A Thing of Beauty at Ghent: Henry van de Velde's Book Designs (Design museum Gent, 21 March - 1 June 2009)

April is not the cruellest month for book lovers and bibliophiles: the weather is good, and suddenly book-related activities abound in libraries and institutions.

Take a stroll around the city of Ghent, into the footsteps of designer and architect Henry van de Velde (Antwerp, 1893 - Zürich 1957). Literally so, by climbing the university library's Boekentoren / Tower of Books, and by taking a visit to the building that van de Velde designed.

The building dates from 1934 , the period during which van de Velde was teaching applied arts and architecture at the university (University Library, Rozier 9, 9000 Gent). While Google Books is currently ploughing away in some secret corner of this building, architects Robbrecht & Daem are planning its renovation.

Belgian by birth, but European by career, van de Velde was formed as a painter at Antwerp and Paris, but quickly relinquished this path in favor of the applied arts: he underwent some influence by the Arts & Crafts Movement, and started to design tableware, silverware, textiles, and on to furniture and buildings, among others his own house Bloemenwerf at Brussels.

As an architect, he had building contracts in Germany - Folkwangmuseum in Hagen, the Nietzsche Haus and the Kunstgewerbeschule in Weimar, Switzerland, Holland -the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, and Belgium - the University Library Ghent and the current Municipal Library "Tweebronnen" at Leuven. In Brussels, van de Velde was the first director of the Art School I.S.A.D., better known today as La Cambre.

Design museum Ghent, which houses items by van de Velde in its permanent collection, now hosts an exhibition highlighting book designs by van de Velde: "Henry van de Velde: Boekontwerp tussen art nouveau en nieuwe zakelijkheid."

What we see is a generous and beautiful amount of mostly morocco bindings with great variation in well-chosen, but tempered gilt decor. Sketches, drawings, photos, applied art and page designs -van de Velde did the page design for the monumental 1908 edition of Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra at Insel Verlag- provide some context. The only information missing is that of the binders and gilders, but surely the monograph lists that.

The exhibition was curated by John Dieter Brinks, owner of Triton Verlag, and was hosted in 2007 by Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum in The Hague in 2007, and from Ghent it will travel on to Berlin this fall. This European tour also serves to draw attention to a future sale.

"Henry van de Velde: Boekontwerp tussen art nouveau en nieuwe zakelijkheid." Design museum Gent, Jan Breydelstraat 5, 900 Gent (21 March - 1 June 2009). No catalogue, but a monograph by the curator: "Denkmal des Geistes: Die Buchkunst Henry van de Veldes", ISBN 3-935518-72-9, 461 pages, 180 euro, to be ordered directly at Triton Verlag.

New University Library website and Piranesi exhibition, both at Gent

The University Library of the city of Ghent ("Gent") is as of today (25 September 2008) presenting a newly formatted website.

Noteworthy is the link called 'Schatkamer', where some of the collection's treasures are presented in digitized form, but the holdings are far richer than that.

Around its collection of etchings by the Italian architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) now runs an exhibition, in part curated by the Department of Architecture of the university, with the help of the Royal Library at Brussels.

"Piranesi" opened on 20 September, and runs until 18 January 2009 at the Museum voor Schone Kunsten.

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.