2/16/2013
It’s 9:30 in the evening here in the
England. I’ve had a whopping two hours of sleep since I woke up for work at
6:00 Friday morning in Boston, and since I woke up I’ve disbound and dry
cleaned a book, sized another book, packed for my trip, been rejected from a
job, flew to England, gotten to know a nice single serving friend, avoided
getting to know a really cranky single serving friend, been to about a million
used book stores, walked all over downtown London with my suitcase in tow,
watched a series of incredibly skilled street performers, taken the most
pathetic excuse for a shower imaginable, eaten tons of Indian food, and have
bunkered down in bed with a nice cup of hot tea.
Most of the
booksellers I’ve met here are really nice. The first place I stopped was
definitely the best. Maybe not in collection, but I got there super early and
helped him set up a bit as he opened his shop, then he gave me a private tour
of his most interesting bindings. Of course, he was smack dab in the middle of
Covent Gardens, so I couldn’t afford a thing, but that didn’t stop him from
being nice to me.
Others on
that street were not so nice. One particular woman, a prints and lithographs
seller, bustled outside of her shop as she saw me approaching her discount
rack. My gloves were off as I handled her wares, looking for things to put on
my walls or wash and mend and use as a sample for potential employers. “Ditch
those gloves!” she shouted at me. “And handle those with both hands!” Well,
yes, I was doing that, actually. Already. Before you started yelling at me.
“What do you want?” she snapped. I tried to placate her, speaking in soothing
tones and showing her that her collections were not in the hands of some
paper-tearing brute. I then told her that I was a bookbinding student, trying
to show her that I’m an interested, informed individual and demonstrate to her that
I’m on her side and maybe to get her to stop yelling at me. “You’re a student? You
want trash to fix? I don’t have any today. Come back in a week and I’ll give it
to you for free. But I don’t sell that. I won’t. I’m running this store for my
father, who passed away. I’m nice to students because he was,” she shouts at
me. “Now go. Go away. No, don’t come in my shop. I’m nice to students. I won’t
sell trash. You want to buy trash, go to one of the other stores and pay too
much for it. I like it when you pay too much for them at the other stores. I’m
nice to students.” She slammed the door in my face.
I think
maybe she was a little bit crazy.
But those
were really the extremes of the day. I had pretty average experiences at the
other places. There was a great children’s book store where I found and finally
read Mervyn Peake’s Captain Slaughterboard
Drops Anchor. (It was £200,
which was far too rich for my blood. It’s okay though, because at another store
I found Lewis Carol’s The Hunting of the
Snark illustrated by Peake for £5,
which satiated my Peake lust. For now.) I couldn’t check into my hotel until
late in the afternoon, so I spent most of the day this way, thinking that
bookstores and flea markets were more
likely to let me bring in my suitcase than, say, the palace or any museums. I
managed to give myself blisters on my hands and neck from lugging around my
bags though.
When I
finally did check in, I was exhausted. The room that I booked is listed as
being a single bed with its own shower. While I knew this meant that I would
have to share a toilet with other folks, I was fine with that because it meant
I could have my own room, unrelated to that of anyone else in my party, which
has never once happened before in my travels.
My room is,
to the naked eye, pretty lame. It’s only slightly bigger than my bedroom at
home (which is the size of a shoebox). It has a twin bed, crotchety television,
one unused power plug for all the things I need to plug in, and a kind of
makeshift closet thing with a shower nozzle shoved in. I came in, stripped the
city grime clothes off, and popped in the shower, looking forward to at least a
good, hot soak.
It spritzed, it drizzled, and it
took me a good ten minutes to get all of my hair wet. Considering how very thin
my hair is, that goes to show how sad the shower is. I will undoubtedly take a
video of this hilariously lame spray.
But despite all that, I love this
room. The staff at the hotel are really nice, the place is conveniently
located, and the room is all mine, which really means a lot.
I celebrated my arrival in England
and my wonderful little lame-showered room with some of that fabulous London
Indian food, and planned to follow it up with a pint in the pub on the corner
but found I was far too full for that! Perhaps tomorrow evening.
And now my eyes are heavy from
jetlag, so goodnight.
2/17/2013
I slept in
a bit later than intended today. Call it jetlag. But my alarm went off, I
turned over and didn’t wake up for another two hours. Missed the complimentary
breakfast and all.
Anyone will
tell you that I need breakfast or bad things happen. I get cranky. I get
headaches. I get sleepy. I’m sleepy and cranky and headachey. I skipped
breakfast before class once this year and passed straight out. (I’m told I fall
like a Victorian lady.) So first on the list should have been breakfast, but
no. I was excited about the flea markets and whatnot to look for old books and
bookbinding tools. So off I went, sans coffee or breakfast, to Portobello Road.
But
skipping breakfast paid off! Because when I got to the famous flea market, I
found that a majority of the flea-market-style stores were closed (I should
have taken into account that it’s Sunday), but the morning was not wasted!
Among the few sellers that had opened their doors or hauled out their wares to
the sidewalk, there were crepe carts!
One of my
greatest lost loves in life is the Nutella crepe. We met on a side street off
the Duomo in Florence and it was love at first sight. The crepe was wearing an
old-fashioned French fry container. I’ll never forget. And though there have
been other foods that I’ve loved throughout the years, none of them have really
ever measured up.
The thing
about crepes is that they’re properly made on a hot plate. They’re a creamy
dough ladled out, thinned and allowed to
cook for just a second before they’re flipped. Nutella is spread on, they’re
folded and removed from the grill. It takes about a minute.
But for
some reason, most shops have decided that “crepe” means “waffle.” Not only
that, but only about a quarter of a waffle. They spread some Nutella on an old,
dry waffle bit and call it a crepe. And while waffle with Nutella is tasty,
it’s not a proper crepe. I’m all about the proper crepes.
Portobello
Road has some of those waffles, but more importantly, they have a whole bunch
of those proper crepe makers! So straightaway, I bought one. The woman folded a
paper plate around it instead of an old-fashioned French fry container, but who
cares about appearances? It’s what’s on the inside that counts. I was so
excited about it that I meant to take a picture of it, but I ate it before I
could get my camera out.
They’re just as good as I remember.
Seeing as
Portobello was tool- and book-wise a dud (I’ll go back tomorrow morning for a
quick glance. I assume things are open on Monday? It’s right next door anyway.)
I went off to Brick Lane, another Sunday market. This one was mostly food, but
it was all amazing. It was an array of international choices, multicultural
fusions, and baked goods. I sampled some things, but since I had just eaten, I
refrained valiantly from purchasing anything other than a coffee. I enjoyed the
sights and sounds and smells though.
I wandered
for about an hour, then adventurously turned onto an off street that looked,
while a bit sketchy, more flea-market than food and trinkets. Think that dark
magic off turn of Diagon Ally. It turned out that this was the street of bikes.
All kinds, sizes, parts, makers, riders, everything. It made me think of a dear
friend who has recently found a passion in bikes, but as I have no ideas
concerning what’s interesting or rare or worth anything at all for presents, I just
observed and thought fondly of him.
After
wandering for a bit more, down the street I saw a store sign. It was called
“Type.” You don’t have to ask twice. I was already at the door and walking in
and there they were. A bigger-than-you-can-imagine pair of fabric shears. They
were a bit expensive, but old and beautiful. I didn’t buy them because they’re
not absolutely necessary to my work
and I want to make sure I have enough money to buy leather at Harmatan and
finishing tools at P&S, but I’ll have time to go back if I have the money
toward the end of my trip. (Who knows. If I keep thinking about them as much as
I have today, I’ll probably go back and buy them on Tuesday, as the store is
closed tomorrow.)
There were
some brushes and monotype matrices, a Kelsey Excelsior that I desperately want
but would never be able to transport, and a whole bunch of furniture (the
sitting-on type; not the type-setting type). I chatted the proprietor’s ear off
for a bit, made him take the shears out for me to fondle, got his card and
chatted some more, and headed off.
I was done
with the markets for the day and not really sure what I was going to do next
when I got a text from my housemate, another bookbinder who is on this trip.
Technically I got a text from her host, a London friend of hers. They were
going to St. James’ Park to feed the ducks and squirrels. Now, keep in mind
that my housemate hates small creatures as she does most things (she is a
crotchety, growly and darling person!), but she must love her host more than
she hates creatures, so somehow he got her to agree to go. Well, I wasn’t going
to pass up on the chance to see her so miserable (such is our dynamic), so I
boarded the tube station to feed some small woodland creatures with my cranky
housemate.
The tube
ride lasted maybe an hour. Service was out on the one line that would have
brought me in two minutes to where my housemate was, so after figuring out how
to circumnavigate the construction sights and directing no small number of
German, Hungarian and American tourists to where they needed to go, I boarded
the infrequent and slow trains necessary to take me where I wanted to go and
ended up meeting my housemate in front of Buckingham Palace. Her host is
charming indeed. He has an impressive knowledge and love of birds and is very
personable. Unlike my housemate, who (pretend-) hates both birds and people.
I fed several squirrels and some
ducks, geese, crows and rooks. The squirrels are remarkably bribable, and I
forced several to step on my hand in order to get their reward. That’s right.
Squirrel contact. Be jealous.
Then we met up with my housemate’s
host’s girlfriend and we all went to dinner at a vegan restaurant (both my
housemate and her host are vegan) where I had Thai curry, vegan stroganoff and
a whole bunch of other things which were delicious. We headed to a pub for a
bit of cider (actually a dozen pubs before we found one with a place to sit),
chatted, looked at pictures on our phones together, chatted more and all headed
home.
If you can’t tell, today was pretty
much all about food. I deem this a good day.
2/18/2013
Today was
the first day in which we had an organized school event—dinner at Lisa Von
Clem’s house. Part of me wishes that we could just be in England for a week
with no schedule so I could see all I want to see and do all I want to do with
no interruption, but I know that the things we have organized will be
wonderfully worth it. Like Von Clem’s was this evening.
I had a few
false starts today. I wanted to run to Portobello Road for used books, but upon
arriving I realized that nothing in this town opens before ten (or eleven in
some cases.) So I dashed off to the National Gallery of Art instead.
Last time I
visited London, I dedicated an entire day and went to every single room in the
National Gallery. Save one. Which was closed.
And it was
kind of the one that I really wanted to go see.
So this
morning, I went to the Gallery in order to visit room 63, which has Bellini’s
astoundingly gorgeous portrait of the Doge of Venice, and was a personal
obsession of mine when I lived in Italy.
But when I
went to enter the gallery…it was closed! Good gracious, does the British
government not want me to see this
portrait? I found a sign saying it would be open at eleven, and since there are
worse things than spending an hour or two in an art museum, I wandered
aimlessly, drinking in the art.
It’s funny,
because I think that seeing artwork is really like visiting and running into
old friends. Sometimes, there are people that you think will be part of your
life forever. Your best friend in high school that you ate lunch with every
day. But they become someone you never see, and you wouldn’t know what to say to
them if you did. But others, the kid in your first year seminar class who said
that funny thing about religion that one time. They’re the ones you end up
having long chats with on the phone or meeting up with in coffee shops years
later when you find out they’re in town.
The same
with art. Panel paintings that were my world when I studied in Florence I saw,
paused at in reminiscence, and moved on. Then a caricature of avarice that
amused me when I first saw it held me captive for twenty minutes as I observed
the details and brush strokes, read and reread its placard, and just sat and
stared.
So I
visited old friends, finally my gallery was open, and there he was. The Doge.
He’s just as breathtaking as I always thought he would be from the slides. He’s
there. Alive and perfect and astounding. It was truly an experience I will
never forget, seeing him there in Room 63. Worth waiting four years for,
certainly.
After I
gazed my fill, I headed to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which for time
purposes was skipped on my last London visit. I didn’t dedicate as much time as
I would have liked, but I wandered its halls of armor and porcelain, jewelry,
photography and even some books. It has a truly amazing collection, and I hope
to spend much more time there in the future.
But
certainly the highlight was on the second floor: the William Morris room. I
can’t even begin to describe how skilled this man was. He read some directions
about how to weave, then suddenly tapestries and curtains and carpets were
flying from his fingertips. His designs are intricate and decadent and his
furniture is solidly crafted and yet somehow delicate. His influence on the
Arts and Crafts movement was phenomenal, and he tops the list of my role models
alongside Dard Hunter. (I’m ashamed to admit that two years ago, I didn’t even
really know what the Arts and Crafts movement was.)
But the
Lisa Von Clem appointment called, and I had to head off to her house, which is
very near my hotel. I was a little disappointed to have to leave for a bookbinder
get together, but I should have known better. Lisa is a book collector of the
highest caliber, and has bindings from not only the old well known binders, but
new up and coming binders. Her collection is spectacular to be able to look at
and handle.
On top of
that, she’s simply delightful. It was the first time the whole of the travel
group has gotten together since arriving in London, and we sat on her living
room floor eating and drinking a never ending supply of food and wine, and it
was the most natural thing in the world just to chat and have a wonderful time
together under her graceful hostessing.
2/19/2013
My hotel
room was sweltering last night. I don’t have control over the radiator and am
on the top floor in a tiny, stuffy room. So while I appreciate the fact that
they are fully trying to keep their guests warm here, the heat that pumps into
a large room on the first floor is not the same heat that should pump into a
tiny room that’s being heated already by all the heat that’s rising from the
five stories of rooms beneath it.
I slept
naked with no covers and the windows open. Slept isn’t the word for it though.
That’s too generous.
Sufficed to
say, it was very difficult getting up today when my alarm went off. I left
getting out of bed until the very last second, stuffed breakfast in my bag and
headed to the train station a little late. Then the tube train didn’t come. And
didn’t come. And didn’t come. By the time I reached my destination (a real train station) I was seriously late
and my train was about to leave the station. I bowled over some pedestrians,
jumped through the gate and onto the train without changing my printed receipt
for a ticket. Turns out this is a no-no in England, and the conductor was cross
with me, but realized I was an American tourist and took pity. Once I found my
group though, it was smooth sailing.
We went to
Portslade, home of P&S Engraving, and had a lovely tour of their workshop.
P&S Engraving is one of the main two providers of high quality leather
finishing tools to the bookbinding world. They make gouges, pallets, fillets
and type. The quality and quantity of work I’ve seen from their workshop led me
to expect a decently sized warehouse with a dozen specialized workers slaving
over tools, computers, laser engraving machines and more. I suspect there were
lab coats in my imaginings as well.
But it’s
just these three guys in a small two story workshop. They’ve got a whole jumble
of old machines and materials on one floor, an office and hand work space on
the second. Two of them are master engravers who apprenticed for six years with
virtually no pay. The third has worked there for thirty years, is considered by
the UK as a “part time employee” and is not allowed in the shop by himself due
to UK’s safety protocols. They’re all amiable, pleasant fellows dressed in
every day slacks who are very good at what they do and are really enthusiastic
about meeting young people who are interested in craft.
They took
us through the stages of transforming a drawn design into a “master” from which
to work tools, then showed us different ways to transform them either into flat
stamps or rounded tools, fillets or plain type. The precision of these men’s
motions is astounding to watch. The machines become extensions of their arms as
they manipulate the cutting edge on a piece of brass while simultaneously
tracing a large acetate off to one side. Fillets, pallets, tools and font all
use either different machines or different accessories to the machines, and
these men traverse each of their intricacies with ease and grace.
I’m also
convinced that not a single one of them has any feeling left in their fingers
after so many years of work. They pick up brass off of sanding belts, out of
engraving machines, lathes and more without blinking an eye. I was handed a
blank soon after it was removed from a lathe and transferred it back and forth
between my hands rapidly for several minutes before I could hold it still
enough to really look at what I was holding.
After the
tour and perusing their stock, they took us out to a 500 year old pub in the
middle of Portslade. I ate fish and chips, had a half pint of something (I
asked for cider, but it wasn’t cider I ended up with; some sort of ale?), and
we chatted about craft and school, America, landlords, royalty, conspiracy
theories and more. It was a lovely lunch that lasted until late afternoon.
Most of the
members of my class then went to Brighton, which is a city on the sea that is
home to the Royal Pavilion. We meandered the boardwalk and seaside, watched the
waves and crazy people attempting to get their feet wet (though the day was
beautiful, it was still extremely cold!), and found the Pavilion to stand agog
at its cupcake-like turrets for a while. Since the lunch lasted so late, the Pavilion
was closed to visitors when we arrived, but seeing the exterior was still worth
a trip.
We got
coffee, talked about leather for an extremely long time because our trip to
Harmitan Tannery is tomorrow, and headed home. When we arrived back in London,
we decided to pop out for a quick drink before heading to our respective
resting places, and Jeff, our teacher, casually suggested “The Library Bar,”
which his phone helpfully suggested to him. “It’s right around the corner,” he
said.
It took us
probably forty minutes to find it in all. We asked several doormen, crossed
many streets, and had a good time of it in all. When we finally arrived, we
nearly left straightaway. Two tail-coated gentlemen with top hats guarded the
door. Beautifully dressed people found their way in and out. There was a deep
throated lobby with plush carpets and large flower arrangements. We didn’t
think they’d let us in dressed in jeans and sneakers, hoodies and backpacks as
we were.
But we’d already come all this way….
But we’d already come all this way….
They were actually very nice. The staff was polite (although I’m sure they silently mocked us while they served us, and openly mocked us when they were out of the room.) Books lined the walls, there were beautiful couches and a piano player. The people around us could undoubtedly have paid for my entire education with a single month’s paycheck with ample change to spare (maybe this is a lie. Maybe not.) The wine list was literally a history lesson that stretched back into the 1700’s (and $4,000 and up price range), and even one of the cheapest drinks was more expensive than any other drink I shall probably ever buy for myself.
But it was fantastic fun and good
conversation. Definitely a once-in-a-lifetime type of bar to visit with
friends. And now I am home late, and need to rise early. I do hope the room is
cooler tonight.
2/20/2013
I can’t
seem to nail down this tube system. Not that the directions are particularly
hard or anything; it’s probably in the top three of easily-navigable public
transportation systems that I’ve encountered. But the timing of the thing. When I think a train will be five minutes,
it’s twenty. When I think it’ll be ten, it’s two.
Safe to say
I arrived at the train station forty five minutes early.
We arrived
in Northamptonshire fairly early in the morning to be picked up by three burly
but friendly men from Harmatan Leather. They drove us to their site and showed
us their facilities, detailing each stage that the leather goes through before
it becomes the stunningly gorgeous skins with which we cover our finest
bindings.
I’ve been
to a leather tannery before, last winter when my class took a field trip to
Pergamena for a parchment making workshop. There we saw the tanning process and
skiving process, drying and dying, etc. And while the vats and machines today
were all familiar, there are some key differences between the two leather
tanneries that I find very interesting.
Pergamena
receives most of its goat skins from the food industry. Once an animal is
slaughtered and skinned, its hide is packed in ice, thrown in a cooler and
shipped to Pergamena. There they dehair it, defat it, vegetable tan it, dye it
and make it leather. Their products are very good, and I buy them and use them
regularly, but for some reason it’s just never seemed fine-binding-material.
Harmatan,
though it receives most of its skins from the food industry, receives it
already tanned. They then go through the process of re-tanning it to achieve
their final product. This means a couple of key differences in their skins.
Since the skins are un-dyed but
processed, they can see some major flaws on initial inspection, and can cull
the lots based on that. This means that their sorting system goes through
multiple levels, where finer and finer flaws are caught, leading ultimately to
a remarkable product when it comes to “firsts.”
They receive their skins from both
Nigeria and India. Nigeria sells skins based on weight; India, on surface area
(or is it the other way around?). This means that Nigerian skins are thick with
dirt and tanned flesh when received. In essence, they’re fat, to render the
product more profitable. Indian skins are stretched more thinly to start, again
to render the product more profitable. While the skins undergo a transformation
in the re-tanning process and ultimately end approximately the same in size, it
is my belief that the grains from the two processes make the skins unique. The
fat skins have a much tighter grain, which is often what I have purchased when
looking at leathers. The stretched skins seem to have a much wider, expansive pattern
to their grain, which I have only recently purchased on a skin and am looking
forward to working with.
The character of Harmatan skins are
matched by their quality. The Harmatan owner, Mark, flies regularly to India
and Nigeria to insure that the process of tanning is organic and maintains the
standards to which the leather will be held. The town in which Harmatan is
located was once a leather working town, full of factories like Harmatan (all
but a few of which have closed down across the entire country), and Harmatan
does its best to uphold the standards of work from those historic days of quality
craftsmanship
After lunch with the “Harmatan
Family,” we went shopping from their stock and bought gorgeous skins. Then we
returned to London and headed over to Bernard C Middleton’s house.
Middleton is a bit of a legend in
the bookbinding world. He’s been a binder for over seventy years and literally
wrote the book—or many of the books—on the subject. As Jeff said this evening,
Middleton has forgotten more about bookbinding than any of us will ever know
combined.
His house is full of bindings. And
tools. And leather. And paper. (And was once full of cats, but only has one cat
now.) He showed us around his collections of both bindings and guns, then
brought us downstairs to show us his bindery. There were more antique finishing
tools there than P&S has ever made, I think. And he has collected handmade
papers, laid papers, woven papers, marbled papers, etc. for years. And
parchment! Name a bookbinding material and this man has it at hand. It was a
thing of wonder.
But for all that, it was kind of
cold and a little bit messy.
After tea and biscuits (the British
are more about feeding their guests than anyone I’ve ever known!), we went to
Flora Ginn’s house. Flora “came to wash one book [for Bernard] and stayed for
twelve years.” She is, according to Middleton, better than he is, and
everything she touches is golden. High praise from probably the greatest living
bookbinder.
She had samples of her work out
around her bindery, which was filled with the other half of the bookbinding world’s collection of antiquarian
finishing tools. I could see why Middleton praised her so kindly. Not only are
they both perfect conservators, they are astounding finishers and paper
workers, sewers and tasteful decorators.
She, too, had a collection of fine
bindings at the ready to astound an amaze. I have seen more beautiful old and
new books in these past few days than I had ever hoped to, and suddenly the
question of “But who actually buys
this ridiculously opulent product?” has been answered.
True book lovers.
We lingered, asking questions and
ogling bindings, headed out for supper at a local pub, then came home. Oxford
tomorrow. The time is flying.
2/21/2013
Visiting
Oxford was a bittersweet trip. The one time I was there before, I was visiting
my best friend from college after a very long time of being away from one
another. I had been in Italy for a semester, and although that was an amazing
experience, it was often a very lonely one. Seeing my friend when I came off
the bus was one of those amazing moments when you realize how much like home a
person can feel. Oxford was very special to me for that reason.
This time,
it was beautiful and historical and full of amazing books, but it made me
nostalgic and homesick and sad because my best friend from college wasn’t
there. It was about this time last year that I saw her last, too, adding to the
ache. I miss her. So ultimately I dedicate this day to Kim, and I had an
amazing time for the both of us.
Oxford was
infinitely colder than London has been so far. I think the country tricked me
into thinking it would be spring-ish by greeting me with those first two or
three lovely days, but now that I’m in that state of mind, it has reverted to
its evil ways and blows bitter winds at me. It was honestly painful walking
around!
That didn’t
stop me though. Upon leaving the bus, I stumbled upon the Thursday outdoor
market. Despite the cold, I dragged around my housemate to each of the stalls
to browse. There were a few old tools, but nothing I needed or didn’t already
have, a lot of old clothes and a few books here and there. But then there was
this book booth full of some really wonderful eighteenth and nineteenth century
bindings. I picked through them and decided on one, then picked up another and
traded the one I had chosen for that, then again and again and again. Although
there was one book that I slightly regret not getting (a little 1700’s printing
with missing board and spine that was ultimately too expensive) I’m very
pleased with what I purchased.
The book I
ultimately settled on is from 1805. It’s a pretty plain calf binding with a
lightly tooled spine and board edges, clasp and slunk titling piece. The real
success is the content, though. It’s titled “Crests” and is simply a collection
of England’s leading families’ crests. This means that a large portion of the
book consists of plates upon plates upon plates. The end of the book has a
description of each crest, its colors, and the family name and motto.
But here’s
where it gets good. Someone loved this book. Because facing each page of
descriptions is a tipped in hand written page (in iron gall ink) with the
family motto as written in the book and a translation from the Latin to English
transcribed beneath it. I have thumbed through the pages extensively and
believe that each motto has been translated and that none of the tip-ins are
missing.
Outside of
this being one of the coolest things I own in general, I’m really excited about
it because it needs so much work. The boards are filthy and loose, the spine is
cracked, the clasp is broken, the tail endband is missing, the pages are dirty
and need both surface cleaning and washing, and the tip-ins need some kind of
attention because they’re neither flush with the fore edge nor healthy for the
rag paper to be in that close proximity with the acidic iron gall ink.
Basically this is a project that will keep me busy for a while and will be a
great before and after presentation piece.
And that
was just the first half hour of being in Oxford.
Due to
sheer proximity, my housemate and I dashed off to the Ashmolean, one of two
museums we planned to visit today in addition to the arranged class visits. We
had a wonderful time wandering around their extensive collections from all eras
and locations. One of the things I like about this museum is that it’s not a
history museum or an art museum in particular—it’s whatever collections they
have, have been donated, or are travelling through in exhibit. There are human
skeletons and tool fragments in one room, musical instruments in the next,
sculptures in the next and paintings in the next. Its collections are varied and
seemingly endless.
My
housemate’s favorite room belonged to the violins, no doubt. There were
countless beautiful instruments there and of course I loved the English guitars
and viols and cithers, but for a musical pedestrian such as myself, the easiest
to identify and appreciate for its craftsmanship was the Stradivarius (“The
Messiah.”)
My favorite
room, however, contained early Italian Renaissance art (big surprise) where I
found Paolo Ucello’s panel painting “The Hunt in the Forest,” which was a
genuine non-ironic big surprise. I didn’t remember that the Ashmolean was where
this painting lives, and you could have knocked me over with a feather when I
turned around and found myself face to face with it.
This painting is one I’ve seen in
slides and books and online, but seeing it in person finally gave me the
ability to stare into its depths. It’s a chaotic scene of a deer hunt with
horses and hounds and men and deer running about in the woods. Slides just give
you a cursory view, though. The woods are deep and detailed. There’s a river to
the far right that I’d never even noticed before. There are deer being
collected by footmen, and more deer fleeing into the depths of the woods with
hounds at their heels. I’ve always liked this painting in particular because of
a certain horse that has pulled up short in its tracks. The rider on its back
has that perfect combination on his face of shock and fear of falling that you
feel when your horse does something unexpected like that. Today, I got to stare
at the pair for as long as I wanted.
It was a
bit of a mad dash to find the Radcliffe Library where we were to meet our
class. It turns out that all those places you’d expect a through road in order
to turn right is full of taverns, pubs and churches at Oxford. Once you get
going in one direction, it’s hard to make a perpendicular turn! But we made it
in time and were treated to a whirlwind tour of some of Oxford’s most
interesting bindings by 5/6 of the conservation staff.
Oxford has
been collecting continuously since the college was founded. The large majority
of the time they’re unwilling to spend any money on the actual binding, so it’s not like they have a
particularly large collection of fine bindings or anything, but in a way that
works in their favor. The bindings that the books came in are the bindings that
they have stayed in, largely, meaning that we were able to see limp vellums,
gothic, parchment, paper, and a Romanesque, amongst others. We only had forty
five minutes, so having the history from the start to present-day was an
impressive feat. In addition they had a few historical finishing tools to show
us, remarkably coupled with bindings on which the tools had been used. A rare
and exciting display.
We were
then taken on a tour of the Bodlean Library, which is exactly what I want my
house to look like someday. Walls and walls and walls of historic books and
bindings. The tour guide was very knowledgeable and friendly, but did tend to
go on a bit about “the scent of knowledge,” which, as bookbinders, we sniffed
and thought, “Hey. That smells like acidic paper to me!” I can’t blame him
though. No matter how often I smell that old book smell and know what it is, it
still automatically triggers thoughts of knowledge and learning, history and communication
with the ages. It’s one of the best smells out there.
A note for
the Harry Potter fan in me: we were shown where they filmed the restricted
section of the Hogwarts library, in addition to where they filmed the medical
wing. I was pleased.
Bus ride
home, Indian food, a free box of chocolates from a nice Indian waiter with whom
I seem to have made friends, and I’m in for an early night because I am really,
truly and utterly exhausted.
But maybe
I’ll just poke through my Crests book for a bit first.
2/22/2013
The face of
the British Library is a lot less impressive than I expected it to be, which is
a little ridiculous because I’ve been there before. I recalled this gorgeous
red brick thing with turrets and towers and windows. It turns out I was
remembering the hotel next door. And while the British Library is big and red
and brick, it was only recently constructed, and looks it.
Luckily,
the things inside are infinitely more impressive. After being told to meet up
at 9:15 at the front desk and finding that the library doesn’t open until 9:30,
I spent the morning sitting in a coffee shop, collecting my classmates as they
filtered in from their respective starting points. It was snowing lightly, all
day, and was bitter cold but really very pretty.
We were
given a tour by a tattooed, pierced woman in a tutu who I would expect to meet
at Sarah Lawrence more readily than at the British Library. She had hours’
worth of information stored up after working at the library for ten years or
so, but we were restricted to forty five minutes which she packed full of fun
tidbits of information, like the fact that the eastern side of the building was
designed to resemble the profile of a ship.
After the
tour, we were brought up to meet Philippa Marks (another big name in the
bookbinding world) and view some of the library’s more interesting bindings.
After nearly a week of being shown bindings, bindings and more bindings, I’d
almost expect to be just a bit sick of bindings. But the variety, skill,
craftsmanship and beauty never cease to amaze and delight, and today’s
selection was no different.
There was
an eastern Mamluk binding (the first non-reproduction I’ve seen in person!), a
gorgeous embroidered binding, samples of Sybil Pye and TJ Cobden Sanderson,
embossed leather, silver filigree and straw bindings and more. More
importantly, we were able to handle each of these books to our full
satisfaction, which after a day at the Bodlean where we weren’t worthy to
breathe on their collections, was refreshing.
After
satiating ourselves on these books, we were brought down to the “Treasures”
room where the Magna Carta, Lindisfarne Gospels, Beowulf and Piers Plowman
manuscripts and more are stored on semi-permanent display. It really was fun to
go around these displays after a few years of not having seen them and view
them with new eyes that have been trained in bookbinding. This is the first
time I’ve re-encountered the same book collections that I’ve previously observed
as closely as the glass will let you since my studies in bookbinding began.
Instead of seeing the illuminated
faces and letters, the marginal annotations and the hands of the script, I saw
headbands and mechanical openings, scraped parchment and treated redrot, broken
sewing and clear evidence of rebacks or rebindings. Granted, I still stared at
length at the pages of the Lindisfarne Gospels (always a favorite) and read
through a selection of Beowulf as best I could, but there was some highlighted
moment of recognizing how much I’ve grown and changed since entering North
Bennet, how my ideas and values and goals have changed in this time, and how
much I like who I have become because of my time here.
I ogled to my heart’s content, but
I did have another mission to complete on my own before our next organized
event, so the library and I had to part ways. I headed back to Brick Lane for
that gorgeous pair of shears that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about
since Sunday. In tow were two of my classmates who had no other specific plans
of their own, so they decided to keep me company. I was a little nervous about
getting back in time despite having four hours because I wasn’t convinced I
would easily find the shop and there had been major delays last time I used
that portion of the line due to construction, but I told them I’d be going at
pace and they didn’t seem to mind.
As soon as the doors to the train
opened, I was off and searching for the store. It was infinitely farther than I
remembered it being, but this is probably because the Sunday market was closed
and instead of there being a thousand things to look at and smell, the streets
were barren and long. But when I finally found it the shears were there and the
owner of the shop, who I had called earlier that afternoon, was waiting for me
with the key to their case. It was a rather quick transaction, exchanging the
last of my cash for two giant plates of really old steel.
I am currently sitting in my room
writing this with them in my lap.
Then I was suddenly responsible for
finding my classmates food and entertainment until the event in the evening. One
of my classmates, a sweet and quiet friend of mine, would have rolled with
pretty much anything. But the other is a dangerous combination of opinionated,
indecisive and cranky. So after trying four different locations to find food
which were unacceptable despite her “having no opinion,” I chose a restaurant
that, as far as I could tell, fit all of her previous requirements for a place
to eat and ordered food. She stormed out in a temper tantrum and only came back
ten minutes later because she couldn’t navigate herself to where we needed to
be. She was then moody for the rest of the day, which kind of put a damper on
things.
I wanted to go to Saint Paul’s
next, so we did because I wasn’t going to change plans for a classmate who
couldn’t act like the grownup she is. Although it was too expensive to go in,
we had a nice look around the outside and popped our heads in as far as the
ticket line. It’s a beautiful church, but historical information wasn’t really
there for anyone who hadn’t paid for an entrance. I glean that it was damaged
in the Blitz, is a massively old church, and is one of the main seats of the
Anglican religion in England.
Having had time to cool off my own
temper, I decided to make an attempt to raise my moody classmate’s spirits, so
we headed to the London Tower. This is intended entirely un-ironically. It
really is where she wanted to go.
It’s an impressive building, and
would be a terrifying place to die. This I know from just looking at the
outside. I can’t imagine it inside. I’ve resisted going in both times I’ve
visited London because I find it disturbingly gruesome to engender such a
fascination with it. I know that it’s on par with visiting battle grounds, but
for some reason it bothers me more despite the added benefits of its conversion
to a museum. Something about it bothers me enough that I can’t bring myself to
want to go in.
After she saw the tower and the
bridge and got to buy some London souvenirs, my classmate was much more
content, and she even bought me a cider later at a pub, so at least things
won’t be too awkward in class on Monday.
Off to the Saint Bride Institute,
which is (fingers crossed) being converted into the center for the Designer
Bookbinders and thus a center for the book in London. One of the coolest things
about this is that the entire area around St. Bride’s is historically a trade
area, including printing, leather work and bookbinding. So really the
bookbinders are coming home.
We were given a spectacular tour of
the St. Bride’s Institute, including seeing type punches and matrices,
historical rooms and the theatre (and its retired basement pool), printing
presses, and two separate libraries with (again!) astounding collections. Here
I saw my second Dove’s Bindery Kelmscott Chaucer, one of seven known ancient
Egyptian papyrus samples with hieroglyphics on both sides, a William Caxton
printing and more.
Dominic Reilly (yet another big
name in the bookbinding field) then took us to The Blackfriar, an absolutely gorgeous art nouveau pub that was going
to be knocked down in the sixties but was saved by the one sane man left in
apparently the entirety of the world at the time. Seriously, what were they
thinking? The building was simply too pretty for their atrocious aesthetic, I
expect.
At the pub we waited out a Designer
Bookbinders’ meeting that was happening at the St. Bride’s Institute. When the
meeting was over, we returned to see the bindery in which the meeting had taken
place: the first room to be converted to a bindery at the institute.
We then went to St. Bride’s Church,
which is famous for its wedding cake tower. This is the church on which the
wedding cake design was based, and though it was destroyed in the Blitz, it has
been faithfully rebuilt. St. Bride’s Church is sort of a patron church of the
book trades. Inside we saw not only the pews dedicated to newspapers, but
prayer candles lit for journalists who have been killed in their work.
Beneath the church, an Anglo Saxon
road and Roman road have been discovered in the crypt. We went for a short tour
down there. It was surprisingly warm and very clean. I don’t think I’ve been
inside a crypt before. (Upon later reflection, I realized that I’ve been to
several Italian crypts and was silly to have forgotten this fact.)
Another pub was next, this time the
Cheshire Cheese. This is the historical bar of the city’s bookbinders. It is
the place that the bookbinders first discussed cutting an hour off of their
workday (limiting their six day week to seventy four hours) and (although that
idea didn’t go over so well and landed several of them in jail for a year)
ultimately helped lead to the institution of the forty hour work week.
It was delightful listening to
Dominic Reilly and Jeff chat about Designer Bookbinders, bookbinding and artist
books, but the pub was loud and it was hard to hear, there was another very
upsetting conversation going on nearby, and it was far to travel home, so I
left early in the evening.
I found myself spending almost a
half hour playing IT person for the folks at my hotel (doesn’t that mean I
should get some kind of discount?), and now I’m sitting here coddling my shears
and realizing that tomorrow is my last day here. How did the time go so quickly?
And how can I fit everything in that I want to do still?
I’d better pack tonight since I’m
back early (ha! Since when is eleven something early for me? The things London
does to a girl.) and figure out transportation to the airport Sunday morning.
I’m afraid my flight is early enough I might have to go the night before and
sleep in the airport. (That’s the last thing I want. It didn’t end well last
time that I did that.) I won’t miss this shower though, the postponement of
which is why I’m still writing. I can’t wait to have enough water pressure to
actually get the soap out of my hair again!
2/23/2014
Today was
my last day in London! And I’ve already done so much, but there was still so
much left to do! The intent for the day was a brief stint in Portobello Road
for their Saturday market, the Tate, the British Museum, and a celebratory
dinner and beer to end the awesome week.
Well. I’d
forgotten how extensive Portobello Road gets when it’s market day. The street
that takes about ten minutes to walk down any other day of the week becomes an
all-day affair if you let it. Which I nearly did. Today, instead of wrapping up
all those last little to-dos on my list of cultural things to see, became a day
about the people of London – or at least of Portobello Road. It was a total
departure from my normal routine, and I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.
I was
mostly looking for tools and books, and I told one fellow why. “I’m a
bookbinder,” I said. “And I like to find things that I’ll actually use.” This,
it seems, is the phrase to use at nearly any of the booths if you want to have
a nice chat.
It turned out he was a certified
horologist conservator, and he had a lot to tell me about tools and
conservation and work and today’s environment in relation to the craftsman.
Another man talked to me about leather; two women and I talked about embroidery
and embroidered bindings for forty five minutes. There were stories about
clients and workshops and things that have passed through the market throughout
the years, tips on where to go next and who to talk to.
One fellow shifted half his shop to
get to some boxes in the back that had some old tools he thought I might like
to see. A printmaker and I spoke at length about different letterpresses and
composition sticks (one of which I nearly bought, but was dissuaded by the
exorbitant price) and about his private collection and how he wants to start a
printer’s museum someday. He claims his collection is better than the St. Bride
Institute’s. (This I highly doubt, but I rolled with it. He was a nice man.)
I had a lot of fun talking to one
bookseller about all kinds of bookish things. I found a really and truly
wonderful little bookbinding guide from 1910 that cost about twice as much as
it should have. I tried to bargain him down, but he seemed determined to only
sell it to me if I purchased this thirty pound (weight) cookbook tome that
wouldn’t have even fit in my suitcase. Safe to say I had to turn him down and
say goodbye to that little paperback binder’s dictionary.
And all along the market, there
were embroidered bindings and velvet bindings, silver filigree and bone
bindings, historical bindings and even the odd fine binding, and for an easy
several hundred or thousand pounds, they all could have been mine. Again, safe
to say, I had to turn them down. But I handled nearly all.
So I was just chatting with a tool
seller, thinking I was having a lovely little morning, when he said how hungry
he was, and goodness! look at the time it’s three o’clock! My jaw sort of plummeted
and I made my one (I’m not kidding; only one) purchase of the day (two
parchment manuscripts from the mid-1800’s that need some cleaning and repair),
bade my farewell to Portobello Road and sprinted to the subway for Victoria
Station.
First stop was Faulkner’s, which
has recently relocated to just behind the station. It was utterly beautiful,
with walls of paper and leather, a bin of silk threads for endbands, portfolios
with paper, cloth and tissue options, two standing presses, a Kwik Print, several
nipping presses and a workshop of linoleum-cut printmakers. Again, I had a lot
of fun chatting with the people there, but I was low on funds (always a problem
at the end of a trip) and still wanted to go to a museum, so I didn’t linger
very long. At least I saw it though.
The Tate was the closest museum to
me, and as I’ve never been there before, I decided it was a good idea to at
least drop in. It was a deliberate choice not to go to the Tate when I was in
London last. Modern art is, to put it lightly, not my favorite. As I’ve told
many people, once we start rolling toward the Renaissance, things are getting a
little too modern for me. There are infinite exceptions to this of course, but
if I have a choice, I linger at panel paintings and frescos and I refuse to
enter a room where there’s a canvas with a smudge of blue paint on it calling
itself art.
Luckily the Tate Modern is now the Tate
London, so there’s more than just smudges of paint, although there’s that too.
The Tate is undergoing a huge restoration project, and so it’s been whittled
down to three main galleries, one of which is ticketed so I didn’t go in. True
to modern art museums, most of the place was a spacious, empty hallway with
high ceilings, artsy lighting and no art. I don’t think much of modern art
museums.
But, for all my modern art museum
bashing, the Cove Gallery has some truly wonderful art, much of which is 19th
century. I enjoyed the Sergents and Degas, John Constables and Whistlers
especially, and found a real treat in a painting by Aubrey Beardsley! I think
this is also the first time that I have actually seen a Waterhouse in-person,
which was most enjoyable.
The Turner Gallery was also a
surprise. I have enjoyed Constable’s work in the past, but don’t think I’ve
ever taken note of Turner. The gallery rightly drew a parallel between the two
men’s work, and seeing their paintings side by side leads me to sum up very
simplistically that Turner is the light, airy, ethereal answer to Constable’s
often heavy, dark, tempestuous and earthy paintings.
The gallery grew further in my
esteem when I rose to the second floor and found a discourse on the development
of color theory throughout Turner’s work, and how this was effected by the
materials developing at the time (different pigments and how they were being
sold). This is the second time on this trip that the physical material of
objects has played a major role in the exhibit’s curation (there was a
conservation display at the Ashmolean) and this trend appeals to my interests
in craftsmanship.
Honestly, there wasn’t much left to
see at the Tate after that though, and it was near closing for any other
museums, so I took a walk along the Thames. I saw Victoria Square Garden and Westminster,
then found (naturally enough) the Big Ben tower.
I don’t think I’ve ever properly
appreciated this tower. Being a morning person who likes to go to bed just as
soon as the museums have closed, I’ve never seen it at night. It’s not as big
as a New York skyscraper, or as decorative as some other clock towers I’ve
seen, and it never really impressed. It was always lovely and always a symbol
of London, true, but this time I saw it lit up through a fog at night, and it
had that magical Peter Pan feel about it and I was impressed. I may also be
getting nostalgic for London before I even leave.
After walking for about an hour just to see the last of the sights (crossing the Jubilee bridge again and purchasing some roasted nuts for my dinner on the way), I came home to my hotel, arranged transport for the morning (fingers crossed) and made the mistake of sitting down before I left for my nip at the pub. Instead of getting back up, I’m having a few After Eight mints leftover from my waiter friend, a mug of tea, reading Jeeves and Wooster, and going to sleep so I can get up for my early flight.
London, you have exhausted me. I
have a nasty head cold, blisters on my feet, perpetual soap in my hair, and am
very much (financially) poorer, but I love you, really and truly and forever, and can’t wait
to come back to visit. Thank you for a spectacular time.
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