, accessible volume explores the latest research and thinking on the Lindisfarne Gospels and is published as the manuscript goes on loan to the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle for an exhibition exploring its meaning in today's world. This magnificent guide presents a detailed introduction and commentary alongside the highest quality, detailed illustrations which celebrate the intricate, interlaced geometrical precision of one of the finest early medieval craftsmen.
Throughout marbling's long history, people have been captivated by both its apparent simplicity and its extraordinary complexity. Get to know and enjoy marbling's beauty in this guide from paper artist Freya Scott, whose enthusiasm for the craft is highly contagious. As Freya explains the wide range of the art's possibilities and how to make them come to life in your work, beginners will learn the craft from square one, while advanced marblers will find many new ideas and directions for expanding their skills. Learn how to size and prepare various papers, choose color palettes, and make patterns, while being inspired by photos of dozens of beautiful marbled artworks. Throughout, try step-by-step projects. Learn how to marble with gouache and with acrylic; a special section covers marbling on fabric. Freya shares the personal experiences that have shaped her marbling career (for example, she learned marbling thanks to a debilitating illness) and the ways marbling can become a source of your best creativity. As she explains, although marbling is a simple concept, there are so many variables that the adventure never ends. This absorbing guide offers you the art and science you need to take marbling as far as you want to go.
Illuminated manuscripts from England and France are among the greatest masterpieces of medieval European art. This beautiful new book showcases dozens of the finest examples, many of which have never before been exhibited and are rarely reproduced. It reveals the close artistic and intellectual connections between Anglo-Saxon and Norman England and medieval France, where scribes and illuminators often shared stylistic ideas and subject-matter. Among the manuscripts featured here are gospel-books and saints' lives, histories, and herbals. Together they give rich insights into the culture and beliefs of people in medieval Europe, and they are a significant source of evidence for Anglo-Saxon England in particular. Curators from the British Library in London and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris have collaborated on a major project to study these manuscripts in detail--this book introduces their findings alongside stunning images.
Some years ago, Oliver Darkshire stepped into the hushed interior of Henry Sotheran Ltd (est. 1761) to apply for a job. Allured by the smell of old books and the temptation of a management-approved afternoon nap, Darkshire was soon unteetering stacks of first editions and placating the store's resident ghost (the late Mr. Sotheran, hit by a tram).
A novice in this ancient, potentially haunted establishment, Darkshire describes Sotheran's brushes with history (Dickens, the Titanic), its joyous disorganization, and the unspoken rules of its gleefully old-fashioned staff, whose mere glance may cause the computer to burst into flames. As Darkshire gains confidence and experience, he shares trivia about ancient editions and explores the strange space that books occupy in our lives--where old books often have strong sentimental value, but rarely a commercial one.
By turns unhinged and earnest, Once Upon a Tome is the colorful story of life in one of the world's oldest bookshops and a love letter to the benign, unruly world of antiquarian bookselling, where to be uncommon or strange is the best possible compliment.
A rich exploration of the importance of books and libraries in the ancient world that highlights how humanity's obsession with the printed word has echoed throughout the ages - "Accessible and entertaining." --The Wall Street Journal Long before books were mass-produced, scrolls hand copied on reeds pulled from the Nile were the treasures of the ancient world. Emperors and Pharaohs were so determined to possess them that they dispatched emissaries to the edges of earth to bring them back. When Mark Antony wanted to impress Cleopatra, he knew that gold and priceless jewels would mean nothing to her. So, what did her give her? Books for her library--two hundred thousand, in fact. The long and eventful history of the written word shows that books have always been and will always be a precious--and precarious--vehicle for civilization. Papyrus is the story of the book's journey from oral tradition to scrolls to codices, and how that transition laid the very foundation of Western culture. Award-winning author Irene Vallejo evokes the great mosaic of literature in the ancient world from Greece's itinerant bards to Rome's multimillionaire philosophers, from opportunistic forgers to cruel teachers, erudite librarians to defiant women, all the while illuminating how ancient ideas about education, censorship, authority, and identity still resonate today. Crucially, Vallejo also draws connections to our own time, from the library in war-torn Sarajevo to Oxford's underground labyrinth, underscoring how words have persisted as our most valuable creations. Through nimble interpretations of the classics, playful and moving anecdotes about her own encounters with the written word, and fascinating stories from history, Vallejo weaves a marvelous tapestry of Western culture's foundations and identifies the humanist values that helped make us who we are today. At its heart a spirited love letter to language itself, Papyrus takes readers on a journey across the centuries to discover how a simple reed grown along the banks of the Nile would give birth to a rich and cherished culture.
A history of one of humankind's most resilient and influential technologies over the past millennium--the book. Revelatory and entertaining in equal measure, Portable Magic will charm and challenge literature lovers of all kinds as it illuminates the transformative power and eternal appeal of the written word. Stephen King once said that books are "a uniquely portable magic." Here, Emma Smith takes readers on a literary adventure that spans centuries and circles the globe to uncover the reasons behind our obsession with this captivating object. From disrupting the Western myth that the Gutenberg Press was the original printing project, to the decorative gift books that radicalized women to join the anti-slavery movement, to paperbacks being weaponized during World War II, to a book made entirely of plastic-wrapped slices of American cheese, Portable Magic explores how, when, and why books became so iconic. It's not just the content within a book that compels; it's the physical material itself, what Smith calls "bookhood" the smell, the feel of the pages, the margins to scribble in, the illustrations on the jacket, its solid heft. Every book is designed to influence our reading experience--to enchant, enrage, delight, and disturb us--and our longstanding love affair with books in turn has had direct, momentous consequences across time.
The biography of a central figure in the final era of hot-metal composition and printing
The book and type designer Frederic Warde is remembered today chiefly for his collaboration with Stanley Morison, for producing the singular typeface Arrighi. His life was short (he died in 1939, at the age of only forty-five) but in the previous two decades he had pursued a peripatetic, rollercoaster career that saw him come into contact with most of the leading players in his field, in England, Europe, and America: Bruce Rogers, Mardersteig, Updike, Ruzicka, George Macy, William Kittredge, and, of course, Morison, are just a few of a stellar cast of characters whose lives intersected with his orbit. Until now, as it was scantily documented, Warde is the missing piece in the story of design, type, and printing in the interwar years, and this book will make essential reading for anyone interested in that critical period, one that saw the end of hot-metal and the emergence of graphic design as a distinct profession. Warde laid many false trails about his personal history, but the author has drawn upon a surprisingly large body of surviving documentation to piece together a fascinating picture of his life and of the complex, frustrating, sometimes dislikeable, but often inspiring, figure at its center. The best of Warde's extensive body of work displays a restraint and economy linked with an often striking color sense that feels thoroughly modern in its approach. This output was maintained, sometimes erratically, against the backdrop of Warde's mercurial and fragmented professional and personal life. Polarizing the opinions of those he met, he was unfailingly a prolific, entertaining, and informed letter writer, and his correspondence provides invaluable insights into his world and those around him. Here is a designer's life played out against the backdrop of the boom years of the 1920s, the challenges of the Depression, and the obstacles and opportunities created by his own remarkable, but troubled, genius.
The never-before-told story of how the makers of The First Folio created Shakespeare as we know him today. 2023 marks the 400-year anniversary of the publication of Mr William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, known today simply as the First Folio. It is difficult to imagine a world without The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter's Tale, and Macbeth, but these are just some of the plays that were only preserved thanks to the astounding labor of love that was the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. When the First Folio hit the bookstalls in 1623, nearly eight years after the dramatist's death, it provided eighteen previously unpublished plays, and significantly revised versions of close to a dozen other dramatic works, many of which may not have survived without the efforts of those who backed, financed, curated, and crafted what is arguably one of the most important conservation projects in literary history. Without the First Folio Shakespeare is unlikely to have acquired the towering international stature he now enjoys across the arts, the pedagogical arena, and popular culture. Its lasting impact on English national heritage, as well as its circulation across cultures, languages, and media, makes the First Folio the world's most influential secular book. But who were the personalities behind the project and did Shakespeare himself play a role in its inception? Shakespeare's Book: The Story Behind the First Folio and the Making of Shakespeare charts, for the first time, the manufacture of the First Folio against a turbulent backdrop of seismic political events and international tensions which intersected with the lives of its creators and which left their indelible marks on this ambitious publication-project. This story uncovers the friendships, bonds, social ties, and professional networks that facilitated the production of Shakespeare's book--as well as the personal challenges, tragedies and dangers that threw obstacles in the path of its chief backers. It reveals how Shakespeare himself, before his death, may have influenced the ways in which his own public identity would come to be enshrined in the First Folio, shaping his legacy to future generations and determining how the world would remember him: "not of an age, but for all time." Shakespeare's Book tells the true story of how the makers of the First Folio created "Shakespeare" as we know him today.
To save ancient Arabic texts from Al Qaeda, a band of librarians pulls off a brazen heist worthy of Ocean's Eleven in this "fast-paced narrative that is...part intellectual history, part geopolitical tract, and part out-and-out thriller" (The Washington Post) from the author of The Falcon Thief. In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River, tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that were crumbling in the trunks of desert shepherds. His goal: preserve this crucial part of the world's patrimony in a gorgeous library. But then Al Qaeda showed up at the door. "Part history, part scholarly adventure story, and part journalist survey...Joshua Hammer writes with verve and expertise" (The New York Times Book Review) about how Haidara, a mild-mannered archivist from the legendary city of Timbuktu, became one of the world's greatest smugglers by saving the texts from sure destruction. With bravery and patience, Haidara organized a dangerous operation to sneak all 350,000 volumes out of the city to the safety of southern Mali. His heroic heist "has all the elements of a classic adventure novel" (The Seattle Times), and is a reminder that ordinary citizens often do the most to protect the beauty of their culture. His the story is one of a man who, through extreme circumstances, discovered his higher calling and was changed forever by it.
A breathtaking journey into the hidden history of medieval manuscripts, from the Lindisfarne Gospels to the ornate Psalter of Henry VIII
"A delight--immersive, conversational, and intensely visual, full of gorgeous illustrations and shimmering description." -Helen Castor, author of She-Wolves
Medieval manuscripts can tell us much about power and art, knowledge and beauty. Many have survived because of an author's status--part of the reason we have so much of Chaucer's writing, for example, is because he was a London-based government official first and a poet second. Other works by the less influential have narrowly avoided ruin, like the book of illiterate Margery Kempe, found in a country house closet, the cover nibbled on by mice. Scholar Mary Wellesley recounts the amazing origins of these remarkable manuscripts, surfacing the important roles played by women and ordinary people--the grinders, binders, and scribes--in their creation and survival.
The Gilded Page is the story of the written word in the manuscript age. Rich and surprising, it shows how the most exquisite objects ever made by human hands came from unexpected places.
"Mary Wellesley is a born storyteller and The Gilded Page is as good as historical writing gets. This is a sensational debut by a wonderfully gifted historian." --Dan Jones, bestselling author of The Plantagenets and The Templars