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.

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.

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.

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.