Friday, October 18, 2013

Haute Couture for Books

The cover of a book bound in blue leather, pressed with star-like designs in other colors.
Bindings 69
In high fashion there's often a disconnect between the world of the practical and that of "just because I can." Over-the-top or outlandish designs, often for the sake of the splash of the design itself, also find their way into the world of bookbinding. Sometimes this is deliberate and sometimes it's an honest effort to reflect the nature of the text that just spiraled out of control.

Rauner holds numerous examples of bindings that clearly reflect this decorative dominance and one of our first blogs was about our jewel-bound Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Today's selections incorporate ivory, enamel, wallpaper, velvet, jewels, precious metals, hand-stitching and other materials and techniques intended to enhance the visual appeal of each book and make it stand out from the crowd. You be the judge of which designs qualify as high fashion for books. Do any of them actually reflect the nature of the text or enhance it?

A cloth book cover stitched with the image of a tulip.
Bindings 59
A cover of metal worked into a botanical pattern. On top of it are five portraits in the style of a medieval manuscript.
Bindings 52

A blue velvet cover with worked metal elements.
Bindings 49
An embroidered blue cover.
Bindings 47

An elaborately patterned leather binding with gold-stamped patterns.
Bindings 243
A binding with a floral pattern.
Bindings 104
An ivory cover with a bird decoration.
Bindings 96
Ask for the following items:
Bindings 47
Bindings 49
Bindings 52
Bindings 59
Bindings 69
Bindings 96
Bindings 104
Bindings 243

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Occom to Wheatley

A handwritten list of letters.In 1765, Samson Occom, a minister and Mohegan Indian who figured largely in the founding of Dartmouth, traveled to Great Britain to solicit funds for the Indian Charity School run by Eleazar Wheelock. Occom kept a detailed journal during his tour, and in its back pages, he lists the letters he sent to America. Occom records that, in March of 1766, he wrote to "Mrs. Wheatley in Boston," noting directly underneath that he has also sent a letter "to a Negro Girl Boston." There can be little doubt that the girl to whom Occom refers is Phillis Wheatley, a slave who would have been about 12 years old at the time.

Phillis was a young girl, not even 10, when she arrived on a ship from Africa (named the Phillis) and was purchased by Susanna Wheatley, matriarch of a wealthy Boston family. Taught to read and write by a Wheatley daughter, precocious Phillis soon proved she had a taste and talent for poetry, and her work was first published, in a newspaper, in 1767. Four years later, Phillis took her own trip to Great Britain, where, accompanied by Wheatley son Nathaniel, she and her poetry were introduced to London nobility to great acclaim. Upon her return, Phillis was forced to defend the publication of her book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral to a group of Boston bluebloods (including John Hancock), enduring what amounted to an oral and written exam to prove that she was indeed its author. But Occom would have been perfectly acquainted with her talents by then, for as the line in his journal indicates, he and Phillis had already been pen pals for years.

The last page of a handwritten letter from Samson Occom.Although none of the letters between Occom and Wheatley reside at Dartmouth, if they still exist at all, Dartmouth’s Occom collection is sprinkled with tantalizing references to what must have been an incredible correspondence. In 1773, writing to Susanna Wheatley, he says "I want Much to hear from your Dear Son and Phillis," while two years before, in a truly amazing postscript, he asks "Pray madam, what harm woud it be to Send Phillis to her Native Country as a Female Preacher to her kindred…." This from a man who only six years earlier asks Wheelock to borrow "one of your Negroes."

Part of a handwritten letter, including the signature of Samson Occom.
A page from a letter addressed to Eleazar Wheelock.It’s intriguing to wonder how much of themselves Samson Occom and Phillis Wheatley saw in the other. Despite their vastly different origins, both Occom and Wheatley were drawn into the world of white men from far outside it, even celebrated in that world. Yet both would find that celebrity to be of little benefit in the end — after a bitter break with Wheelock, and repeated snubs and reversals from white clergy and lawmakers, Occom turned towards advancing Indian causes from within Indian communities; while Phillis, though eventually freed, died young, destitute and alone after enduring public indifference, an unhappy marriage and the deaths of her children. At the very least, it appears the two were mutually inspiring. Occom scholar Joanna Brooks speculates that Occom paraphrases Wheatley's poetry in a 1784 letter to one John Bailey and, in a more illustrative example, a well-known letter from Wheatley to Occom was reprinted in The Connecticut Gazette in 1774. It's a glowing response to a letter of Occom's, now missing, in which he apparently professes his belief in the "natural rights" of her people. "How well the Cry of Liberty, and the reverse Disposition for the exercise of oppressive Powers over others agree," she writes in return, "I humbly think it does not require the Penetration of a Philosopher to determine." One can only imagine Occom would have agreed completely.

Posted for Dawn Dumpert: The Occom Circle Project