Boffin Bookplates

Boffin Bookplates is an illustration series by Joanna Lisowiec highlighting the geeks and bookworms of history through hand-drawn bookplates. Ex Libris is the traditional inscription and is latin for 'from the library of'. New post every week! Follow me on instagram and never miss a post. @JoannaLiso

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Known as 'The Witch of Wall Street', Hetty Green was all about the green. Her passion in life were money, money and more money. A strong-willed and capable woman, but also not the sort of person I would call my role model... Nevertheless, it takes all sorts so I've made this week’s bookplate about this financial sorceress.⠀ ⠀ Born 1834, Hetty grew up to become a financier and business woman during America's 'Gilded Age' (1870's ~ 1900). During this period of industrialisation and rapid economic growth, many garnered fortunes but Hetty was the only woman to do so, eventually becoming the richest woman in America. ⠀ ⠀ Yet, she was no Mother Theresa. A notorious miser she went to great lengths to keep her money, HER money. Here I have compiled a list of Hetty's Rich Witch Top Tips 🧙🏻‍♀️.⠀ ⠀ 💰Never turn on the heat or use hot water. Only cold! Don't wash your hands either - that's a disgusting squandering of money. ⠀ ⠀ 💰Have only one dress and wear it everyday. Make sure it's black for complete witch-factor. Only wash the dirty bits to save on soap. Also you only need to change your undergarments when they've completely worn out.⠀ ⠀ 💰Keep biscuits in your hand bag so you never have to buy food when you're out. Only buy the cheapest kind, preferably something that tastes terrible.⠀ ⠀ 💰Instead of paying rent, live in your office. ⠀ ⠀ 💰Move frequently to stay ahead of the taxman.⠀ ⠀ 💰Use the office radiator to heat your porridge. Eat only porridge. Sometimes a pie but only if it costs 15 cents or less. ⠀ ⠀ 💰If your family members are sick, disguise yourself as a beggar and take them to the free clinic.⠀ ⠀ 💰Put a 'F*ck the Patriarchy' sticker on your diary.⠀ ⠀ Ok I made that one up - but the rest of them allegedly are true! Unfortunately, Hetty died from a stroke while arguing with her maid about the virtues of skimmed milk. What a way to go. ⠀ ⠀ Fortunately she left her money to 2 children who managed to enjoy it more and easily weathered the Great Depression. They were less frugal than their mother and Hetty's daughter Sylvia left most of her $200 million fortune to hospitals, colleges, churches and other charities. I'm sure Hetty was turning in her grave.

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1920s impressionist composer Maurice Ravel was a bit of a weirdo to be honest. An aloof loner, he mainly kept cats for company. There’s no telling how many cats he had but he specifically loved Siamese cats and even composed music inspired by them.⠀ ⠀ Ravel was also highly interested in Japanese culture. During the 1920s there was a huge influx of artefacts brought to Paris from Japan and Ravel decorated his home with them and had a Japanese style garden. ⠀ ⠀ He worked slowly and abandoned many works but is best known for his work ‘Bolero’, an orchestral piece of a repetitive theme - a popular choice for figure skaters.⠀ ⠀ Later in life Ravel suffered a head injury in a taxi accident which many scholars believe exacerbated a cerebral condition that caused absent mindedness, aphasia and obsessing on certain themes - possibly a result of frontotemporal dementia. ⠀ ⠀ Even though he was a little strange, I like his style 🤷🏼‍♀️⠀

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A wise queen who captured many hearts; inspirational poet, writer, singer and civil rights activist Maya Angelou.⠀ ⠀ The reason I've made her Ex Libris a playing card is because of a unique aspect of her writing process. Maya Angelou would write in a rented hotel room, asking for all pictures to be removed and requesting housekeeping not to change the sheets since she never slept in there. Instead she would lay across the bed, propping herself up on one elbow with nothing around her except the yellow legal pads she liked to write on, the bible, a thesaurus, a bottle of sherry and a deck of playing cards or crossword puzzles. She developed an unusual habit of playing solitaire or completing crosswords when she found it difficult to unlock her inspiration and creativity and called this activity ‘occupying the little mind'. ⠀ Although this notion started out as a childhood misinterpretation, she came to think of this little mind as sort of surface level thoughts that distract us while the big mind is where we think deep thoughts. Thus she would give her little mind tasks to keep it busy while she tried to unlock the thoughts ruminating underneath. It's difficult to articulate what this means but I know exactly what she was talking about.⠀ ⠀ Sometimes when I sit down to work I find myself overthinking things and that creative 'flow state' eludes me. I will stare at a blank page, trying to draw or write, waiting for the ideas to present themselves, but everything I think of is garbage so I get frustrated and give up or procrastinate endlessly with trivialities. I've started to unpick my work process and I’m learning healthy habits that are akin to this 'occupying the little mind'. Before I begin work I try to access a more relaxed state of mind rather than trying to jam myself into the role of creator. Tactics are different for everyone and to the outsider it might look like a waste of time but it's essential. For me it comes in the form of yoga, meditating, stream of consciousness writing, doodling mindlessly or sometimes literally staring into empty space.⠀ ⠀ Do you experience this phenomenon? What are some things you do to unleash your creative juices?

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My Polish homeboy Copernicus (aka Mikołaj Kopernik) celebrates his birthday on Tuesday next week! He was an astronomer and a founding father of the Polish Renaissance. He was the first to represent for the heliocentric model of the universe (Galileo got his back later on though, you feel me.) To fully understand the magnitude of his discovery it's important to bear in mind the context. Copernicus was born in 1473 on the upper east side of Brooklyn (OK, that’s a lie, you got me.) Anyway, during the middle ages, science wasn't really a thing yet and most people just looked to religion for guidance. Everyone assumed that because Earth was God's greatest creation it must be the center of the solar system. Seeing the movements of the sun and moon rising and setting each day seemed to confirm this point of view and early astronomers like Ptolemy came up with mathematical support to this theory. Nowadays, we all know that Ptolemy was just frontin’ - but back in the day, everyone believed him. A couple hundred years from now, if the human race is still thriving, they'll probably look back on us now and think something like 'Wow those fools had no idea! Man, they thought that it was healthy to eat fruits and vegetables! Lemme get some more of that good mineral cake up in here!' I mean, nobody can really know what discoveries we will make in the future and there are still many unanswered questions about life, but you can surely imagine what an earth shattering discovery this was. It poked a hole in the seemingly water-tight religious view of the world - and before you knew what was up, the Scientific Revolution was in full swing! As the first telescope wasn't invented until the 17th century, the way Copernicus made his discovery was by observing planetary motions visible to the naked eye and using mathematics to account for their movements. Copernicus was old school like that. He wasn’t too hot when it came to the publishing game though: he was too afraid of the reaction it would receive from the Church, but I guess when you turn 70 it changes your outlook. Copernicus finally published his seminal work 'On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres’ in 1543 and then died.

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Jazz is amazing. I think it’s America’s greatest contribution to society and it was really hard to pick an artist for Boffin Bookplates this week. February is Black History Month in America and of course jazz came to being in New Orleans where West African rhythms and folk songs, American blues, ragtime and European military band music met together in the joyful, playful and improvisational art of jazz music. 

Louis Armstrong is one of the most influential jazz musicians know for playing the cornet and trumpet, his distinctive gravelly vocals and masterful scat singing. There are so many interesting things about the life of this impressionable musician but here’s a handful of facts.

• His first proper instrument was a cornet which he was helped to buy by the Karnoffsky family, a Jewish family for whom he worked doing odd jobs and who knowing about his troubled family life, helped looked after him. In their honour he permanently wore a Star of David pendant. • He was one of the first artists to record scat singing. Legend has it that while he was recording he dropped his sheet music and started improvising on the lyrics but it was so good they just let him carry on and kept that version on the recording.

• He performed so much and had such an aggressive style of playing that at one point he cut his lips so badly he had to take a year off to recover.

• His nickname “Satchmo” is short for “Satchel Mouth” - purportedly from his days of busking on the streets of New Orleans when he kept coins in his mouth to keep bigger kids from stealing them. 

• His biggest vice was smoking weed which he described as “1000 times better than whiskey”. 

• He was a fan of laxatives which he used to control his weight and even advocated without pay for herbal laxative Swiss Kriss.

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A woman who thought for herself. 

Mary Wollstonecraft: philosopher, writer, and feminist. She lived an unconventional life and challenged beliefs in pursuit of rational thought. Something men and women alike should strive for especially in the age of sensationalism and fake news. 

Question everything and seek the objective truth even if it does not agree with the voices around you. 

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“You and me baby we ain’t nothing but mammals...”

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Gertrude Bell, sometimes referred to as 'Queen of the Desert' was a force of nature. Born in 1868 in the North East of England, she was really ahead of her time in terms of how free she was as a woman. At the time history was one of the few subjects women were allowed to study and she was the first woman to graduate with a first class honours degree in Modern History from Oxford. Afterwards she spent time mountaineering in Switzerland, even getting a mountain named after her, and traveling extensively throughout the Middle East pursuing her passion of archaeology and languages. She was fearless and intelligent, speaking fluent Arabic, Persian, French, German and also some Italian and Turkish. She became well acquainted with the geography, culture, customs and people of the Middle East and wrote several books on the subject. Later she was recruited by British Intelligence to get soldiers through the deserts and became highly influential in shaping British imperial policy in the area, including during the creation of Iraq. She was the only woman holding political power in the region from the outbreak of World War I until her death and was one of the few representatives of British Government remembered by the Arabs with anything resembling affection. I think her life is best summed up in the obituary written by her peer D.H. Hogarth. "No woman in recent time has combined her qualities – her taste for arduous and dangerous adventure with her scientific interest and knowledge, her competence in archaeology and art, her distinguished literary gift, her sympathy for all sorts and condition of men, her political insight and appreciation of human values, her masculine vigour, hard common sense and practical efficiency – all tempered by feminine charm and a most romantic spirit."

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Ray Mears, the mastermind of bushcraft and survival techniques! His relaxed attitude and good nature make watching his programmes so comforting for me. Even as he tucks himself up in shelter made of pine boughs with the outside temperature dropping to -50°C, he still manages to laugh as he contemplates using a frozen banana as a tent peg.

What I like most about Ray especially compared to other survival expert tv personas is that wherever he goes, he takes the time to learn about the bushcraft of the local and indigenous people, acknowledging that nothing could supersede their knowledge or harmonious and sustainable approach to living off the land. I just hope one day my amateur wood carving abilities will be up to his standard. 

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I'm excited to present the first instalment of a new series I am working on, #BoffinBookplates. I often talk about my affinity for books but I don't just mean I like reading them, I also cherish them as physical objects, whether it's a beautiful leather bound, gilded volume or a well-loved dog eared paperback, there is something special about these vessels of information that will never be completely replaced. 

Back in the day people used to declare ownership of their books by sticking a bookplate, or personalised label in the front of their books declaring 'Ex Libris', Latin for 'from the library of'. They are often quite beautiful works of art, sometimes decorative, sometimes funny. As a passion project I've decided to highlight some of my favourite boffins (people who are experts of their field and have arcane knowledge or skill) by creating bookplates for them. 

This first Boffin Bookplate is dedicated to Dame Jane Goodall, the world's leading authority on chimpanzees who devoted more or less her entire life to studying them in the wild. She has written over 10 books on the subject and has received numerous awards for her humanitarian and environmental contributions. 

Her affinity for chimps actually started when at one year old she was given a toy chimpanzee by her father which she named Jubilee. Apparently she still keeps Jubilee on her dresser. As a tribute to her her bookplate depicts one of her friends enjoying her book, 'In the Shadow of Man', and of course it's very impressive that he can read upside down!