Belgian blog about maps

We are adding a new blog to the links to the right in our pages: Maps and More.

Author is Joost Depuydt, curator of Maps, drawing and prints at the FelixArchief, the new name for Antwerp's City Archive.

The municipal archive at Antwerp used to be located in Venusstraat, but its holdings got so crammed, that the entire service has moved to a port warehouse north of the city center, the so-called Sint-Felixpakhuis at Oudeleeuwenrui 29, 2000 Antwerp.

Photo taken from www.felixarchief.be.

Summer is precious (reading) time

Traffic in these pages may become a bit slow in the next few weeks. Not because this curator can be spotted on a beach somewhere, but because these sunny months are a good time to catch up on some reading, done to better serve these pages. Perhaps for some this could be an ideal time to visit our library in person. We'll be back with feature articles, but intermittently, at a slower pace. Happy summer.

"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.

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.

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).

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.