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Rare Books School, 2001

Chris Clarkson’s seminar on Medieval & Early Renaissance Bookbinding Structures draws on the evidence of the surviving artifacts, interprets the meanings of depictions of books in art and demonstrates the actions of binding structures using models. Defying destructions of time and disregard, the seminar is an awesome achievement of archeological method, scholarship, graceful narration and a simple love for the subject.

Here is an example of fun of learning from Chris: to differentiate between artistic depictions of the sewn board family of bookbindings and other supported sewings he does not depend only on the ”fall back” opening of the sewn board work. That depicted opening type is too subject to stylistic license or to constraints of hand cradling or book furnitures. Instead he begins with the simple differentiation of the “flat” vs. “curved” page, knowing that the cantilever arch of sewing supports will transmit drape to the leaves while the relaxing stitch chains of an opening in a sewn board binding will release the leaves into a flat surface. He illustrates that this simple visual observation is at work in all periods of graphic depiction.

River of Gold

Chris is also good at intangibles such as invoking a sense of craft skill to explain the appearance of artifacts. Chris Clarkson tells the story of going to learn book edge gilding at Mr. Gywnn’s. The shop was located below grade and at first it was dark. Eventually Chris noticed a window grate where passing legs were visible. His eyes adjusted and he soon realized that he was in a very dusty basement work room. Equipment and jars were webbed by spiders. Chris thought this must be exactly the opposite of the recommended environment for gilding.

Mr. Gwynn also became visible. Standing at the gilding press, he was huge. There were work piles beside him. Chris imagined that he would take a book from the stack. Instead he lifted the entire stack, rotating and suspending it between the clamp of his arms. Before this feat could be appreciated, he set the stack between the beams of the press, all volumes level. Next Mr. Gwynn picked up an immense iron bar and passed it through the hub of the press screw. He lunged against it, charging the books into a solid block. At that point Chris put down his notebook.

Mr. Gwynn looked at the edges. He brought out a scraper but took only a few flicks across the book edges. Next he brought down a bad pot of egg glare and used the stub of a brush to flick on a coating of glare. He glanced across this effect, but the results were difficult to observe in the semi-darkness. He brought out a book of gold and casually laid out full sheets across the block of book edges as if he was distributing from a deck of cards. He then picked up the burnisher and sharpened the wedge of both faces on a stone.

He glanced across the book edges and bracing the burnisher into his shoulder he took a massive stroke. Chris maintains that a “river of gold” suddenly appeared in the darkness. Then other strokes flashed into view. Mr. Gwynn had finished the first edge. He loosened the press, gripped and rotated the pile of books ready for the next edge before Chris realized that he had just seen the process of book edge gilding.

Thinking it Through and Learning from Chris

In his complete review of the papyrus era of the codex, Chris considered each of the scroll to roll transition scenarios, and expressed his dissatisfaction with them, both separately and in combination. He established that the codices were produced from long, rolled sheets, the product format of papyrus. He then offered the insight that any scenario for the advent of the codex must be associated with some common and prevalent mode of information transmission among the sectarians who subsequently adopted the format.

Within such a matrix, the use of folded papyrus letter formats, known both from masses of archeological evidence as well as from the traditions of frequent letter exchanges among the dispersed sectarians, may have provided a useful mechanism for codex format development. The only insight needed would have been sewing through the single inner fold of the road map configurations. At first this would have been done for security during travel. Subsequently, modest invention coupled with the exemplar role of letters could have yielded the single quire codex book.

The seminar was filled with such interplay. While Chris singled out the Romanesque binding as his exemplar of the craft. I thought this position was a bit arbitrary and I believe there are points of debate over both structure and craft context. Structurally, the Romanesque bindings lacked effective attachment to the inner face of the boards. This feature, necessary for transmission of the wooden board leverage on opening, is provided by the later development of vellum panel linings put down inside the board.

Chris also positioned the Romanesque period as a high point in the craft, after which structure was “deteriorated” and abbreviated. Again, I felt this was a bit arbitrary; that each era of hand binding must exhibit equivalent, though different, achievement, if only because of the continuities of dexterity and mechanical insight in all the generations of craftspeople.

In fact, with close attention to Chris’ view it appeared to me that the Romanesque binder had certain “unfair advantages” over the binders that followed. These included the ability to select and reject among a great range of high quality materials and a working approach that enabled moderate resizing and realignment as well as a pervasive reversibility throughout the process. Finally the Romanesque binder had the unfair advantage of continuous reference to a whole, bound book exemplar and a craft context of high proficiency in exemplar replication.

A Field Trip

Chris prepared us for a mid week field trip with wonderful lectures on parchment text block make ups. (He resolved the ambiguous pair of parchment and vellum by using parchment in a manuscript and calligraphic context and vellum in reference to book covers. Simple, eh...?) The Stonyhurst Gospel was studied and this exemplar was both related and distinguished from traditions of Ethiopian work. Wood for boards was a major general topic with very careful narration of associated evidences of tools used and methods of preparation employed. All this preparation and more provided a vocabulary for study of actual bindings during a day long field trip to special collections at the Library of Congress and Folger library.

We examined 16 early bindings at the LC and 32 at the Folger with the specimens very efficiently glided around the table on their own cushioned glider trays. Each student was able to make minute observations following Chris’ commentary on each. These were phenomenally rare and fine examples and they produced life long impressions of the character of early bookbinding.

We made very close observations of the evidences of edge trimming. We had studied various pictorial representations that frequently illustrated or indicated the plow, draw knife and metal scraper in the same shop. Now, faced with the tool marks we could still not decide on a simple technique. This left us with some interesting, alternative possibilities. These included a possibility that foredges and head and tail edges were actually trimmed differently. Just as possible, the draw knife, plow and scraper were actually used as tandum tool sets, perhaps the draw knife used first to clear raggy deckles.

Chris as a Teacher

Chris Clarkson is a great instructor. He has a poignant method of inter weaving slides of bindings with slides of artworks and archeological sites and kinetic models occasionally interspersed with beautifully delivered short readings or with spontaneous commentary or with very attentive responses to questions. And all of this is infiltrated with splashes of humor and outright classroom excitement. Chris is also extremely up-to date on research and the most recent publication. Invariably he can bring his own consultancies to bear on new discoveries or new tragedies of loss.

In one last example, I asked Chris to consider a picture of the folds of an unbound manuscript. The particular mss is a 14th century Italian Missal service book that, in its unbound state, revealed too many knife kerfs for sewing. I certainly expected that such a book should have evidence of multiple bindings...but I couldn’t get past the identical knife kerfs of all those stations.

The first amazing thing that he said was that such a book would have been rebound in intervals of about 100-150 years. He then picked up a piece of paper and plotted the alignment of two different bindings from the matrix of knife kerfs. Immediately the configurations jumped out; a more Gothic style layout and a more Renaissance style layout, both Italian. Wow! Was that neat!

EndNote

Additional credit for the success of this seminar must go to the Rare Books School at the University of Virginian and to the management expertise of Terry Belanger. With this infrastructure it is assured that Chris will return.