MatterTexts

Materiality and its material expression; a collage or commonplace book of my current research.

[materialtexts]

... though this Discourse be gross and not subtil, yet you may learn thereby to know what is subtile and secret; for that which is subtile must be infused into the ignorant by course Examples, that thereby they may be taught to reject the gross, and to embrace that which is subtile.

Valentinus (possibly fictional!), Of natural & supernatural things also of the first tincture, root, and spirit of metals and minerals, how the same are conceived, generated, brought forth, changed, and augmented, trans Daniel Cable (London: Moses Pitt, 1671)

[materialtexts]

In corrections ... we see not only the importance of material things for shaping human thought but also the importance of literary thinking for shaping the material text.

Daniel Wakelin, Scribal Correction, 10.

[materialtexts]

While literature depends on the hard work of artisans and on material conditions - on shaping letter-forms, scraping parchment, finding exemplars - conversely the labour of artisans is shaped by literature's qualities of style, form and structure, and by the scribes' thinking about those qualities.

Wakelin, Scribal Correction, 9.

[materialtexts]

...scribes attentively and intelligently correct things from The Canterbury Tales to practical texts such as the versified list of cures, in ways which make no distinction between 'literary' and 'ordinary' language but treat all sorts of writing as extraordinary.

Wakelin, Scribal Correction, 9

[materialtexts]

As well as meeting the patrons' demands or cultural expectations, craftsmanship has its own internal logic and autotelic reward of doing something well.

Wakelin, Scribal Correction, 8.

[materialtexts]

The craftsman's insights as a reader develop in the material process of writing, while his material process of writing reflects his ideas about literature.

Daniel Wakelin, Scribal Correction and Literary Craft (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014)

[materialtexts]

... a lute player, for instance, has a part of his memory in his hands: for the ease of bending and disposing his fingers in various ways, which he has acquired by practice, helps him to remember the passages which need these dispositions when they are played. You will find this easy to believe if you bear in mind that what people call Local Memory is outside us: for instance, when we have read a book, not all the impressions which can remind us of its contents are in our brain. Many of them are on the paper of the copy which we have read.

Descartes, letter to Martin Mersenne, 1st April, 1640

[materialtexts]

With unrecorded preliminary leaf... *gets on phone to conservation* http://t.co/p93cn6TcII #strangethingsinbooks pic.twitter.com/riaXdwIelv

— Robert MacLean (@bob_maclean) October 16, 2014

[materialtexts]

Pompei

[pittrarebooks]

Two weeks ago muspeccoll tagged us in the book challenge, and what a challenge it was to just limit the list to only 10 books! In no order, here our some of our favorites. Images accompany all but two, since they have been used in past Facebook posts. We look...

[materialtexts]

#FlyleafFriday 'Son go work to day in my Vineyard'. Inscription in the one early modern book I own - a dos-a-dos bound New Testament and Psalter.

[houghtonlib]

Agricola, Georg, 1494-1555. De re metallica, 1661.

Typ 565.61.127 

Houghton Library, Harvard University

[materialtexts]

To gylte the edges of bookes. TAke the quantitie of a Walnut of Boale Armenicke, the byggenesse of a Cyche pease of Sugre Candye: braye them drye the one with the other, and putte to it a little of the white of an Egge well beaten, than mingle well all together. This doen, take the booke that you will gylte, whiche muste be wel bound, well glewed, euen cutte, and well polished, set him fast in the presse, and that as euen and as righte as you can possible. Then with a pensill geue him a wype ouer with the white of an Egge well beaten, and let it drye, than geue him also another with the sayd composition. And whan it is well dryed, scrape it, and pollish it wel. Last of all when you will laye on the Golde, wette the sayde edges with a little cleare water, with a pensill, and than incontinent put on the golde leaues, cutte in that biggenesse they ought to be, and whan it is drye, pollyshe it with a dogges tothe. This doen, you maye make what worke you will vpon it.

The secretes of the reuerende Maister Alexis of Piemount (London: John Kingston for Nicholas England, 1558).

[materialtexts]

A little game of spot the difference: two lists of 'The Names of all thinges necessary for a Banquet' by the same author. There's one particular change that I'm excited by...

[materialtexts]

'I cannot write it right'

The complaint of a recipe compiler in MS Codex 252, University of Pennsylvania Library, fol. 40. Identifed as 'Mrs Maddison' by Janet Theophano.

[materialtexts]

'The most ingenious book that I ever read in my life' (Samuel Pepys)

Engraving of a flea, from Hooke's Micrographia: or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and Inquiries thereupon (London: J. Martyn & Allestry, 1665). Schem.XXIV, facing page 210. Wellcome Library, London

[materialtexts]

'Read, practice, and censure'.

Hugh Plat, Delightes for Ladies (London: Humphrey Lownes, 1608). Folger Shakespeare Library STC 19980.