featherston

Principium

Last Monday, Brittany Williams and I met with Midwestern State’s special collections librarian, who gave us access to all of Nolan Moore’s collection information. She opened a filing cabinet stuffed with manilla folders containing information for each item in the collection. She then handed us a binder with a list of the items. From this binder Brittany and I selected most of the 18th century books that were listed, but narrowed our list down to 20 books. Next, we searched each of the chosen book’s titles in MSU’s online catalogue which gave us each book’s call number. We turned back to the aforementioned cabinet and searched for the folder labeled with the desired call number. Inside the folder we generally found a couple thin strips of paper that described the book and the auction where Moore bough the item. From the auction site name and date we turned to a staggering book shelf stuffed with all of the auction pamphlets Moore had attended. Once we found the pamphlet with the corresponding date, we found a detailed description of the book and its condition at the time, as well as the price it was sold for.

The information we gathered will be used to create a map or timeline displaying where the book was published and then where Moore bought it. Our intention with this display is to showcase the distance each book had traveled since its production. Moore found significance in book history and our hope is to use part of his collection to demonstrate this. We want to create a small representation of the travel aspect of a book’s physical history.

As tedious as the process was, it was incredible getting to see the extent Moore went to build this collection. The shelves were packed tight with those pamphlets, each representing a day Moore spent in search of great works of literature. He kept such detailed records of the collection, making his personal connection to it even more evident. He truly loved and respected literature, human communication and books as a physical being.

Social Networking With Kumu

This assignment brought a whole new meaning to the process of “trial and error.” While I struggled immensely with the intricate process of data scraping, the final product gave me a special appreciation for Kumu. This data mapping site brings a special awareness to the relationships between different elements. In this case, we see the […]

This assignment brought a whole new meaning to the process of “trial and error.”

While I struggled immensely with the intricate process of data scraping, the final product gave me a special appreciation for Kumu. This data mapping site brings a special awareness to the relationships between different elements. In this case, we see the relationship between students and the books they borrowed within 1845 at Manchester Academy. I gathered this data from Dissenting Academies Online. This data started out messy and complex so it needed to be scraped and cleaned. Although the last assignment went extremely well for me, this exercise was a different story. In my opinion this map was worth the struggle. Being able to see all of the information that taunted me in such a cool visual is strangely fulfilling. Below is the end result of my attempt at data scrapping.

The Nurse, a Poem

I love this tool. I still have no idea how this happened, but I love it. After doing a search through the English Short Title Catalogue of The Nurse, a Poem by William Roscoe, I managed to create this map of all three of its publication sites(overacheiving at its finest). Considering I have struggled immensely […]

I love this tool. I still have no idea how this happened, but I love it.

After doing a search through the English Short Title Catalogue of The Nurse, a Poem by William Roscoe, I managed to create this map of all three of its publication sites(overacheiving at its finest). Considering I have struggled immensely with every aspect of technology thus far, I was amazed at how smoothly the entire process went for me. I’m so excited to get more in depth with this tool with future assignments.

Shakespeare’s First Folio Investigation

This assignment set the standard for the rest of the semester! After searching through ridiculously expensive books in Midwestern State University’s rare books room I decided to turn back to the Moore collection. I found a first edition of Shakespeare’s First Folio in a display case that had a significant amount of wispy, ink writing in its margins. On the inside of the cover, among several taped-in articles and pictures, was a bookplate of famous English actor, David Garrick. Directly underneath followed the bookplate of a “Schmidtchen.” (The information I found through researching Schmidtchen’s bookplate could take up an entirely separate blog post but did not lead me to a full name as of yet.) The work was printed in 1623 by Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount through the Stationer’s Company.

After talking with my archivist and through private research, I discovered David Garrick was a famous actor in England during the mid-1700s. Along with acting he was a successful producer, poet and co-managed the Drury Lane Theatre company. In addition to these things Garrick was well known for rewriting parts of Shakespeare’s works. Midwestern State University’s special collections even has a few of Garrick’s own published works. With Garrick’s background in acting and reputation for making alterations to Shakespearean plays I expected to find a sweeping amount of marginalia. The only marks I felt safe to assume were Garrick’s were several areas of wispy, brown ink writing or smudges. He never left more than a single word or letter. On several pages it looked as if he was practicing a letter ‘R’ and later in the book he marks out the Italian words ‘Tertia’ and ‘Quarta,’ then writes their translations ‘Third’ and ‘Fourth.’ There are several pages with significant brown ink smudges on them that seem to show this wasn’t deemed a valuable possession of Garrick’s.

The taped-in clippings and pictures could either belong to the mysterious “Schmidtchen,” or Nolan Moore. Because I haven’t found any other books with provenance left by Moore I’m going to assume the clippings writing were left by Schmitdchen. The pictures he left in the book reveal that Schmidtchen had a great appreciation for Shakespeare and his life. While there was very little writing left by him what I did observe looked to be in black pen and had a very contemporary style to it, which contradicts my theory of it being Schmidtchen since he does have a bookplate.

This assignment was challenging but so stimulating because I found that the book was my most reliable source of information. There were several instances where I was given incorrect information, but by turning back to the publication information I was able to correct those mistakes. I enjoyed attempting to reveal the history of ownership behind Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories and Tragedies, and to view a production of the information I found you can view the timeline I created below.

Bibliography Research

For this assignment I decided to turn back to the Nuremberg Chronicles, originally written in Latin by Hartmann Schedele and printed by Anton Koberger in 1493. This work to me was the most interesting from a bibliographical stand point because it is actually a block book. Block books are pages of text and […]

For this assignment I decided to turn back to the Nuremberg Chronicles, originally written in Latin by Hartmann Schedele and printed by Anton Koberger in 1493. This work to me was the most interesting from a bibliographical stand point because it is actually a block book. Block books are pages of text and images cut into a wooden block and then transferred onto paper. A single block would be used for an entire page. Generally, and in the case with the Nuremberg Chronicles, two pages were printed on one side of a single sheet of paper. This sheet was then folded in half and the two sides were glued together so that the blank sheets on the inside were joined. In this book there are a total of 1,809 woodcuts from 645 blocks. There are a total of 300 pages in the Nuremberg Chronicles and the thread used to bound the 150 sheets shows an obvious case of stab-stitching. MSU’s copy had been so well preserved by the Moore family that the binding and the original leather cover are still intact. Because most block books are undated, bibliographers compared the books watermarks to that of dated documents and determined that mid-15th century Europe was the prime time for this style of press.

Although most of what I learned about block books and woodblock printing was through research, the Nuremberg Chronicles gives a visual and physical example of what I had studied. The deep impressions of the words and images are choppy yet soft, helping me visualize the carved block pressing into the paper like a stamp. The paper appears to be woven because there aren’t any chainlines. Because two blank sides of the pages are glued together, I would assume no one has ever seen them but there is no evidence of any of the pages being detached. There are several beautiful two page spread images, including a two paged map of Europe. Most of the book contains elaborate and colorful half sized images which is typical of woodblock press. The edges were all trimmed and only slightly worn but again, the book was so well preserved that it looks virtually untouched.

Sources:

http://education.asianart.org/explore-resources/background-information/invention-woodblock-printing-tang-618–906-and-song-960–1279

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?pics=on&sortby=1&tn=Nuremberg%20Chronicle

Kicking Off the Semester

On Wednesday 11, 2017, Brittany Williams and I met with Midwestern State University’s archivist. Remarkably, we had this entire assignment handed to us in a single collection. MSU was fortune enough to have this exceptional collection donated to our library by the family of Nolan Moore, the original owner. Moore traveled the world in search of original publications of greats works and literature. Being in the same room with fragments of Sumerian tablets, books published hundreds of years ago and even original news clippings from incredible moments in history was overwhelming. The oldest, complete work in the collection is the Nuremberg Chronicles, published in 1493 by Anton Koberger. The original book was made with the woodblock print technique in Latin; MSU has the German translation. The Nuremberg Chronicles is a summary of the Bible and the history of significant cities. The process of woodblock printing alone is astonishing because it is such an intricate way to produce books. I feel that the time that went into making this huge book shows how significant books were to this culture or time period. The book and its pictures were so well preserved, which speaks for the importance the contemporary society found in this medium. From this collection, the biggest theme that stands out is the obvious effort Moore put into building up significant literary periods. Another theme I noticed was that most of the books would be considered core texts or some of the most commonly studied works of literature from Dante’s Inferno to many of Hemingway’s works.

Kicking Off the Semester

On January 11, 2017, Brittany Williams and I met with Midwestern State University’s archivist. We soon realized we had this entire assignment handed to us in a single collection. With MSU being a smaller university, the entirety of our rare books section is comprised of a single collection created and owned by Nolan Moore. He […]

While there were a few leafs from the Gutenberg Bible, the oldest complete book in the collection is the Nuremberg Chronicles, written by Hartmann Schedel and published in 1493 by Anton Koberger. This book was created by a woodcut press. The intricate process that went into producing this beautiful work was my first indication of how important books and records were to the people of this time period. Because the majority of the book is a reconstruction with pictures of the Hebrew Bible and a rough history of the world, it reinforced my preconceived notion that religion dominated the culture of this time period.

Most of the works in the collection were so well preserved that they looked untouched. A small edition of Dante’s Inferno did show a lot of evidence of ownership and marginalia. Most of the pages were annotated in small, cramped ink handwriting that was extremely difficult to read. Because of the amount of writing in the book, I assume it was used for scholastic purposes before Moore collected it.

The collection was donated to MSU by Moore’s family after his death. Nolan Moore and his family were native Wichitans and wanted the collection to go to a smaller liberal arts university. They eventually decided Midwestern State was the best choice. Moore dedicated his life to showing others the significance of human communication and its evolution over time, making that the underlying theme of this collection. From a model of cave drawings and the Rosetta Stone to first editions of comic books, Moore found significance in printed works no matter what their origins or intended and was motivated to share their importance.

https://www.mwsu.edu/library/departments/Nolan-Moore-III/print