#muspeccoll

[muspeccoll]

Happy New Year! We hope your 2023 is as sparkly as this 1771 French almanac. Click through to our website to see the mirror hidden inside the front cover.

Image description:  Front and back covered in red foil, overlaid with colored metallic paper elements covered with a thin sheet of mica. Intricate gold tooled cut outs of red leather are overlaid on the mica. The covers feature centered oval miniature paintings of couples walking arm-in-arm.

(via Almanach iconologique, année 1771 : septieme suite, les XII. mois de l'année / par M. Gravelot.by Gravelot, Hubert François, 1699-1773, artist, author. A Paris : Chez Lattré, Graveur, rue S. Jacquesa la ville de Bordeaux, 1770. · Special Collections and Archives)

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"The twelve virtues of nobility", followed by an armorial. Folio (320 x 215 mm), [24]-[2 bl.] ff. on parchment, in pen and black ink, coats of arms with watercolor. Binding: waste from a liturgical manuscript in Latin. Text: calligraphic French verse, celebrating the virtues of the nobleman: nobility, faith, beauty, honor, righteousness, prowess, love, courtesy, diligence, neatness, generosity and sobriety. The armorial is made up of 30 coats of arms with their stamps, captioned in Dutch. The first 10, in large format, relate to large sovereign houses (Holy Empire, Bohemia, Brandenburg, Valois, Saxony, etc.), the other 20, in smaller format, relate in particular to the former Netherlands (Duchy of Brabant, counties of Flanders, Holland, Zeeland, Hainaut, Namur...) and the royal houses of Valois, Aragon, Bohemia and Portugal.

(via "Les douze vertus de la noblesse", with an armo...)

[muspeccoll]

Wordy Wednesday

Gauffered edges: A form of tooling that is applied not to the cover but to the edges of the text block. It is typically done after the pages have been gilt and involves applying a heated metal tool to the edge of the paper. It had its heyday in the 1500s, especially in Germany, and eventually fell out of favor in 1650, but was later revived in the late 1700s and in the 1800s.

(via Facsimile — Gloss · Rare Books: A Glossary · Special Collections and Archives)

[muspeccoll]

A lovely floral Friday for you from a portfolio featuring original plates from herbals published 1485-1863. This image of pinks or carnations is from Phytantoza Iconographia, first published in 1737.

(via Tafel 45: Phytantoza Iconographia ...)

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This lovely Marbled Monday is from the front board of a collected volume of Spanish plays published at the beginning of the 1800s. See more here: Comedias famosas, volume 1.

[muspeccoll]

We're back!

After four long years away, we're back and ready to start sharing our collections with you again. We have so many new and exciting things to show you in 2023. Expect more new posts after the New Year!

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The cover of this pamphlet was designed by Corita Kent, a nun whose influential artwork spread a message of social justice, peace, and equal rights. Kent used silkscreen as a means to create democratic, accessible art, and she became a well-known designer. Throughout the 1960s, she engaged with themes such as racism, feminism, and the Vietnam War in ways that drew criticism from Catholic traditionalists. This pamphlet cover was designed about a year before Kent left her convent and her role as an art teacher there.

This pamphlet and many others are available as an open access collection in JSTOR.

Thomas Merton. Blessed Are the Meek: The Christian Roots of Nonviolence. July 1967. Documents. Catholic Peace Fellowship, 1967. https://jstor.org/stable/community.33124894.

[muspeccoll]

Wordy Wednesday

Gloss: An annotation in the margins of a book intended to explain or clarify the main text. Sometimes glosses are also “interlinear,” i.e., written between the lines. Medieval scholars were particularly fond of glosses and it is not uncommon for a page to be more gloss than text in a medieval or early modern book. In these less heavily glossed times, readers must make do with footnotes or endnotes.

(via Facsimile — Gloss · Rare Books: A Glossary · Special Collections and Archives)