October 16, 2020 – Pamphlet Tutorial
Tufts University, Tisch Library, Special Collections
Thanks to all who have followed iPhone in the Vault. Today we invite you to make a beautiful book of your own, a pamphlet, using an easy technique seen in our 18th & 19th century pamphlets. If you make one, please consider posting a photo and tagging @tischlibrary
With a few minutes of cutting & folding, plus a few stitches, you can make a notebook to write, draw, doodle; to record the best quotes from your reading, or your impressions of this peculiar year.
“Books win in the end." - Franco Maria Ricci (1937-2020)
Materials: an 8-1/2 x 11 sheet of paper, or a few sheets of smaller letter stationery; a piece of fancy paper, such as from Papersource in Porter Square, light cardstock, or grocery bag paper (the vegan counterpart to a parchment cover); needle and thread, or a stapler; letter opener or a dull knife; pencil, ruler, scissors; bone folder, or the barrel of a pen, to make sharp folds.
1. More paper than you need, in order to show different possibilities.
2. The directions.
3-9. You don’t even need to know how to sew on a button to do this. Multiplied by a dozen or more, this is how books were bound by hand, for centuries (but at that scale, more complicated than sewing a button).
10. Voila. You have made a sewn pamphlet.
Christopher Barbour
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Tufts University, Tisch Library
October 15, 2020
Anna Minasyan
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2020
October 15, 2020 – MS 24
Tufts University. Tisch Library. Special Collections
For the penultimate entry in this series, Elettra Conoly ‘21 and Megan Szostak ‘22 post about their research on music in Tufts Univ. MS 24, a Dominican miscellany from Northern Italy.
This manuscript is a collection of writings and chants, with the first 225 folios being copied during the 15th century, and the following fifty folios copied in the late 13th or 14th century. MS 24 is categorized as a Dominican Miscellany for a number of reasons. It contains several writings by Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar, as well as two musical sequences often associated with the Dominican order.
The first musical sequence, with the incipit (beginning words) ‘Ave virgo virginum’ (image 1), was copied in Northern Italy in the late 13th or early 14th century. It precedes another sequence, ‘Tibi cordis in altari’ (1,2), which was copied at the same time. Both texts and melodies most likely are of Dominican origin.
1. ‘Ave virgo virginum’ sequence, followed by ‘Tibi cordis in altari,’ which begins about halfway down the second folio with the majuscule “T.”
2. Continuation of ‘Tibi cordis.’ The facing page includes a decorated initial “P.”
3. Sixth book of the ‘Compendiae theologicae veritatis’ by Hugo Ripelin, a Dominican theologian from Strasbourg.
4. 15th century binding of MS 24.
5. Transcription of the beginning of ‘Ave virgo virginum’ melody, notated using GregorioTeX, along with an approximation of the melody and rhythm of the first phrase.
Christopher Barbour
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Tufts University, Tisch Library
October 15, 2020
Anna Minasyan
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2020
15th Century
14th Century
13th Century
October 14, 2020 – The Bayeaux Embroidery
Tufts University. Tisch Library. Special Collectiond
October 14 is the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 CE. An invading force led by William of Normandy, claimant to the English throne, defeated an army led by King Harold II. The closely fought battle lasted from dawn to dusk, ending when Harold was slain. He was the last Anglo-Saxon king of England.
The Bayeaux Embroidery (commonly, but erroneously called “Tapestry”) depicts the Battle of Hastings and the events leading up to it, from the death of Harold’s predecessor on the throne, and William’s cousin, Edward the Confessor. This important work of Romanesque art, which dates to ca. 1070-79 CE, may have been commissioned by the Bishop Odo, William’s half brother. The embroidery is first mentioned in a 1476 inventory of the Bayeaux Cathedral. The embroidery techniques are regarded as characteristically Anglo-Saxon, not Norman, which has led some scholars to search for encoded subversive messages, while others reject the notion.
The embroidery measures 70 meters by 50 cm. This facsimile on paper, based upon superb photographic rendering of the original’s textures, is 60% of the original’s size.
The Bayeaux Embroidery is thought to have been displayed hanging from walls or specially made framework. The physical act of walking through the narrative - in effect, walking through time - would have been part of the viewing experience. The facsimile, placed inside a cabinet, in effect remixing the Embroidery as a scroll, introduces other, interesting aspects to how we view the art & narrative.
Christopher Barbour
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Tufts University. Tisch Library
October 14. 2020
Anna Minasyan
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2020
11th Century
October 13, 2020 – Julia O’Gara's and Dr. Rossi's Projects
Tufts University. Tisch Library. Special Collections
Dr. Anne R. Rossi, double Jumbo and former faculty member at the School of Medicine, examines a physician’s almanac made by Julia O’Gara ‘19 (BFA, BS, pre-med) in FAH 92: Medieval Books. When Dr. Rossi retired from her medical practice, she returned to Medford to study art history.
Ms. O’Gara’s project explored a form of medieval reference book, made to hang from a doctor’s belt, which contained biological and astrological knowledge necessary to formulate treatments.
Also shown is Dr. Rossi’s project, a text taken from “Alice in Wonderland,” for which she drew a series of figures, many of them grotesques and visual jokes inspired by medieval manuscripts we studied in class. She included a scribal portrait of author Lewis Carroll, pen name of mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.
Christopher Barbour
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Tufts University. Tisch Library
October 13, 2020
Anna Minasyan
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2020
October 12, 2020 – Facsimile of Shigisan-engi,
Tufts University. Tisch Library. Special Collections
Professor Ikumi Kaminishi of Art History & Architecture teaches with this facsimile of Shigisan-engi, a splendid reproduction of the 12th century scroll, which relates the miracles attributed to Myoren, a monk who lived on Mount Shigi, in Japan, during the 9th century. Among these legends is that of the Flying Storehouse: the monk’s alms bowl takes command of a frugal farmer’s granary, and whisks it off to the monastery, with astonished villagers in pursuit.
Christopher Barbour
Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CGPqOIclqMR/">@Tischlibrary</a>
Tufts University. Tisch Library
October 12, 2020
Anna Minasyan
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2020
12th Century
October 9, 2020 – "Peterborough Bestiary"
Tufts University. Tisch Library, Special Collections
Elephants in a beautiful facsimile of the Peterborough Bestiary, an early 14th century manuscript.
Christopher Barbour
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Tufts University. Tisch Library
October 9, 2020
Anna Minasyan
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2020
14th Century
October 8, 2020 – John Rawls
Tufts University. Tisch Library. Special Collections
These are mass-produced books: cheap to manufacture, produced in relatively large numbers, inexpensive to acquire (unless, perhaps, they are your course texts). What elevates them to the status of “rare,” and worthy of the best measures to preserve them, is the person who collected them, political philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002).
It has been written that paper is how the dead talk to us, and how we talk to them. In the pages of these books we observe one of the great minds of the 20th century in dialogue with historical figures, among them, in these photos, Abraham Lincoln and Aristotle.
Tufts Professor of Philosophy Erin Kelly was John Rawls’s student at Harvard. It is to her, and to Mardy Rawls, wife of John Rawls, that Tisch Library owes thanks for this collection of books which allow us into the philosopher’s study, where we may eavesdrop on the conversation there.
Christopher Barbour
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Tufts University. Tisch Library
October 8, 2020
Anna Minasyan
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2020
October 7, 2020 – Edwin C. Bolles
Tufts University. Tisch Library. Special Collections
Edwin C. Bolles (1836-1920) was Professor of English & American History and the first chaplain of Tufts College. He built a large collection of books and other material about the history and geography of England, especially of London, much of it while living in that city in the 1870s. He set out to “illustrate” his copy of Thornbury’s multivolume “Old and New London” with marginal notes collating the text to a vast external collection of illustrations collected from many other printed sources.
Bolles died at his residence (now known as Bolles House) in 1920. As a memorial to his long & distinguished service to Tufts, the trustees purchased his collection for the college library. Along with the Hosea Ballou and Walter Welch Collections, it is one of the largest named collections in Tisch, supporting research to this day, indeed a student project provided the title image of the book on the plague in London.
Christopher Barbour
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Tufts University. Tisch Library
October 7, 2020
Anna Minasyan
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October 6, 2020 – John Holmes
Tufts University. Tisch Library. Special Collections
Tufts poet, professor, & critic John Holmes (1904-1962) was friend, teacher, and mentor to many fellow poets. Anne Sexton and John Ciardi A’38 were among his students in writers’ workshops and Tufts’s classes. After his death, his wife, poet, memoirist, and Wellesley dean & lecturer Doris Holmes Eyges (1921-2016) donated Professor Holmes’s large poetry collection to the Tufts library. Many volumes, by intention, are in the circulating collection. Presentation copies, gifts such as these, from Ciardi and Robert Frost, are important parts of Tisch Special Collections. Holmes’s papers are held in Digital Collections & Archives, which hosts an online exhibit dedicated to the first Tufts Poet.
Christopher Barbour
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Tufts University. Tisch Library
October 6, 2020
Anna Minasyan
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2020
20th Century
October 5, 2020 – Walter Welch
Tufts University. Tisch Library. Special Collections
“Your letter came informing me of some books I sent the Tufts College Library. It is a very great pleasure for me to be able to do this and I hope to send more in the future.” - Walter F. Welch, Jr. A ‘28, writing on January 12, 1953.
Over the next two decades, Welch sent 10 medieval manuscripts, dozens of early printed books, manuscript fragments, fine bindings, and much more to support Tufts students & faculty in the study of art, literature, languages, and history. To mark the 30th anniversary of his graduation, he gave a leaf from a Gutenberg Bible, from a damaged copy, bound with an essay to commemorate the printer. The Welch gifts are the beginning and core of the #tischrarebooks collection @tuftsuniversity
1. Leaf from a French Book of Hours, 15th century
2. MS 9, Book of Hours, Netherlands, 15th century
3. Walter F. Welch, Jr., Tufts yearbook photo, 1928
4. Welch’s bookplate in a 16th century copy of Cicero
5. Leaf from a Gutenberg Bible, about 1450-1455
6. Miniature in MS 2, Book of Hours, France, 15th century
7. Signature of preeminent Shakespearean actress Ellen Terry, an earlier owner of MS 7, Gospel sequences for Holy Week, Italy, 15th century
8. Decorated initial in MS 7
9. Clippings from the Tufts Weekly
Christopher Barbour
Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CF9kYQZlMOQ/">@Tischlibrary</a>
Tufts University. Tisch Library
October 5, 2020
Anna Minasyan
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2020
20th Century
15th Century