Filed under: ACLU, Augmented Reality, BoingBoing, Book Conservation, Brave New World, Civil Rights, Connections, Constitution, General Musings, Government, movies, Privacy, Society | Tags: ACLU, blogging, BoingBoing, book conservation, bookbinding, civil liberties, Constitution, crickets, Erik Kwakkel, jim downey, Legacy Bookbindery, movies, privacy, Shakespeare
Some more ‘quick hits’ …
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here’s a very good article about the nuance of what you can/should call a book, and the sort of question I have had to dance around countless times when people have asked me what was the “oldest book” I’ve ever worked on:
What is the Oldest Book in the World?
The past few days I have been preoccupied with a deceptively simple question: “What is the oldest book in the world?” Having done some looking around I can now report that while somewhere on this planet, in a vault or a cupboard, lies the oldest surviving book, it is actually impossible to say which one may be branded as such. Bear with me.
* * *
A light bulb in our kitchen blew out, and needed to be replaced. Routine, except that this bulb was in a fixture on the ceiling in the part of the kitchen where the ceiling is 12′ (I live in an old house). Still, no big deal — we have a tall enough step ladder so it’s just a minor hassle.
So I set up the ladder, climbed to the fixture, new CFC bulb in hand. The fixture is one of those old kind that have been used for 50+ years, with a glass sphere hanging from a metal ring, more or less enclosing the whole thing. You back out three set-screws, drop the sphere, clean out the various small flying bugs which have gotten into it over the years, replace the bulb and then put the sphere back.
And there were some small dead flying bugs. But there were also several large crickets. Dead. And one small live one.
How the hell did they get into that fixture?
* * *
Anyone who thinks we’re not living in a partial police state just hasn’t been paying attention. To apply William Gibson’s classic phrase in a rather darker way: “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.”
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Federal agents wrongfully strip-searched a New Mexico woman at the El Paso border crossing, then took her to a hospital where she was forced to undergo illegal body cavity probes in an attempt to find drugs, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in El Paso said the unnamed 54-year-old U.S. citizen was “brutally” searched by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in December 2012 after being selected for additional random screening at the Cordova Bridge in El Paso when a drug sniffing dog jumped on her. The woman was returning from a visit to a recently deported family friend in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, the lawsuit said.
Agents quickly stripped searched her and did cavity searches but found no evidence of drugs, court documents said. But the woman was transported in handcuffs to the University Medical Center of El Paso, the lawsuit said, where doctors subjected her to an observed bowel movement, a CT scan and other exams without a warrant.
Via BoingBoing.
* * *
Enough for now, except to note that this is blog post #1,600 and we’re rapidly closing on 100,000 hits to this blog! Yay!
Have a good weekend!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Book Conservation, Failure, General Musings, tech | Tags: art, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Chutzpah, jim downey, Kozo, MU, technology, University of Missouri, vellum
I mentioned on Facebook the other day that sometimes I stop and consider the sort of chutzpah it takes to think that I should be mucking around with a 700 year-old book. That thought occurred to me following a session in the bindery working on the bible I have blogged about earlier. I had just done some work on it, then had to put everything into one of my presses and let it dry overnight, hoping that I had done the work properly. Hoping really hard.
What follows is a bit long, but might be of interest to some. At the risk of spoiling the suspense, the book came out well, though not entirely perfectly. You’ll see.
* * *
In my last post I had an image of the interior of the spine of the book. This one:
That shows the paper liners adhered to the inside of the spine cover material. If you look at the top of the image, you can see some of the damage which had happened to the book — basically, some tears in the vellum cover at the hinge joint.
Repairing vellum is a bit tricky. You can’t use too much moisture, because it can cause the vellum to warp and shrink, even become brittle. So carefully I removed all the old liner material, then selected some heavy kozo and applied a methyl-cellulose/PVA mix adhesive, allowing the adhesive to dry partially before mounting the kozo to the damaged areas. That’s when I put everything into the press and hoped for the best. Here’s how it looked when I took it out:
One problem – in order to get the kozo mounted securely, I had to flatten the entire vellum spine, losing the nice shaping where it went over the sewing structure cords. We’ll come back to that.
On the textblock, I had to mount some new endpapers before I could add in the spine liners and hinging material. Fortunately, I had some nice handmade flax paper I made some 25 years ago which was a nice color tone match for the vellum. Here you can see it mounted:
Then I was ready to mount the hinging material to the spine. I chose a very heavy type of kozo, which would be strong enough but wouldn’t add much bulk, and applied it so that it conformed to the sewing cords:
Then I cut panels of another flax paper, and mounted those between the cords. Here is a pic when a couple of them have been mounted:
When those were done and dried, the text block was ready to be mounted back into the cover. But I had two problems. One was the spine vellum had been flattened by mounting the repair kozo, as mentioned above. But there was also another problem, part of the reason why the book had become damaged in the intervening centuries: the vellum cover had shrunk slightly, and the text block had swollen slightly, with the result that the cover no longer fit properly.
How to make it fit?
Well, I had actually already done one thing: I had placed the text block into a heavy press and slowly compressed it over a period of several days. But that only did so much.
The other thing I decided to try was to force the spine to stretch a bit. I did this by VERY slightly dampening the vellum, then putting a jig in place which would slightly push the front and rear covers away from each other. At the same time, I had mounted some cords the same size as the ones on the text block, and positioned the same way. This jig went on the inside of the spine, and on the outside I used a piece of foamcore which would partially compress, making the vellum conform to the shape of the cords and spreading it just a tich. A couple times over the course of a couple days I swapped out the jigs, using a slightly larger one each time. Here’s the final set, with the spine of the finished book alongside to better help envision what I mean:
That bought me about 3 or 4 mm of space. I worried about trying to stretch it any further. When I positioned the cover over the text block, the spine conformed perfectly, as you can see in the image above. I went ahead and pasted out the endpapers and mounted the text block into the cover.
Here’s how the pasted endpaper looked when everything dried:
And here’s the fore-edge of the book in its cover:
Yup — that right there is what is technically known as an “oops”. The cover doesn’t *quite* come around far enough, with perhaps 2 mm of the text block showing at the widest point. I hadn’t been able to stretch the cover (or compress the text block) enough.
However, the book was solid, and my interior repairs to the vellum damage turned out nearly perfect. Here’s a picture from earlier which shows the damage:
See that crack on the spine at the left side? Actually, if you look closely, you can see there’s a couple different cracks. Well, here’s an image of the spine at the same point with my repairs:
The cracks are still there, but they’re no longer a structural problem. The underlying kozo will now handle the structural forces. That should mean the cover will work as intended, and propagation of the cracks further down the spine should be stopped for at least a couple centuries.
It’s not a perfect repair, and that tempers any temptation I might have to inflate my ego any more. But it’s a pretty damned good repair, one I can take a measure of satisfaction with.
I can live with that.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Book Conservation, Connections, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Religion, Science Fiction, tech | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, art, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, care-giving, Communion of Dreams, free, jim downey, John Bourke, Kindle, promotion, Science Fiction, technology
Remember that 700+ year old bible I posted about the beginning of June? This one:
Well, this weekend I got started working on the book. And I thought I’d share a couple of images of what I found inside, and what I’ve done to it so far.
Here’s the spine of the text block, once it had been freed from the cover seen above:
That’s after I’ve removed the gross chunks of paper liners which were applied between the cords. I’ve since removed all the rest of the liners, first using a jeweler’s tweezers and then a scalpel. Anyway, I want to note the very evident lines of sewing stations (holes punched through the folios) from the original binding. That shows that the book has been rebound at least once.
Here’s another image:
That’s an image of the interior of the cover. Which shows a couple of interesting things. First, you can see how the vellum of the cover molded itself to the spine of the text block over time. That sort of thing happens over *centuries*.
Second, how the supporting cords are laced into the cover. The sewing was done in a way that it wrapped around the cords, which helps to support the overall structure. The cords are then laced into a channel, looped over the board material, and then come back on the inside and are pasted down. This is VERY common of medieval and Renaissance bindings.
And lastly — note that the cover material is an early variety of bookboard. It’s NOT wood. This is a clue to the age of the binding. It means that it is after the introduction of papermaking to Europe. Which is to say, this book was probably rebound sometime in the 14th or 15th century. (Papermaking technology was introduced to Southern Europe late in the 13th century, but it took a little while to disseminate across the continent.)
So, I removed a couple of layers of more modern papers on the inside, and pulled the old ends of the cords out of the bookboard. Then I dampened the board on the inside, put it between moisture barrier sheets, and put it into a press to flatten overnight. Then once the spine of the text block was fairly clean I applied a layer of conservation adhesive (a blend of methyl-cellulose and poly-vinyl-acetate) and some fairly heavy Kozo-fiber paper, which I stippled onto the spine so that it would conform to the existing structure and hold everything in place. Like this:
You’ll note that it extends past the text block on the left-hand side of the spine. I can trim that excess off with a scalpel once everything is dried. I should finish up the rest of the work tomorrow.
Oh, and speaking of tomorrow … remember, the week-long give-away of my books starts then!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Book Conservation, Religion, Science Fiction, University of Missouri, Writing stuff | Tags: art, Bible, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, calligraphy, jim downey, manuscript, MU, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, University of Missouri, vellum, writing
It isn’t the oldest, rarest, or most interesting item I’ve ever worked on. But it’s not everyday that a 700+ year old book comes into my shop for conservation work. This one did yesterday:
Here’s the official description of it, for those who might be interested:
Bible. Latin. [Biblia Latina] 1300. Bound in parchment ms. with neumic notation over boards ; leaf [103] torn with part of 1 column wanting; small stain on p. 1 partly hides incipit; trimmed, headings mostly lost. Prehumanistic minuscule script; rubricated. Lectionary? with different pen on final 2 leaves. Contents: Prol. in libros Salomonis — Proverbia — Ecclesiastes — Canticum canticorum — Sapientia — Ecclesiasticus — Joshua — Isaias –Jeremias — Ezechiel — Daniel — Osee — Joel — Amos — Abdias — Jonas –Michaeus — Nahum — Habacuc — Sophonias — Aggaeus — Zacharias — Malachias — Job – Judith — Esther — [Novum Testamentum]. Cover is a manuscript leaf of a parchment page with nuemes and a Gothic script with red initial letters from about about the same time.
It’s been a while since I shared any images from my conservation work, so thought I would.
In other news: still plugging along on St. Cybi’s Well. It’s going well.
Have a great weekend!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Book Conservation, Connections, Feedback, NPR, Predictions, Publishing, tech | Tags: art, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, jim downey, Kickstarter, Legacy Bookbindery, literature, NPR, predictions, Science Fiction, technology, WIlliamson Oak
Remember this?
But that doesn’t mean that the book has to have an old look. Not at all. I’m playing around with some design ideas which will incorporate the cords, but which will feel more modern. Watch for some preliminary posts on that in a couple weeks.
OK, how about this?
Well, this afternoon NPR’s “All Things Considered” had a good piece about the tree, and the drought. And already I’ve had people ask whether it was the same one I had written about/used for the cover of Communion of Dreams.
Yup, that’s the same one. Here’s from the NPR website:
Well, can you take a guess what sort of design motif I’ve decided to use? Here, take a look:
Now, if you look at those images closely, you’ll see that there are a pair of lines just to the left of the tree trunk. Those indicate where the spine will be, just as with the paperback edition of the book:
Now, that’s all well and good, but how to create the ‘raised cords’ effect overall? Like this:
So far, so good. Now let’s test how it would look with some calfskin adhered down over that:
OK, I like that. But how will it look with goatskin? Here’s that:
OK, keep in mind that these are just tests to see how the leather looks over the raised cords. I’m happy with the results. But now I need to convert that simple bas relief 2-dimensional effect into a fully functional 3-dimensional sculpture which also happens to be a comfortable-to-read book, using some of the cords above as part of the actual structure of the book.
Sound difficult? Yeah, but remember that this has been my profession for over two decades. I like a nice challenge.
Just thought I’d share that little progress report.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Book Conservation, Connections, Gardening, Health, Preparedness, Press, Publishing, U of Iowa Ctr for the Book | Tags: Amazon, Annie Tremmel Wilcox, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, health, jim downey, Kim Merker, serendipity, UICB, University of Iowa Center for the Book
My wife came through the kitchen, past the back door, and stepped into my bindery. I was in the process of gathering and folding the sections for the limited edition of Communion of Dreams. I paused, looked up.
“Did you see Annie’s email?” she asked.
I sighed. “Yeah, just a few moments ago.”
* * * * * * *
Because of the crazy weather we’ve had this spring, it seems like everything has been out of kilter in the garden. As a result, I’m just now getting around to doing the usual spring maintenance on the raised strawberry bed. Yesterday, as I was finishing up the weeding, having removed a couple bushel baskets worth of henbit and no small amount of rogue grass, I decided to see if I could get out the entire root of some large and nasty prickly thing.
To do this, I dug down into the surrounding soil with a weeding tool, then grasped the base of the plant with a large pair of old pliers. These plants are tenacious, and this is about the only way I have found to get most of their roots out of the ground without resorting to explosives. Anyway, I got a good grip on the root with the pliers, positioned myself, and pulled mightily.
The root started to come out. But then it snapped off suddenly. My right hand, grasping the pliers, flew free. For about 8 inches. Then it encountered the back edge of the concrete block used in construction of the raised bed. I knew I had broken the fourth metacarpal (the bone in the hand which goes from the wrist to your little finger) before I even raised my hand to look at it.
* * * * * * *
I met him by accident, and it changed my life. It’s a story I’ve told many times, but I don’t recall writing about it before.
I was a couple semesters into work on my MA in English Lit at the University of Iowa. I was looking to get a drop/add slip signed, and opened the wrong door.
See, there were these two doors, side by side. The one on the left went where I intended to go. The one on the right led into the Windhover Press, the fine letterpress at Iowa. But I didn’t notice the sign on the door, and didn’t realize my mistake until I was already a step or two inside.
A short, greying man wearing thick glasses was busy doing … something … behind a piece of machinery I didn’t recognize. He looked over the top rim of his glasses, and gruffly asked: “Can I help you?”
It should have been my cue to stammer out an apology for interrupting him, then turn and leave.
Instead, I stopped, looked around more. It started to sink in what it was I was looking at. “Wow, what *is* this place?”
My appreciation for tools and fine equipment must’ve shown on my face. He smiled. Just a little. And stepped out from behind the Vandercook proof press he was working at, wiping his hands on the (once) white apron he was wearing. “Like it says on the door, this is the Windhover Press. The fine letterpress. We make books here. By hand.”
“People still do that?” Well, I knew that they did. In the abstract. But being confronted with the no-nonsense reality of it had me a bit stunned.
“Yeah. Let me show you around.”
He did. I was fascinated. I did drop the class I was planning on dropping, but rather than some class on literary theory I added in a class on “The Hand Printed Book”.
* * * * * * *
‘He’ was Kim Merker. I spent two semesters taking his class. And I learned a lot about letterpress printing, about paper, about ink. And a bit about bookbinding. I also met one of my closest friends, Annie, who was Kim’s assistant at the press and who usually referred to him as “Herr Gutenberg”. Actually, it was Annie who taught me a lot of what I learned there.
Because Kim was gone a lot. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was busy putting together something new. Something which necessitated a lot of meetings, a lot of schmoozing, a lot of travel. That something was the embryonic Iowa Center for the Book.
So Kim and I never became particularly close. Oh, I got along with him just fine, and was always happy to see him in the press when I went there for one of my ‘classes’. And he did teach me a lot, himself.
But I found I was more interested in the simple bookbinding techniques I learned, and shifted my attention to doing more of that as time went on, moving on to taking other classes, learning from other artisans who had been brought together for this new and somewhat vague ‘program’ called the UICB.
Still, without him allowing his work to be interrupted and taking the time to show a gob-smacked grad student around, I never would have become a book conservator and book artist.
* * * * * * *
I felt the sharp pain that comes with a bone break. Dropping the pliers, I lifted my hand and looked at the back of it. There was already a knob there at the point of impact. I felt it. Flexed my fingers. Couldn’t feel any shifting of bone or fragments. And while it hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, there was no additional pain from moving my fingers. Just a weakness in my grip in the little finger.
Yeah, I broke the metacarpal. I was certain of it. I finished up the last few bits of the weeding I hadn’t done, using my left hand, and then replaced the boxwire panels which protect the strawberry plants from birds and critters.
I came inside, washed my hands, and again did an assessment. Was there any reason to seek medical attention? Not really. I’ve broken enough bones and had enough other injuries to be able to tell when I should see a doctor or head to the ER. In fact, I’ve broken four metacarpals in my life, and this was actually the second break for this particular one. Only for the first one was a cast needed — because I had shattered the bone when I was 16. (That was the last time I hit anything in anger.)
As I explained to a friend: I prefer to lead a somewhat rough & tumble life rather than a completely safe one. Sure, there are more hurts that come along with that, but the risks are generally worth it.
* * * * * * *
My wife came through the kitchen, past the back door, and stepped into my bindery. I was in the process of gathering and folding the sections for the limited edition of Communion of Dreams. I paused, looked up.
“Did you see Annie’s email?” she asked.
I sighed. “Yeah, just a few moments ago.”
Kim Merker had passed away two weeks ago. Word was just now getting out beyond his family and those who knew him best. There was a statement up on the UICB website.
I had looked at the dates of his life. And counted the years to when I first met him. I’m almost the same age as he was then.
“I’m going to want to try and attend the memorial service they have for him this fall,” I said.
My wife nodded. I went back to gathering and folding sheets.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Book Conservation, Connections, Kindle, Publishing, Religion, Society, tech | Tags: Amazon, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, caligraphy, direct publishing, economics, Erik Kwakkel, history, jim downey, Kindle, technology
A lot of folks don’t know it, but I have an undergraduate degree in Economics (and another in German). And, while I haven’t really done anything with that degree, it does still largely inform how I see the world: in terms of economic forces at play.
So this nice little explanation of how the industry of making books worked during the Medieval Period … and the forces which led to it … as well as how it relates to modern publishing … well, let’s just say it ties a lot of my interests together. Here’s an excerpt:
The professionals who made books for profit were usually found near the biggest church in town. This was a well-chosen spot as canons and clerics (i.e. people who visited the church and who could read) formed an important part of the clientele. By the 14th century true communities of the book had formed in the neighborhoods around churches and cathedrals. Evidence from such cities as Antwerp, Bruges, Brussels, London and Paris suggests that in these communities a diverse group of artisans interacted with clients and with each other. It was a world bound not only by the book, however, but also by profit.
The whole thing is worth a read, and it’s actually quite brief. Brief, but insightful.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Connections, Expert systems, Humor, MetaFilter, New Horizons, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech | Tags: augmented reality, blogging, book conservation, gizmag, humor, jim downey, Loz Blain, NSFW, predictions, RealTouch, reviews, science, Science Fiction, sex, technology
I should be working in the bindery. Really.
But I came in here to send an email, then paused to check MetaFilter, and saw something which scared me. Something not exactly safe for work.
So of course, I had to share.
Welcome to the future:
That’s the business end of a, um, male sex toy.
Yeah.
And if that isn’t scary enough, here’s this bit from the actual tech article:
It also occurs to me that as amazing an experience as it is, it might be even better, in a purely physical sense, if I was given full control over it – maybe even just a series of different patterns like most girls’ vibrators have. I bring the idea up with RealTouch Director of Sales, Scott Rinaldo, and he tells me that a plan to open-source the development of third party apps is already up and running.
What could possibly go wrong?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Book Conservation, Carl Zimmer, Connections, Faith healing, Health, National Geographic, Predictions, Psychic abilities, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Carl Zimmer, civilization, Communion of Dreams, dental hygiene, diet, Ed Yong, evolution, faith healing, genetics, health, jim downey, National Geographic, predictions, psychic abilities, science, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, writing
I’ve been entirely preoccupied with a big book conservation project which landed in my lap unexpectedly and needed attention right away (and trying to keep work going on St. Cybi’s Well), but a news item I saw the other day has been kicking around in my head. Er, so to speak. It’s the notion that the quality of dental hygiene & health in the modern era is *much* worse than it was before the advent of civilization. Here’s a good passage from one of the better articles which sums this up:
Our mouths are now a gentrified shadow of their former selves. And as Carl Zimmer described earlier this week, ecosystems with an impoverished web of species are more vulnerable to parasites. He was writing about frogs and lakes, but the same is true of bacteria and mouths. The narrow range of microbes in industrialised gobs are more vulnerable to invasions by species that cause disease, cavities, and other dental problems. “As an ecosystem, it has lost resilience,” says Cooper. “It basically became a permanent disease state.”
Of course, current thinking is that this is due to a fairly radical change in diet between the two time periods, with our reliance now on domesticated grain crops.
But I know the real reason:
“He had a nutty theory that early man had been shortlived, but impervious to disease. Something about being able to trace back mutation clues to some proto-genes that suggested a powerful ability to heal.” Jackie frowned.
Yeah, that’s from almost the end of Communion of Dreams. And is a topic we’ll revisit in the prequel.
Hehehehehehehe.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 