Ardent Endeavor: un délice du Pays de Liège (part I)

Are book collectors and book curators worlds apart? The former might well be hoarding books since the age of 15. A he could have stored books under the beds of his children, and a she could have been briskly bidding at auction unbenownst to her husband. The book curator meanwhile may have prudently acquired a few precious items, and studied many more in the silence of the university library.

A collector is capable of pulling out each precious treasure in a sequence that would rival artillery fire, but rarely jots down basic information on so much as a notecard. The book curator or historian is able to x-ray a book, present it under peer review in the shape of statistical, material and bibliographic facts, which isn't to say that he or she remains obtuse to its beauty, or doesn't know a jolly good story or two.

United by their love of a similar object, the twain do meet: in bibliophile societies. Book historians may deliver the acumen for membership publications, whereas venerable collectors may bring up the memory of Baron such and such, and may have seen every elegant drawing room and château with a library.

Recently, an elegant mingling of both worlds has taken place in the city of Liège (Luik) and within the Société des Bibliophiles Liégeois, which resulted in a sumptuous publication: Florilège du livre en principauté de Liège du IXe au XVIIIe siècle (2009, ISBN 978-2-9600900-0-0).

This is merely the announcement; we hope to come back to the contents of this volume in the next two weeks.

Details:
Florilège du livre en principauté de Liège du IXe au XVIIIe siècle. Société des Bibliophiles Liégeois, 2009. 560 p. numerous color illustrations. Hard cover and colored dust-jacked. ISBN 978-2-9600900-0-0. Paul Bruyère and Alain Marchandisse, Scientific Editors. Available by subscription from the Société des Bibliophiles Liégeois.

2 New Portals for Bibliophily and Book History: Part 2

They're not twittering, but two Belgian bibliophile societies with seats at Antwerp and Brussels are sounding new drums online. And the portal for book history in the Dutch-speaking part of the country became fresh-faced as well.

Part II
Contrary to Brussels, the bibliophiles at Antwerp have not opted for an individual portal. Issued from the Flemish (Dutch-speaking) northern part of this country, there is now 1 single portal for news about rare books: Boekgeschiedenis.be.

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Boekgeschiedenis.be is the joint portal (and more) for Vlaamse Werkgroep Boekgeschiedenis (society for book historians in Flanders) and Vereniging van Antwerpse Bibliofielen, bibliophile society at Antwerp, with its seat at the Plantin-Moretus Museum.

Plenty of book historians of the Werkgroep being members of the Antwerpse Bibliofielen, and many of them sitting on the editorial board of De Gulden Passer, journal of the Vereniging van Antwerpse Bibliofielen, seem to be the main reasons behind this.

Members of both respectively can access the pages related to their society. Both already worked with memberships, and retain access to certain pages as a privilege for members. New visitors can easily become new members.

Boekgeschiedenis.be is available in Dutch only. It is work in progress, but the bonus lies in centralized access via Boekgeschiedenis.be to both De Gulden Passer, with future promises of digitization, and Kroniek van het gedrukte boek in de Nederlanden, searchable book reviews of books on books.
De Gulden Passer has turned into the journal of book history available from Flanders. Published as a yearbook, it will soon accelerate pace, and publish 2 issues a year.

Kroniek van het gedrukte boek in de Nederlanden is the chronicle of book reviews that since 1971 has been appearing in Archives et bibliothèques de Belgique = Archief- en bibliotheekwezen in België, paper journal edited at the Royal Library of Belgium.

In 2002, Johan Hanselaer performed the herculean task of bringing all book reviews online separately, known simply as "de Kroniek". Dutch only, and search options still limited, but this is an easy tool for anyone looking for recent literature or studies about the subject of the book.

2 New Portals for Bibliophily and Book History: Part I

They're not twittering, but two Belgian bibliophile societies with seats at Antwerp and Brussels are sounding new drums online. And the portal for book history in the Dutch-speaking part of the country became fresh-faced as well.

Part I

The Société royale des bibliophiles et iconophiles de Belgique (SRBIB) presented its new website, Bibliobel.be, officially to its members on 1 April 2009. In 3 languages: French, Dutch and English. Access for members and non-members alike, but members have a closed section related to activities.
The journal of the SRBIB is called Le livre et l'estampe. For all 162 issues that have appeared between 1954 and 2004, the website provides indices on subject and author in printable documents. No hyperlinks; full text for the journal is not digitized, and remains a privilege to subscribers and institutional members.
The occasional visitor can however glean through the list of catalogues and publications that this society has published, and can easily order the items that are still available.

The SRBIB is looking forward to its 100th anniversary in 2010, and is preparing a sumptuous exhibition with treasures by its members at the Royal Library at Brussels called Belgica nostra.
More on that event later.

Recent Lipsius studies: Iusti Lipsi Epistolae (ILE)

Last June, Princeton-based professor Anthony Grafton was seen conversing, at the “The Jewish Book in a Christian World” conference at Antwerp (19 June 2008 post), with Dirk van Miert, the Dutch Neo-Latin scholar, based at London, with whom Grafton is collaborating on a critical edition of Joseph Scaliger’s collected letters.

In 2002, Grafton became a recipient of the prestigious Balzan Prize. Prize winners are required to spend half of the prize to finance research in their field, preferably by young scholars. Grafton chose the critical edition of letters written by or addressed to Joseph Scaliger, a project carried out at the Warburg Institute in London. The Scaliger Institute at the University of Leiden Library is co-sponsoring.

The result will be a 7-volume opus covering about 1,400 letters. The project’s aim is to provide “crisp, reliable” transcripts, according to the Balzan Prize website, and to present the letters both electronically and in print. Initially, the editors thought the corpus to encompass some 1,000 letters. To their surprise, their thorough work yielded much more fruit, and far exceeds the initial estimate.

Along similar lines, how is ILE?

Short for Iusti Lipsi Epistolae, Belgium’s own critical edition of the collected letters of a humanist, Justus Lipsius (1547-1606)? ILE was initiated in print in 1978, with the publication of a first part, which covered the letters written by Lipsius in the period 1564 until 1583. Aloïs Gerlo, M.A. Nauwelaerts and H.D.L. Vervliet served as editors.

Ten years earlier, in 1968, Gerlo, Nauwelaerts and Vervliet had made an inventory of letters to and from Lipsius. According to their estimate, the corpus consisted of 4,300 letters. Meanwhile research for ILE has yielded more letters, including overlooked scrap versions, so that the editors see the first estimate augmented by almost two hundred. ILE has set rules to define the corpus.

As longstanding publication series, Iusti Lipsi Epistolae is the pride of the Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten (KVAB) at Brussels. The complete set can be ordered directly via the KVAB website.

So far, the following parts have been published:

-part I, covering 1564-1583, published in 1978;

-part II (1584-1587), edited in 1983 by M.A. Nauwelaerts with the help of S.Sué;

-part III (1588-1590), edited in 1987 by S.Sué and H. Peeters;

-part V (1592), edited in 1991 by Jeanine De Landtsheer;

-part VI (1593), edited in 1994 by Jeanine De Landtsheer;

-part VII (1594), edited in 1997 by Jeanine De Landtsheer;

-part VIII (1595), edited in 2004 by Jeanine De Landtsheer;

-part XIII (1600), edited in 2000 by Jan Papy;

-part XIV (1601), edited in 2006 by Jeanine De Landtsheer.

Other parts are well on their way to see printed form as well. Four have been or will be the subject of a PhD thesis. Part [IV], covering the year 1591, has been the subject of a doctoral thesis in 1974/5 by S.Sué. PhDs have been defended at the university of Leuven on part [IX], covering 1596, by Hugo Peeters (2007), and part [XVI], covering 1603, by Filip Vanhaecke (2004). In 2009, Tom Deneire will present his work on part [XI], covering the year 1598.

In all likelihood, ILE will count not nineteen, but twenty volumes. Part XIX will conclude the series, and promises to include all newly found letters pertaining to older parts, a general index, and a general concordance table. Part XX will offer a separate treatment of fictional letters.

Standard quotation is ILE, followed by roman letters, followed by a comma and three 2-digit numbers for year, month, and day respectively for the dates. Example: ILE V, 92 02 01, or a letter in ILE, part V, dated 1 February 1592, in which Richard Stanihurst gives Lipsius the full story of a trip to Spain. Whenever a newly found letter is accounted for in the inventory from 1968, has yet to be published in the series, but has been referenced in print, the roman numeral stands between square brackets.

Recently, an unknown letter by Richard Stanihurst to Lipsius, written on 29 October 1583 resurfaced at the Maurits Sabbe library within the University of Leuven system. An exciting discovery for Jeanine De Landtsheer, ILE’s prime editor, who was preparing the exhibition about Lipsius held there in 2006. She published the letter in the 2006 yearbook of De Gulden Passer, scholarly publication of the Vereniging van Antwerpse Bibliofielen (bibliophile society at Antwerp) (De Gulden Passer, ISSN: 0777 5067), which was entirely devoted to Lipsius. We discuss its contents in another post.

The Scaliger and the Lipsius projects overlap, as both scholars were professors at Leiden, albeit at different times. They established epistolary contact by the intermediary of Antwerp printer Christophe Plantin. We also briefly mention the Clusius project, instigated at Leiden in 2004 for the publication of letters by Carolus Clusius (1526-1609) and a mapping of his network, which included Scaliger and Lipsius.

For Scaliger at Leiden, see Paul Hoftijzer, Adelaar in de wolken. De Leidse jaren van Josephus Justus Scaliger 1593-1609. Scaliger Instituut/Universiteitsbibliotheek Leiden, 2005 (Kleine publicaties van de Leidse universteitsbibliotheek, ISSN 0921 9293, no. 69). Contributions by R. Bruegelmans, W.P. Gerritsen, H.J. De Jonge, Chris Heesakkers, Dirk Van Miert, Jeanine De Landtsheer, and Kasper van Ommen. This publication has Jeanine De Landtsheer’s article “Justus Lipsius en Josephus Justus Scaliger” (p.59-92).

For Lipsius at Leiden, see Jeanine De Landtsheer, Lieveling van de Latijnse taal. Justus Lipsius te Leiden herdacht bij zijn vierhonderdste sterfdag. Scaliger Instituut/Universiteitsbibliotheek Leiden, 2006 (Kleine publicaties van de Leidse universteitsbibliotheek, ISSN 0921 9293, no. 72). Contributions by Hans W. Blom, Chris Heesakkers, Robert-Jan van den Hoorn, Nicolette Mout, and Kasper Van Ommen.

Lipsius’s arrival at Leiden in 1578, similar to that of Scaliger, was somewhat of a ‘Joyous Entry’ for the recently inaugurated university. Lipsius abandoned his professorial chair somewhat furtively in 1591. Ties between Leiden and Leuven –Lipsius’s final destination- were not too greatly shaken, as Chris Heesakkers, who documented Lipsius’s circle of friends at Leiden, concludes.

In 2006, the 400^th anniversary of Lipsius’s death was marked by two exhibitions, one at Leiden, with the catalogue Lieveling van de Latijnse taal, and one at Leuven, entitled Justus Lipsius (1547-1606). Een geleerde en zijn Europese netwerk. It was also marked by the yearbook of De Gulden Passer (Antwerp). The recurrence of scholars writing contributions for all three manifests a similar spirit of friendship.

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.