The Book of Durrow, 7th C

The Book of Durrow, or the Codex Usserianus I is perhaps the oldest surviving Insular gospel, was written around 650–675 either at the Durrow Abbey, County Offaly, Ireland, or in Northumbria, England. Wherever it was written, however, it ended up at the Durrow Abbey, where a cumdach (a silver covering) was made to house the manuscript. An inscription added to the text stated: “the prayer and benediction of St. Columb Kille be upon Flann, the son of Malachi, King of Ireland, who caused this cover to be made.”

The manuscript apparently remained at Durrow until the abbey was dissolved in the mid-16th century. According to legend the next custodian of the manuscript placed it in his watering trough to cure his cattle of sickness. Later, sometime around 1662, Henry Jones, Bishop of Clogher and Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College, presented the book to the college library, where it remains to this day.

Folio 22, recto

By the time Christianity was introduced into Ireland by St. Patrick, nomadic Germanic tribes, such as the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians had conquered much of Europe, including England. Ireland, however, was apparently not all that important to the marauding Germanic pagans and they were left alone to develop a unique version of monastic Christianity. So when St Columbia reintroduced Christianity back into England by establishing monasteries in Iona, Scotland in 563 and Northumbria in 635 these Germanic and Celtic artistic traditions merged – a cross-pollination of sorts – into what is now known as Insular or Hibero-Saxon art.

The Insular scribes and illuminators were heavily influenced by Hibero-Saxon crafts: The complex interlaced knotting, perhaps the most recognizable Insular form, was borrowed from Celtic metalwork, the iconography of animals was borrowed from Germanic zoomorphic designs and the images of the Jesus and the Evangelists from Pictish grave markers. Of course, of all these other sources are now largely forgotten and it is the manuscripts that define the art.

The Insular manuscript ended with the invasion of Ireland by the Normans in 1169–1170, which ushered in the Romanesque style. Many insular design elements, however, continued to be adapted and used as decorative motifs. A millenium later Insular design, often under the misnomer Celtic design, continues to be popular

The Book of Durrow contains the complete compliment of Insular designs. Each gospel is laid out with a full-page miniature of the evangelist or his symbol:

Portrait of Mark. Folio 84, verso

Then a purely ornamental full-page geometric design – a carpet page, named after its resemblance to a Persian rug:

Carpet page. Folio 85, verso

Then an incipit page where the text begins with an elaborately decorated initial letter. These historiated initials became so large that they were integrated into the rest of the text by several lines of decreasing size – an effect known as diminuendo:

Incipit of Mark. Folio 86, recto

David Lance Goines on the Poster, 20 th C.

I love this one... Can you see the Book of Kells influence at this poster? Niiiiiiiice (here)

 

::from wikipedia res:: Just the text below for the BIO...

David Lance Goines (born May 29, 1945) is an American artist, calligrapher, typographer, printing entrepreneur, and author. He was born in Grants Pass, Oregon, the oldest of eight children. During the 1960s, Goines enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley as a Classics major. While a student in classical literature at the University of California, Berkeley he participated in the Free Speech Movement of late 1964, which led to his expulsion. Though soon re-admitted, he again left the University in 1965, this time to apprentice as a printer in Berkeley. In 1968 he founded Saint Hieronymus Press there. The major output of the press consists of Goines' limited edition poster and calendar art

 

Goines first printed this poster for his friend Tom Luddy and the Pacific Film Archive to advertise a showing of the film Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach in 1973. Long after the movie finished playing, Goines changed the text and the poster became a general publicity piece for the San Francisco-based California Bach Society. It is perhaps his most popular poster, going through no less than three printings.

Like many of his late-1960s Bay-area contemporaries, Goines was influenced by the German Jugendstil movement, especially Lucian Bernhard and Ludwig Hohlwein. Unlike most of the psychedelic designers, however, he pared his designs down to only the most relavent elements: a strong central image, limited use of color, and a straightforward message. Anything more he felt was no longer a poster.

Although Goines graphic style is most often described as Arts and Crafts, he draws on a wide range historical styles including Japanese ukio-e woodblocks, Art Nouveau, Vienna Secession and Art Deco. His Bach poster, for example, is influenced by Celtic stonework and the Book of Kells to characterize the composer as the "fifth evangelist." Link to my previous post about the Book of Kells here

 

What separates Goines from other designers, of course, is that he prints his own work. His posters are all 2-24 solid-color lithographs printed on the same press he learned his trade on in the 1960s. It goes with saying that 4-color reproductions in books or the images presented here hardly do the originals justice.

 

No. 167. Napa Valley Wine Auction, 1996

This poster is still available from the California Bach Society. For around 30 USD you not only get an actual Goines-printed poster but help support the Society. 

Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings, 19th C

Étienne Léopold Trouvelot was born on 26 Dec 1827 in Guyencourt, France. As a young man he dabbled in politics, becoming a staunch Republican. After Louis Napoleon’s coup in 1852 he fled to America with with his wife Adelaide and settled in Medford, just outside of Boston. He listed his occupation as lithographer.

Although an artist Trouvelot had a keen interest in science and turned his attentions toward sericulture. Hoping to become rich in the American silk trade he raised giant silk moths (Antheraea polyphemus), eventually having as many as a million larvae under nets on his five acre property in what he called his “infant industry.”

Trouvelot, the American Silk Worm, 1867 

In Mar 1867 he returned from France with live gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar) eggs, intending to cross the two moths to develop a disease resistant strain. It would turn out to be a bad idea; not only are gypsy moths and giant silk moths two entirely different species but sometime around 1868-69 some of the moths escaped his nets. He had – quite inadvertantly – introduced the gypsy moth to North America. He knew enough at the time to become alarmed, but after contacting other entomologists there was apparently little concern.

The gypsy moth incident was the beginning of the end of his interest in entomology. In 1870, after observing the aurora, he embarked on his next scientific obsession – astromony. He bought a 6-inch telescope and began preparing drawings that caught the attention of Joseph Winlock who invited him to use the 15-inch Great Refractor at the Harvard College Observatory. His work under the especially clear skies at Cambridge set a new standard for astronomical illustration that wouldn’t be surpassed until the perfection of the photographic dry-plate. In 1872 The New York Times wrote “a person entirely ignorant of astronomy could not fail to be much impressed with [Trouvelot’s] drawings.” Here are a few examples from the 1876 Harvard Annals

Harvard University Library

In 1875 Trouvelot was invited to the US Naval Observatory to continue his work using the 26-in Great Equatorial, then the largest telescope in the world. As part of the observatory’s exhibit at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia he prepared a series of large-format pastel illustrations:

In the late 1870s Trouvelot approached Scribners, who had recent experiance with color lithography, to publish some of his illustrations. He personally supervised the conversion of his pastels into lithographic stones by Armstrong and Co. of Boston. A folio of 15 large-format (24 × 38") chromolithographs and 167-page descriptive manual was published in 1882 as The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings.⁵ Despite its small edition size (~300) and its rather prohibitive price of 125 USD, Scribners listed it as one of their most successful titles of the period.

Here is a detail showing the chromolithographic process:

University of Michigan Library

And here are the rest of the plates:

 

In 1882 Trouvelot accepted a position at the Meudon Observatory in Paris. He continued his astronomical research using their Grande Lunette and even travelled to the Caroline Islands to observe the total eclipse of 1883. He wrote that one day he hoped to return to America but he never did. He died in Meudon on 22 Apr 1895.

Trouvelot was a classic case of the Victorian autodidact. With no formal training he left behind a legacy of several books and monographs, more than 50 scientific papers and nearly 7000 illustrations covering the entire range of natural science – everything from astromony to moths and butterflies to reptiles to geological surveys. Of course he will be remembered for his other legacy – the gypsy moth – which continues to spread across North America and causes nearly a billion USD of damage each year.

1. Unless otherwise noted, all of the images here are from the Public Library of Cincinnati

2. For more bibliography see: Spear, Robert. The Great Gypsy Moth War: The History of the First Campaign in Massachusetts. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005 (WorldCat) or Corbin, B.G. Etienne Leopold Trouvelot (1827–1895), the Artist and Astronomer. Library and Information Services in Astronomy V, ASP Conference Series. 2007 377: 352– 360 (online).

3. See: Trouvelot, L. The American Silk Worm. American Naturalist 1867; 1(1) 30-38 (online).

4. Bond, W. C., Bond, G. P., Winlock, J. Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College. Cambridge: John Wilson and Son, 1876 (online).

5. Trouvelot, E. L. The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1882 (WorldCat).

6. Adjusted for inflation that’s more than 3000 USD today. However, according to the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Scribners was remaindering copies for only 10 USD in 1886.