The National Art Library at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London

According to their website, the National Art Library, housed at the Victoria & Albert Museum, ‘holds the UK's most comprehensive public reference collection of literature on the fine and decorative arts, including books, journals, exhibition catalogues, auction house sales catalogues, comics, e-resources and much more’. 

This bold claim is supported by its holding of in excess of 1 million items, which can be easily searched for online once one has taken the relatively simple step of becoming a member. Material can only be viewed at the library (and precious items will require assistance by a curator in order to turn the pages) but can be ordered in advance for a specified date, while items requested on the day are guaranteed to be made available within 90-minutes.  

Through the good offices of Mark Frith and Cherrell Avery, 20 Letter Exchange members were welcomed to the library on 14 January by curators Victoria Worsfold and Frances Willis.  

Of particular interest is their collection of illuminated manuscripts, which has grown from an original bequest of 83 items by William Reed in 1902 to include works by contemporary calligraphers (we saw pieces by Donald Jackson, Friedrich Poppl, KarlGeorg Hoefer, Werner Schneider and Imre Reiner) and other book artists, such as Paula Rego. It was wonderful to be able to see the original copy of Bembo’s sonnets, accurately described by Stan Knight: ‘The expert script avoids, on the one hand, the harsh pointedness of much cursive italic and, on the other, the mechanical rigidity of later hands that tended to imitate typography’ (Stan Knight, Historical Scripts, A&C Black, 1984, p. F6). 

Printed books included a Kelmscott edition of William Morris’s News from Nowhere, an original printing dating from 1797 of Thomas Bewick’s History of British Birds, an artist’s book with acquatint etchings by Picasso to accompany text by the French naturalist, Buffon (Comte Georges Louis de Leclerc) – the edition fascinatingly dating from 1942 during the German occupation of Paris – and, of course, a copy of Rudolf Koch: Letterer, Type Designer, Calligrapher by our very own Jerry Cinamon.  

There was also a striking copy of the Cranach Press Hamlet (1930) containing wood engravings by Edward Gordon Craig and title lettering by Eric Gill, beautifully printed on handmade paper with parallel commentary in French and English running round the central text of the play.  

The black-letter typeface, of course, was designed by Edward Johnston for Count Kessler, based on a Cicero printed by Peter Schoeffer in 1466. We were able to review some of the correspondence between Johnston and the punch cutters, Edward Prince and then G.T. Friend following Prince’s death, during the creation of the type. There is an amusing account in Priscilla Johnston’s biography of her father of how Friend bore the brunt of Count Kessler’s frustration at the inevitable delays, demanding that he (Friend) extract the drawings from Johnston, only for Kessler to melt when ushered into the presence of the great man: ‘My dear Johnston, you look tired, you haven’t been taking care of yourself, you’ve been doing too much! (Priscilla Johnston, Edward Johnston, Barrie & Jenkins, 1959, p. 273). 

We also saw a collection of early letters from (the evidently rather smitten) Johnston to the Macrae sisters, dating from the 1890s, commenced when he was still a student at Edinburgh University. It was through the Macrae family that he had been introduced to the pre-Raphaelites, the early romances of William Morris, the paintings of Rossetti and Burne-Jones. It is interesting also to compare the handwriting of this period in Johnston’s life with that of his more mature style.   

The NAL is open Tuesday-Saturday from 10.00 to 5.30 (6.30 on Fridays). Membership details can be obtained from their website (https://www.vam.ac.uk/info/national-art-library).

[This review was published in Forum 37 (March 2019), the Journal of Letter Exchange, and is reproduced by permission of the Editor.]

Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War: The British Library, 19 October 2018-19 February 2019

The initial stimulus for this terrific exhibition was provided in 2012 by the British Library’s acquisition of the St Cuthbert’s Gospel. Since then, curators Claire Breay and Joanna Story were responsible for assembling over 180 artefacts spanning the 600 years between the 6th and 11th centuries and which required loans from over 20 different institutions worldwide.  

Although there was plenty of sculpture and metalwork, for example, from Sutton Hoo and the Staffordshire Hoard in the exhibition, it was the collection of illuminated manuscripts that really stood out, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, Beowulf, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People and the Domesday Book.

 As captured by the sub-title (‘art, word, war’), there were a number of parallel themes running through the exhibition. However, it was the significant scale of multi-cultural influences during the Anglo-Saxon period that really struck me, and the clear evidence of intellectual and artistic exchange on a continental scale.   

One of the earliest pieces in the exhibition features a lament from AD 540 ‘On the ruin of Britain’ at the hands of the Saxon invaders while of course the multiple Viking incursions – lasting from the sacking of Lindisfarne in 793 well into the 11th century – as well as the Norman conquest in 1066 each grafted their own distinct cultures on to indigenous traditions. Furthermore, the kingdom itself was not unified while Bede records five distinct languages coexisting during the period. 

Perhaps most startling is the African influence – initiated, of course, by St Augustine of Hippo, but evidenced also by one of the earliest pieces in the exhibition, a transcription of a letter by Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (died in AD 258), as well as notes from Boniface, Archbishop of Mainz, and Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, on the ‘Commentary on the Apocalypse’ by Primasius, Bishop of Byzacena in Africa (died around 560).  

Later on, the Book of Durrow (created AD 650-700), for example, shows its Irish heritage but also that from Anglo-Saxon England, the Mediterranean and Pictland – these influences most obvious in the rich illumination and style of ornamentation, suggesting that professional artists travelled between scriptoria. 

But perhaps the most remarkable story is that of the monumental Codex Amiatinus – the earliest complete Latin Bible and one of three made at Wearmouth for the church at Jarrrow during the great flowering of the Northumbrian artistic tradition in the 7th century. It contains 1030 leaves, probably requiring around 515 whole animal skins. The decorative scheme shows the influence of the Codex Grandior, a lost Bible from the library at Vivarium in Italy. The workmanship was of such a high standard that it was only recognized as being of English origin in recent times.  

The exhibition provided a unique opportunity to study at close hand the scripts and illumination of such iconic works within their historical context. I was particularly struck by the intimate connection between Christianity and the power structures of the day, with the most lavish works clearly considered as appendages of wealth and status. However, despite the inevitable technical variation in the quality of some of the scripts and illumination (much of which is frankly superb), the overall impression is that these were living documents, created with a unifying sense of purpose and within a coherent intellectual framework, remote from our own times. One can but wonder how much was lost during the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s.  

My only criticism is that the exhibition was somewhat overpowering – after nearly 3 hours my concentration was failing as a result of which I merely skimmed the final section covering the Domesday Book and as a result missed out on some beautiful manuscripts containing text and the musical notation for plain chants. The exhibition was also booked solid when I visited, resulting in the need to queue at several points. But notwithstanding the above, this would have been an outstanding exhibition if only half the objects had been on display.

[This review is due to be published in a forthcoming edition of Forum , the Journal of Letter Exchange, and is reproduced by permission of the Editor]

Brought to Book

Welcome to my new website! Plaudits to Gayle Karen Young for setting this up for me. I am delighted to be able to share my work on a more consistent basis.

Two of my books are currently showing at the Crafts Study Centre Centre until August 2019 in the exhibition entitled ‘Brought to Book’ (http://www.csc.uca.ac.uk/programme/): ‘This exhibition draws work from the whole range of the Crafts Study Centre’s collections. It investigates the way that particular collections relate to a book of some description. The book may be a formal record of a craft process; or a scholarly analysis of the maker’s work set in an art or social context; or a listing of samples; or a volume of poetry; or an artwork in its own right. In each case the maker, researcher or curator has taken a very particular care to record specific objects in the collection, or has used the collection as a basis for original creative work. The exhibition reveals academic integrity, private thoughts, creative struggles and romantic reflection on the past. Research and creative writing are placed in the public domain, often after long periods of study. ‘