June 19, 2008

"The Jewish Book in a Christian World": International Conference at Antwerp (25-27 June, 2008)


With the recently inaugurated exhibition "Hebraica veritas: Sprak God Hebreeuws? (did God Speak Hebrew, see our April 25, 2008 post)" up and running until August 17, 2008, the Plantin-Moretus Museum (MPM) is about to close its Spring season festively with the international conference "The Jewish Book in a Christian World" (25-27 June, 2008).

Apart from MPM and the University of Antwerp's IJS (Institute of Jewish Studies), co-organizers are the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA), and the Universitair Centrum Sint-Ignatius at Antwerp (UCSIA).

Keynote lecturer at 5 pm on Wednesday at the City Hall of Antwerp is Princeton professor of Renaissance history and the history of scholarship, Anthony Grafton. Grafton's first book was an intellectual biography of Joseph Scaliger. He's been a frequent visitor at the University of Leiden, where he received an honorary doctorate in 2006, and where he has found colleagues to edit Scaliger's collected letters. The University of Leiden Library has a Scaliger Institute to promote research of its holdings.

This blogger has some interesting links in connection with Grafton's latest book, Codex in Crisis. It's a bibliophile edition limited to 250 copies based on an article from the New Yorker in which Grafton expresses to what extend some reserve is due about digitization.

On Thursday June 26, 2008, two sessions will be held at this conference: "The Printing of the Hebrew Bible and Judaica in Antwerp and the Low Countries" (morning) and "Christian Publishers and Readers of Hebrew Literature (afternoon). Location is the Print Room at the Plantin-Moretus Museum (morning) and University of Antwerp's Hof van Liere (afternoon).

A morning session on Friday June 27, 2008 will close the conference: "The Impact of Print on Jewish Culture." Location that day is the University of Antwerp's Hof van Liere. The conference will be held entirely in English. Admission is free, but registration is mandatory.

Illustration: cover of the exhibition catalogue of Hebraica veritas. Book design of the catalogue by Louis van den Eede, who drew the front cover's design by hand. Details: Hebraica veritas. Christoffel Plantijn en de Christelijke Hebraïsten. Catalogus bij de tentoonstelling: Hebraica veritas. Sprak God Hebreeuws? Antwerpen, Museum Plantin-Moretus/Prentenkabinet, 16 mei-17 augustus 2008. No ISBN. Inquiries should be made at the museum.

Exhibition "Florent Rousseau" at Bibliotheca Wittockiana (24 May-30 August, 2008)

The Bibliotheca Wittockiana grew out of the private collection of bookbindings of Belgian bibliophile and collector Michel Wittock. It was turned into a museum, devoted to the binding, with opening hours, at one of Brussels' most leafy boroughs.
The best source about this collection is the Festschrift Bibliophilies et reliures. Mélanges offerts à Michel Wittock (2006) in the museum's own Studia series (no.6). 520 pages, cloth. No ISBN. Inquiries can be made at the museum.

Wittock gathered a collection of rare books and bindings, but the contemporary binding, increasingly a focus in his collecting, has always been a particular focus for exhibitions. Here is Florent Rousseau. Reliures de creation 1998-2008. It opened May 24, 2008, and runs until August 30, 2008. A selection of bindings from French bookbinder Florent Rousseau’s production are shown.

In the second half of 2007, the periodical of the Société royale des bibliophiles et iconophiles de Belgique (SRBIB) -this is the Royal Society of Bibliophiles and Iconophiles of Belgium, based at Brussels- published an article of Florent Rousseau's, actually a talk that he had delivered at Tournai in 2006: Etat actuel de la reliure en France. In Le livre et l'estampe (2007), vol.53 no.168, p.127-159 (BE ISSN 0024-533 x). It's an excellent article: clear, informative.

Florent Rousseau founded AIR neuf, Association internationale de relieurs, in 1995, and today he initiated a new group called APPAR, Association pour la promotion des arts de la reliure. With APPAR, he responds to a rift that he detected between amateur bookbinders and professional ones, on the one hand, and to attitudes pro or counter the classical French heritage of bookbinding on the other.

Starting with Marius Michel at the cusp of the 20th century, Rousseau gives an overview, in which all the famous bookbinders from a golden age of French bookbinding are mentioned. The period of Decorative Arts yielded an intense collaboration between famous French authors, artists, bookbinders, and their collectors. Most of the bookbinders then were like fashion designers: no craftsmen, but responsible for the concept. One of them, Paul Bonet, was both: fashion and binding designer. Collaboration with separate doreurs or gilders was customary.

Ironically, collectors are deemed responsible by Rousseau for a turn away by bookbinders from a tradition that had become somewhat stilted. Collectors had demanded too much of a good thing, a binding with sleeves and etui that continued to be influenced by the same arts, and that had become "purely academical".

There was a tendency among the binders who did ply their craft in person, starting from the late 1970s, to reject tradition altogether. New currents came into existence with no link to tradition. With AIR neuf, Rousseau wanted to provide a typology for the innovations. Collectors meanwhile did not place orders with just any adept of radical change. But exploration of the binding by the artisan bookbinder did yield some technical riches for the craft.

Structure became the magic word. Binders showed the construction of the book, no back, no carton, no more guards. No gilding. No hierarchy as to types of leather, and a turn to less expensive kinds of leather. No more sleeves, no étui, but boxes, and use of wood. But little by little, new references to tradition were made, but by artisans adept with paper and decors who were able to improvise, to work with color and contrasts. Rousseau is one of them.

Over time, amateur bookbinders got more limelight than the professional craftsmen, but only because their work rarely is the subject of exhibitions. In APPAR, Rousseau is hoping to unite both. French bookbinding is pretty vibrant these days, and Rousseau is adamant to keep it that way.

June 17, 2008

24 hrs in Brussels "boring"? Not so for book lovers.

Last March, Brussels was voted most boring city on a layover. One thing is fairly certain: the international travelers coming to this conclusion have no predilection for the book.

We have reported about the current exhibitions at the Royal Library of Brussels (KBR) and the Erasmus House. We suggest a day of sightseeing for the book lover or bibliophile (who can furthermore contact this curator to inquire about stops at bookstores and eateries).

We suggest that the book lover starts the day at the Erasmus House in the morning, with a visit to the exhibition "The Anatomy of Vanities" and its beautiful garden (see June 6, 2008 post). This exhibition was initially running until July 13, 2008 only, but word reached this curator that it has been extended. It now runs until the end of August.

By metro, the book lover travels to the center and to the Royal Library for the exhibition in the Nassau Chapel about 20 eminent historical collectors whose books became part of the holdings (see our April 24, and March 10, 2008 posts). It runs until August 24, 2008.

In the afternoon, the book lover takes the metro to Montgomery Square, and strolls along a district reminiscent of Paris 16 to Bibliotheca Wittockiana, a private museum devoted to bindings (this curator can be contacted about an ice cream parlor nearby - reward after a satisfying day).

See our next post for coverage of its current exhibition with bindings by French bookbinder Florent Rousseau. Illustration: binding by Florent Rousseau (courtesy of the Wittockiana). Below: a book lover, caught reading by the window in uptown Brussels.

June 12, 2008

Museum Plantin-Moretus to initiate TORAD, an image bank of ornamental typography for Antwerp printers 1541-1600

The Museum Plantin-Moretus / Prentenkabinet at Antwerp has received government funding to initiate a project called TORAD, short for Typografische Ornamenten Repertorium van Antwerpse Drukkers 1541-1600. (Our source for this post is the Museum's press release in Dutch).

The TORAD project, which runs over the next three years, aims to create an image bank of the typographical ornamentation and ornamental letters that printers at Antwerp used between 1541 and 1600.

The historical context is a period rife with political and religious instability in the Spanish Netherlands, with a serious likelihood for printers to be persecuted for their output. Many publications appeared anonymously. Often they mention a publisher, but no printer, which begs the question for book historians which printer delivered the goods.

A repertory will help researchers to identify the anonymous titles. A similar project in Holland could identify the right printer for 70% of the anonymous output, and 99% of the editions for which publishers were known, could be matched to a printer. The Antwerp project is hoping to achieve a similar succes rate.

Illustration: Initial (51mmx51mm) cut by Anton Van Leest, used in Petrus Bizarus, Senatus populique genuensis rerum. Antwerpen, Christoffel Plantijn, 1579. Initial used in Museum Plantin-Moretus press release, but here taken from our own library copy (Labore et constantia 155).

June 11, 2008

On an Anjou Bible, book surgeons and funding

Our cultural heritage is a commodity, one that draws researchers and tourists from abroad to our country. A source of pride, admiration and, come on, let's not be coy, envy. It is our country's duty to see economic value in that, a ruse to foster technical expertise long-term. Not only to keep know-how in our country to preserve this heritage in the most appropriate of ways, but perhaps also to offer expertise internationally as a viable enterprise.

This was more or less Professor Jan van der Stock's plea in 2005, at the inauguration of the "Van der Weyden Chair - Paul and Dora Janssen" for research on illumination. Jan Van der Stock is an able mix of the professorial with the entrepreneurial -to our knowledge, he's the only professor ever to have realised a named chair in Humanities, at least at Leuven.

We are very pleased that civic duty did not fall on deaf ears at the Inbev-Baillet Latour Fund. Recently, this Fund has awarded 80.000 € to a restauration project on the "Anjou-Bible", a mid 14th-century precious manuscript, kept in a vault at Leuven. In matters of culture, the Fund has chosen restoration projects as its focus.

Today's issue of Campuskrant, the magazine of the University of Leuven (KUL) (June 11, 2008, 19th year, no.10), opens with the story. We see color pictures of the richly illuminated manuscript, and of the conservator, Lieve Watteeuw, beaming.

The manuscript, we gather, was executed at the behest of Robert I of Anjou. In the early 16th century, the manuscript came to the Arras College of the university at Leuven, by the doings of the bishop of Arras. And today it still belongs to the university, as it is preserved at the Maurits Sabbe Library (Theology Department).

The conservation project is a co-production between llluminare at Leuven and KIK-IRPA, the Royal Institute for the Study and Conservation of Belgium's Artistic Heritage, based at Brussels.
For Illuminare, Jan Van der Stock will supervise, and Lieve Watteeuw will execute.

The manuscript will receive a new conservation binding. All folia will be taken out of the old early 20th-century binding that was too tight and detrimental to the manuscript. The folia will be cleaned, and the color layers will be stabilized. Here are a few photos of damage to miniatures on Illuminare's website. The folia will also be digitized. Leuven plans to put the manuscripts on show in 2011 in the newly planned city museum "M" (Museum Leuven), where visitors will be able to leaf through the digital copy.

Lieve Watteeuw is one of these conservation specialists, whose importance can hardly be overrated, especially when they happen to be rather few. A "book surgeon", at home with parchment, paper, illumination and leather bindings, and it was excellent news that she received public accolade on February 21, 2005 in the shape of the Flemish Community Prize 2004 in the category of Cultural Heritage.

We planned to dwell somewhat longer on Watteeuw's doctoral thesis at Leuven (see June 6, 2008 post, "Hora est"), entitled "The Touch of Chronos: Caring for the Medieval Manuscript (1731-1937)." Our source is the recently promoted researcher's own summary.

Watteeuw undertakes investigation of how the material aspect of the medieval manuscript has been treated and altered throughout the ages, and how it was been viewed by art and library historians, and conservators-restorators. Apparently, it wasn't until recently that the link between the material appearance of a codex and its contents has been taken into account, which explains "complete acts of destruction", for instance when codices were rebound, and their old covers done away with, over a period of the last two hundred years.

Watteeuw's thesis has three parts. Part I offers a history of the preservation and restauration practices of manuscripts, bindings and miniatures, from the Middle Agens until the 19th century. Watteeuw is using traces of book care in archival material, the inventories of the Burgundian Ducal Collection at the Royal Library at Brussels, and the Chapter of the Church of Our Lady at Antwerp. This history touches upon a historiography of mentalities, to explain why certain practices were favored in certain epochs.

In no period has the medieval manuscript suffered so much as at the hands of the 19th century antiquarians, who nevertheless rekindled an interest in the Middle Ages. Part II explores the heritage conservation practices or that era. Watteeuw also develops a methodology for the intervention on book and manuscripts for this day. She does this at the hand of one single, very famous corpus at the Royal Library of Belgium: the 280 surviving manuscripts, out of an original 900, once in the library or librije of the Court of Burgundy. Watteeuw investigates the fate of this collection from 1731 onwards, when the Burgundian Library fell into desuetude, until 1937, marking the end of the career of Charles Weckesser as bookbinder in the service of the Royal Library.

In Part III, entitled "Fight Against Chronos," Watteeuw takes the material fate of four medieval manuscripts as a starting point to gather the contrasting responses of bookbinders, restorators, antiquarians, archivists and librarians to them. Both the exterior book cover as the interior illumination are considered. Watteeuw also discusses what present-day manipulations such as exhibiting and making photographic facsimiles do to such artefacts.

Jan Van der Stock is quoted in today's Campuskrant as saying that the history of how the Anjou-Bible actually originated at a French court, reads like a thriller. We have the feeling that in Watteeuw's PhD material sits a book that does too.

June 6, 2008

Hora est!

In 2008, quite a number of Belgian researchers in the fields of history, as well as in history of art, literature and the book, defended a PhD thesis or are about to. A short overview.

On February 5, 2008, Alexandre Vanautgaerden, Director of the Erasmus House at Brussels, defended a thesis on Erasmus and typography as a rhetorical instrument in the 16th century: "
Erasme typographe. La mise en page, instrument de rhétorique au XVI siècle", towards a PhD in history, art and archaeology at the ULB (Université libre de Bruxelles).
Promotors were Sylvia Deswarte-Rosa (CNRS-Université Lumière-Lyon) and Alain Dierkens (ULB). The jury consisted of Franz Bierlaire (ULB-Université de Liège), Wouter Bracke (ULB-KBR), Jean-François Cottier (Université de Montréal), and Michel Magnien (Université de Paris III-Sorbonne nouvelle).
Vanautgaerden has edited, with Jean-François Gilmont, a study called
La page de titre à la renaissance (Brepols Publishers, 2008), ISBN 978 2 503 52669 0. See our June 2, 2008 post

On April 18, 2008, art historian Lieve Wattteeuw presented "The Touch of Chronos: Caring for the Medieval Manuscript (1731-1937)", in defense of her PhD at the KUL (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven). Promotor was Prof. Jan Van der Stock, Director of the Center of the Study of Illumination, Illuminare. Watteeuw can easily be regarded as one of the (alas, too) few authorities (Dutch-speaking research), on the conservation on paper, parchment, and bindings. We will dwell somewhat longer on the contents of this thesis in a next post.

On May, 27, 2008, Kevin Absillis defended his PhD at the University of Antwerp, with research conducted about an episode in the history of Manteau, a Dutch-language Belgian publishing house founded by Angèle Manteau (1911-2008): Literaire kwaliteit uit Arm Vlaanderen. Uitgeverij A.Manteau en de verzelfstandiging van het literaire veld (1932-1971). Professor of Dutch Literature Kris Humbeeck was promotor. Absillis will publish this thesis in edited form at Meulenhoff/Manteau early in 2009. He has already published on the rather complex history of this publishing house:
-Kevin Absillis, Een kleine uitgeverij van stand. Fondslijst uitgeverij A.Manteau/Les Editions Lumière 1956-1970 (250 numbered copies). L.P. Booncentrum/Demian, 2005. ISBN 90 804548 8 5.
-Kevin Absillis and Katrien Jacobs, eds, Van Hugo Claus tot hoelahoep. Vlaanderen in beweging 1950-1960 (Literatuur in veelvoud-series, no. 17). 282 p. Maklu/Garant, 2007. ISBN 978 90441 201 89.

On May 29, 2008, Gerrit Verhoeven defended his PhD at the Department of History of the University of Antwerp: "
Anders reizen? Evoluties in vroegmoderne reiservaringen van Hollandse en Brabantse elites (1600-1750)." Promotors were Professors of History Guido Marnef, specialist of the history of the Netherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries, and Bruno Blondé, who heads a research unit called History of Cities (University of Antwerp).
According to Verhoeven, historical research on travel in the early modern period all too often limits itself to study of the
Grand Tour as carried out by British noblemen, with the occasional foray into the travel habits of French and German nobility, but with the Netherlands entirely out of scope. Unjustly so: travel in the early modern period in the Netherlands showed more variation and was subject to greater changes than is known to current research.
Verhoeven consulted diaries and fringe documents in libraries and archives in Holland and Brabant, and chose the quantification of thousands of data as his gauge for how travel exceeded the utility aspect of the Grand Tour, what the means of travel were and the destinations, and what the social profile of travellers was.

On June 20, 2008, Dirk Imhof, Curator of the Museum Plantin-Moretus, will defend his PhD in History with a study of the publishing activities at the Plantinian house of Jan I Moretus: "De
Officina Plantiniana ratione recta: het uitgeversfonds van Jan I Moretus (1589-1610)," at the University of Antwerp. Professor of History Alfons Thijs and Professor of Dutch Literature Hubert Meeus serve as promotors.
Imhof, with Karen Bowen, recently published
Christopher Plantin and Engraved Book Illustrations in Sixteenth-Century Europe. Cambridge Univesity Press, 2008, ISBN 978 0 521 85276 0.
Regarding Plantin's successors, the Moretus family, see also, amongst others, Imhof's introduction to
Le rayonnement des Moretus, a 2006 exhibition catalogue of the Bibliotheca Wittockiana, edited by Bruno Liesen and Claude Sorgeloos.

On June 24, 2008, at the University of Antwerp, Department of Dutch Literature, Goran Proot defends a PhD on Jesuit school plays: "Het schooltoneel van de jezuïeten in de Provincia Flandro-Belgica tijdens het ancien régime 1575-1773." Promotor is Professor of Literature Hubert Meeus. Goran Proot has been a bibliographer at the STCV, the Short Title Catalogus Vlaanderen. Regarding Jesuit plays, recent articles of his are:
-Goran Proot and Leo Egghe, "Estimating editions on the basis of survivals: Printed programmes of Jesuit theatre plays in the Provincia Flandro-Belgica before 1773. With a note on the 'bookhistorical law'" in The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 102, no.3 (2008).
-Goran Proot, "Gebruikssporen in programmaboekjes voor het collegetoneel van de jezuïeten in de provincia Flandro-Belgica 1575-1773," in Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis 15 (2008), p.71-91.

Lastly, Bart Op de Beeck Curator of the Rare Books Department of the KBR (Royal Library of Belgium), who's been working for years on the library holdings of Jesuits, is finally presenting his PhD thesis at the University of Leuven in September 2008. As Op de Beeck has been working on this for over 10 years, and as he has closely scrutinized up to 24,000 copies out of Jesuit collections, if not more, his work is expected to be.. weighty. Serving as promotor is the former head of the University of Leuven's Central Librar
y, Jan Roegiers.

Illustration (to follow): woodcut on the titlepage of Francisco Del Tuppo, La Uita De Esopo Hystoriata. S.l. [probably Venice], s.d. [15..]. Page: 149x94 mm; typesetting: 122x72mm.
See no.4 in our second catalogue: Claude Sorgeloos, La bibliothèque du Cultura Fonds: acquisitions 1991-1999 (See label: Our catalogues).

Exhibition "The Anatomy of Vanities" (Erasmus' House, Brussels, April 24-July 13, 2008)

The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton got published in 1621, and the Erasmus' House in Brussels currently has an exhibition called The Anatomy of Vanities (April 12, 2008-July 13, 2008). Burton's medical treatise and the exhibition have in common a medical subject and an unusual breadth of approach. In the case of the exhibition, we add staggering beauty.

The son of a French luxury goods scion quipped that he sees the best contemporary galleries in each city he visits on business. Why not a pars pro toto at the Erasmushouse with the works of Jan Fabre and Marie-Jo Lafontaine, in rooms that have recently been repainted. Why not the museum's garden with permanent works of art, amongst others Les larmes du ciel by Marie-Jo Lafontaine. With a spoonful of contemporary art, a medicine of memento mori goes down.
This exhibition fits one of the themes that the Erasmushouse under its director Alexandre Vanautgaerden sets out to explore as of 1998: the cabinet of rarities or vanities, which it sees as a predecessor of the museum. The cabinets brought together works or art, natural or exotic fauna and flora, and scientific instruments.

Such cabinets were in vogue after Erasmus' time, but, as gathered from Vanautgaerden's introduction to the catalogue, Erasmus' contemporary Albrecht Dürer started his Wunderkammer with elements from a trip to.. the Netherlands. Cabinet elements are present here, organised around the concept of idleness or vanity.

In Erasmus' days, death was more pressing than in ours, the reminder more common. Erasmus, who was somewhat sickly, wore a ring with the Latin inscription 'concedo nulli', 'I yield to no one', a direct reference to man's natural fate from the standpoint of a personified Death.

The take on death in this exhibition is to understand it with a certain jubilation, by lingering to take in past and present moments of beauty, and by seeing the attempts to fixate or represent life in the name of curiosity.

Bright green parrots from the Museum of Natural History at Tournai are laid around a skull in garland fashion. The skeleton and the snake are omnipresent in delicately wooden or ivory sculpted figurines or heads. There are plant arrangements by a Brussels florist, leaving room for ongoing microscopic processes in glasshouse conditions. and there's the human desire to push the limits of technique in exquisite mechanically turned objects of ivory and wood.

In an essay from the catalogue, Jean-Marc Mandosio traces man's preoccuption with the anatomical model through time. The models of women, the Venuses or Evas, as he explains, were always represented full-bodied, with skin, unlike the Adams. Their shape was an ideal, and in stark contrast with the entrails and organs you could still remove.

The collector who gave these strange and beautiful objects on loan, acutely phrases how despite our ability to prolong life, and to taunt it with the most fantastical creations, clinging to it will be as vain as in the time of Erasmus. If to the vistor this comes as too great a shock, there are always the editions of Erasmus on view on the second floor, or a moment's pause in the philosophical garden of the museum to regain spirits.

As a visitor, you take these beautiful objects home in the shape of the catalogue: Anatomie des vanités. Anatomie der ijdelheden. Sous la direction de - onder leiding van Alexandre Vanautgaerden. Bilingual catalogue French-Dutch. Le Cabinet d'Erasme VI (2008). 93 p. color ills. ISBN 978-2-930414-22-5. Exhibition until July 13, 2008. Erasmus House and garden, open every day except Mondays (Photos: museum website).
PS: Belgium is a country of collectors-the exhibition Hout in boeken (see our March 10, 2008 post) featured another collector's 17th C set of thinly turned woodcups -a marvel. See Charles Indekeu's article "Ornamentdraaiwerk. Machinekunst voor vorsten" (p. 315-325) in the study Hout in boeken (see our April 24, 2008 post) as a complement to the catalogue of the Erasmushouse exhibition.

June 3, 2008

Annual convention of librarians and book researchers (Flanders chapter), May 30, 2008

The Dutch-speaking or Flemish chapter of rare book librarians and book history researchers, the Vlaamse Werkgroep Boekgeschiedenis (see: Book and Manuscript Research) convened at the city of Ghent on May 30, 2008.

Location was MIAT, museum voor industriële archeologie en textiel, an old textile factory with an historical approach to industrial technology. The museum simulates a walk through time from the 18th to the 20th century. As MIAT not only emphasizes textiles, but also printing technology, it houses a fair amount of printing presses and composition casters.

During a guided tour at the end of the day, the participants got to see a Blaeu wooden hand-press from the 18th century, the Stanhope, and other hand-presses in iron, among them one driven by steam. The two composition casters F4 and C4 came from the Harris Intertype Corporation of New York.

But first came the household meeting, with an overview of 2007, several announcements, and a lecture, followed by critical remarks from a referee, by a Dutch researcher currently working at Antwerp, Janneke Weijermars: Het literaire bedrijf in de Hollandse tijd 1815-1830 (The Literary Trade in the Dutch Period 1815-1830).

Weijermars' study is part of a large-scale project studying "Literature in Context" led by Dutch professor Lisa Kuitert (Amsterdam) and Belgian professor Piet Couttenier (Antwerp): De Nederlandse literatuur en het literaire bedrijf in het Verenigd Koninkrijk der Nederlanden 1815-1830: interactie en differentiatie, about Dutch literature and the literary trade in the fifteen years during which the Southern Netherlands (more or less Belgium shortly before its independence in 1830) were united once more with Holland, with Dutch king Willem I as ruler.

From more than one standpoint, this reunion fell uneasy on the South. In reaction to a Dutch society that was founded in the North in 1784 called Maatschappij tot 't Nut van 't Algemeen, also called "het Nut", and aimed at the edification of its population through education, social work, and good books, a society came to existence in the South in 1825 in the city of Mechelen (Malines) called the Society for the Distribution of Good Books. This society chose its "good books" to be of a catholic signature, partly in reaction to het Nut and its protestant stamp.

Weijermars presented one case in all its ramifications: a publishing project that lasted about three years (1825-1828), executed by Hanicq, printers at Mechelen, which consisted of printing religious books in series, in Dutch translation mostly from Latin, French and German, in a small format and aimed at a large audience.

Weijermars has so far researched a few case studies for the period, applying Pierre Bourdieu, but with a unifying idea for the study still lacking. The audience was quick with critical remarks and useful suggestions. As an overarching history of the book trade with regard to Flanders has yet to be written, this project seemed welcome indeed.

From the announcements during the household meeting, we retain many that deserve attention in separate posts. Here, we'd like to enumerate the Belgian researchers who are scheduled to deliver talks at SHARP 2008 on "Teaching and Text", the 16th annual conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, held at Brookes University, Oxford (24-28 June, 2008).

-Jürgen Pieters (professor of Dutch literature, University of Ghent) together with PhD students Christophe van der Vorst and Lise Gosseye, reporting on their project of reading Constantijn Huygens in a new historicist light;
-Chris Coppens (University of Leuven) on a topic in the 16th century Italian book trade;
-Pierre Delsaerdt (University of Antwerp) with typographic analysis of Christopher Plantin's dictionaries;
-Kevin Absilis (University of Antwerp), on Pascale Casanova's systemic model for studyingliterature, and its use for book publishing;
-Janneke Weijermars (University of Antwerp) on a systemic model by Siegfried Schmidt;
-And stretching it, professor of China Studies in the U.S. Hilde De Weerdt, who did her graduate work at Leuven.

In teasing reference to the speaker's topic and in mild jest -professor De Weerdt aside- it was said that for once Belgian speakers at SHARP outnumber the Dutch.

June 2, 2008

A special entry at the Plantin-Moretus Prizes 2008

The Plantin Genootschap - Hoger Instituut voor Grafische Kunsten (Higher Institute of Graphic Art, Antwerp) and the VUV. or Vlaamse Uitgeversvereniging (Union of Flemish Publishers) join forces to discern prizes, the so-called Plantin-Moretusprijzen, to books in Flanders (Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) which deserve attention for of their graphic design.

Prizes are given in several categories: literature, schoolbook and scientific study, art book & exhibition catalogue, other non-fiction, the children's book, the experimental book & private press, as well as work by graphic artists from Flanders for publishers abroad.

New categories in 2008 are a vote for best debut or graduation project, as well as the public's prize for Best Book Cover.

As of May 30, 2008, public voting is open from a shortlist of ten book covers, accessible via the website of the Plantin Genootschap, which leads one to the site of the Flemish daily De Standaard to cast a vote. The prizes will be distributed on June 30, 2008 in Brussels, at Bozar, the Centre of Fine Arts. A public vote is possible every day until then.

The books with best layout will be on show all summer in Brussels at Bozar, the Centre of Fine Arts, from July 1, 2008 until August 24, 2008.

We were extremely pleased to discover that among this public shortlist, between a cookbook and humor, is a study co-edited by the formidable Belgian bibliographer Jean-François Gilmont and the curator of the Erasmushouse Museum, Alexandre Vanautgaerden.

Very aptly, this study has typography as a theme: La page de titre à la Renaissance. Treize études suivies de cinquante-quatre pages de titre commentées et d'un lexique des termes relatif à la page de titre (ISBN 978-2-503-52669-0, Brepols Publishers, 2008, 396 p., 100 b/w ill., 65 color ill, paperback, 75 €).

This study is also "Nuger 6", n° 6 in Nugae humanisticae sub signo Erasmi, or a study series devoted to nugae, varia or trifles, published at the Erasmushouse Museum. Under its young curator Alexandre Vanautgaerden, this museum, which celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2007, does communication no less than in fine typography. Report on the current exhibition of this museum is soon to follow.