[HN Gopher] Why early modern books are so beautiful ___________________________________________________________________ Why early modern books are so beautiful Author : benbreen Score : 101 points Date : 2023-08-03 16:28 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (resobscura.substack.com) (TXT) w3m dump (resobscura.substack.com) | User23 wrote: | Edward Tufte used to give seminars on good data presentation and | he used a ton of early modern examples to derive a cogent albeit | not uniquely determined philosophy of data design that mixes | images, diagrams, and text to densely and cogently communicate. | | Naturally the Q&A was 90% microsofties trying to tell him how | their UI is actually good design, right? I was impressed by his | heroic effort to not crash his face into his palm. | [deleted] | akiselev wrote: | Alternative thesis: OP picked an especially rare and expensive to | produce first edition _hand colored_ (!) copy of the _Hortus | Sanitatis_ which isn 't representative of books from the early | printing press era. If you look at the digitized copy from a | later 1497 printing [1], the illustrations are all black and | white although still beautiful. The first editions were colored | because it was such a landmark textbook meant to be distributed | to the fledgling academic class and royal libraries who were | still used to commissioning expensive works from scribes. Today's | equivalent would be those really expensive reference books found | in college libraries that can only be used on site, except even | more expensive and valuable. | | Before governments started to introduce the early incarnations of | copyright, printing was the wild west for over a century. | Printers often copied the works of their rivals without any | attribution or permission, resulting in numerous nearly identical | editions of popular texts flooding the market and competition | driving profits to zero. Printers raced each other to find | original content and a ton of it was equivalent to today's mass | market paperbacks. | | Trashy adventure novels about King Arthur and the Knights of the | Round Table were especially popular during this era, along with | each and every translation of a classic text no matter how | fanciful. They really didn't put as much effort into those as | they did with first-of-its-kind textbooks and color printing | didn't become widespread till later in the 16th century. Survivor | bias is also at play since the books that survive tend to be the | higher quality ones with color prints. | | [1] https://library.si.edu/digital- | library/book/ortussanitati00p... | taeric wrote: | Stated differently, we preserved things from the past that we | found beautiful. | UncleMeat wrote: | This is not true. The archive is complex and interesting but | it is absolutely not the case that preservation was driven by | beauty as a primary concern. | taeric wrote: | I find this hard to believe? Did I word it sloppily? Of | course, this is a conversation more than a pointed debate. | But I would be surprised to find we go out of our way to | preserve things that society doesn't find some aesthetic | beauty in. | | Does that mean I don't believe we can also have people | dedicated to archiving all things? No. The post I responded | to had a good example of some of the "lesser quality" | preservations of the same work. | dirtyid wrote: | Why are labour intensive luxury goods beautiful (well matter of | taste)? Maybe bespoke premium goods reflect high effort. | kvetching wrote: | Nothing beats late 1800s books. See this 15x17" Iowa Atlas from | 1875. Massive. Contains 139 maps of just counties, cities, | states. And just as many artistic engravings of the locations. | They had to hand carve every one of these pages. | https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/10448348 | TacticalCoder wrote: | > Early modern printed books are a much wider category, | encompassing the entire period between ~1450 CE and ~1800 CE (I | tend to date the end of the early modern period to the end of the | Napoleonic Wars, 1815). | | I have one from 1575 about plants and it is indeed beautiful. As | I named my daughter after a plant (and she knows that) when she | heard about the book and its content she asked me if "her plant" | was in it: I had no idea so we looked into that old grimoire | and... Turns out it's in there. | | Over the centuries people (I have no idea who) did put actual | plants in the book, at their corresponding pages, which I really | dig. | | It's not that rare: it was already "mass printed" and copies | regularly show up for sale. | | FWIW it's called _Histoire des plantes_ by Fuchs (and it 's a | copy translated from latin to old french that I've got). | benbreen wrote: | I came across many different versions of books with that title | while doing my PhD research (was tracing the names and | descriptions of various drugs popular in the early modern | period). It's quite an interesting group of books because as | they go into new editions and get translated into new | languages, new plants from places like Mexico and Brazil are | added. And even as Fuchs continues to be cited as an authority, | the authorship changes despite the title (a variation on | "History of Plants") and many of the images staying the same. | | The version I used the most was a Portuguese book called | _Historia das Plantas_ by Joao Vigier. Among other things, it | 's interesting because it contains an early reference to the | medicinal use of cannabis in Europe: | https://www.google.com/books/edition/Historia_Das_Plantas_Da... | digging wrote: | > Over the centuries people (I have no idea who) did put actual | plants in the book, at their corresponding pages, which I | really dig. | | You mean you have an original printing with physical plants | pressed into it? | genter wrote: | I know it's bad form to complain about this, but there's a | special place in hell for sites that put up a barrier forcing you | to sign in to finish reading it, when you're halfway through the | article. | joegahona wrote: | You can just click "Continue Reading" on this one, and the | modal goes away. I've seen people complain about this several | times, thinking they're prevented from reading entirely, so | maybe it's something Substack should improve UX on. | martinhath wrote: | I'm pretty sure it's intentionally a dark pattern. | dgb23 wrote: | At least it's better than blocking content with CSS. | | These sites typically want their cake (getting indexed) and | eat it too (not letting visitors read the indexed content). | So they resort to using CSS to hide it. | MrVandemar wrote: | view > page style > no style | | Fixes that in jiff. | j_random_berner wrote: | _cough_ 'open link in incognito window' _cough_ | andsoitis wrote: | > forcing you to sign in to finish reading | | right under the "Subscribe" button is a "Continue reading" link | which allows you to finish reading without needing to sign in. | Syonyk wrote: | It's funny. The page complains at the bottom about my browser. | | > _This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn | on JavaScript or unblock scripts_ | | Yet, without JS, not only does it render correctly with images, | it _doesn 't block me from reading the content._ The site is, | in every sense I care about, _better without Javascript._ | bluGill wrote: | I always close the tab. If you don't want me to read, then I'll | respect your wishes and close the tab. | baud147258 wrote: | Despite the obnoxiousness of the pop up, at least Substack | doesn't force to sign up to finish reading articles... At least | I've never had to | rolph wrote: | no pics but will this help? | | [drop] | | Res Obscura Why Early Modern Books Are So Beautiful Three | theories Benjamin Breen Aug 3, 2023 | | The Hortus Sanitatis (Latin for The Garden of Health) is an | encyclopedia about the natural world that was first published | in Mainz, Germany in 1491. It features 530 chapters on plants, | 164 chapters on land animals, 122 chapters on flying animals, | 106 chapters on animals that swim in the sea, and 144 chapters | on precious stones and minerals. It is 454 pages long. | | These are the ways that bibliographers tend to classify books. | But nothing I can tell you about the Hortus Sanitatis will do | justice to what you learn from looking at it. Because numbers | aside, the most salient thing about this book is that it's | incredibly beautiful. A digitized copy of the Hortus Sanitatis | is available here (via the Smithsonian Institution). | | I am sometimes asked why I became a historian. A big part of it | is that I just really like looking at old books. Not just | looking, exactly, but finding out what we can learn from | looking at them -- how the meaning and function of a book | interacts with the technologies used to produce it and the | creativity and craftsmanship of its creators. | | The Hortus Sanitatis is what's known as an incunabulum, or | "cradle book," a term for books produced before 1500 during the | infancy of movable type printing. These books have some | recognizable traits: They were often printed | in black letter (Gothic) font. Reflecting their | transitional status between the world of manuscript books and | printed books, they borrow stylistic elements from late | medieval manuscripts. They were rare and very | expensive, and thus typically created for social elites and | official functions -- academic treatises, encyclopedias, | Bibles, and the like. | | Early modern printed books are a much wider category, | encompassing the entire period between ~1450 CE and ~1800 CE (I | tend to date the end of the early modern period to the end of | the Napoleonic Wars, 1815). Printed books from this period | cover a huge range of topics and dozens of languages, but for | me at least, they have one thing in common: I almost always | find them far more interesting -- more beautifully designed, | more strange, more intriguing -- than modern books. | | The rest of this post is a few thoughts on why. Thesis #1: | Early modern books occupy an uncanny valley of familiarity | | I first encountered Hortus Sanitatis as a PhD student at UT | Austin over a decade ago. I was in UT's rare books library, the | Harry Ransom Center, reading through 18th century books for a | class assignment, and decided on a whim to look up the oldest | printed books in the Ransom Center's catalogue. | | It turns out the oldest is their copy of the Gutenberg Bible. | Considering it's worth over $20 million, this is not something | you can check out at the circulation desk! | | But the Ransom Center's librarians were happy to let me look | through Hortus Sanitatis (which, if you're wondering, is a | relative steal as far as incunabula go, with copies priced at | roughly 100k). | | One of the first parts I remember noticing was the section on | mermaids. If the mermaid at right looks oddly familiar... | | ... that's because it or a similar woodcut was a direct | inspiration for the ubiquitous Starbucks logo. | | The format of early modern books is also familiar to any | reader: there's a dedication, a prologue, a table of contents, | an index. Sometimes there are even "blurbs" from other eminent | authorities recommending the book. | | But even though the same basic pattern is there, the execution | is totally different. Early modern book dedications were | decidedly less minimalist than they are today. Left: John | Gadbury, Dies novissimus (London, 1664). Right: Christopher | Heaney, Empires of the Dead (Oxford University Press, 2023) | Thesis #2: Early modern printers thought a lot about design | | Incunabula like the Hortus Sanitatis are very large books, but | because they are divided into columns, the reading experience | is surprisingly eye-friendly, provided you are ok with reading | Gothic black letter font. A key thing to keep in mind about | early modern books is that the type was all hand-set, and | (because printed books were luxury items created by master | craftsmen) a huge amount of time was spent experimenting with | ways to arrange the text in a maximally visually appealing way. | | Interestingly, this led to a convergence with certain | principles of modern web design. For instance, I counted out | the total characters in a few full lines from the first edition | of Hortus. They average roughly 35 to 45 characters across, | which is what contemporary designers recommend for mobile view | on websites. | | Here's the New York Times mobile site compared with a column | from Hortus: | | This is just scratching the surface of the other design | features of early modern books, from gorgeous marbled endpapers | to the unhesitating use of a half dozen different different | fonts on a single page. Above all, early modern books were | experimental. | | Including even the advertisements... Thesis #3: Early modern | books are incredibly charming, even when they're trying to sell | you something | | As far as I can tell, some of the earliest mass-produced | advertisements were seventeenth-century "advertisements to the | Reader" like the example above. It's from a 1672 medical | treatise called The American Physitian which is mostly famous | today because the author was obsessed with the health benefits | of hot chocolate. | | Here again, the uncanny valley of familiarity. Readers in 2023 | are no stranger to "advertisements to the Reader," after all. | But what an advertisement! | | Not only does the ad promise that the book -- an English | translation of Magia Naturalis -- will unlock "all the riches | and delights of the natural Sciences," it then proceeds to list | all twenty of the magic books which you, lucky buyer, will | receive for the price of one (they were bound as a single | volume). | | I especially like #17, "Of stranges Glasses." And of course the | final book, "Chaos." Now that's an ending. | | Early modern indexes are also a trip. I wrote about one | especially strange one, by the buccaneer William Dampier, here. | One of the many things I love about The Public Domain Review is | that they created an early modern-style index for their site | which was partially inspired by oddities like Dampier's index. | | Finally, there's the interesting branding that went into the | names of booksellers' shops. Hughes American Physitian, for | instance, was sold "at the Green Dragon": | | This was meant quite literally. There actually was a green | dragon. | | A painted sign of one, at least, as this article from the | Folger Shakespeare Library explains. Try Google searching for | "to be sold at the signe of" and you will find early modern | books being peddled at such places as "the Sign of the White | Lion in Duck-Lane" and "the sign of the Bible in Popes-head- | Alley." | | Sometimes this info about the bookseller tells a tiny story in | itself, like this Spanish book from 1748 that was printed "by | the heirs of the widow of Juan Garcia Infanzon" (who, it turns | out, had a pretty sweet printer's mark of a lion holding a | starry shield). Primary source quote of the week | Chocolate is most excellent, it nourishing and preserving | health entire, purging by Expectorations, and especially by the | sweat-vents of the body, preventing unnatural fumes ascending | to the head, yet causing a pleasant and natural sleep and rest; | preserving the person vigorous and active, sending forth all | vicious humours to the Emunctorites... and being eaten twice a | day, a man may very well subsist therewith, not taking any | thing else at all. | | -- William Hughes, The American Physitian (London: Printed by | J. C. for William Crook, 1672) (link). | | Weekly links | | * My good friend Christopher Heaney's book comes out this week. | It's the one I used as an example of a contemporary book | dedication above, and it's called Empires of the Dead: Inca | Mummies and the Peruvian Ancestors of American Anthropology. | It's the culmination of 15 years of amazing historical research | (including that time in 2010 when Chris spent roughly an hour | telling me how Inca surgeons performed trepanations using | obsidian scalpels). You can order it from the publisher, Oxford | University Press, or via Amazon or Bookshop.org. | | * "Why No Roman Industrial Revolution?" (A Collection of | Unmitigated Pedantry). This whole blog, by the historian Bret | Devereaux, is great. | | * "Isles of Scilly remains are iron age female warrior, | scientists say" (The Guardian) | | * "Earliest curry in Southeast Asia and the global spice trade | 2000 years ago" (Science Advances). This is a fascinating and | very detailed scholarly article about the history and | archaeology of curry spices. Check out this map: What is Res | Obscura? | | This newsletter is written by me, Benjamin Breen. It's free, | and you can unsubscribe at any time. I started Res Obscura ("a | hidden thing" in Latin) to communicate my passion for the | actual experience of doing history. Usually that means getting | involved with primary sources, in all their strange glory. | | [/drop] | xhevahir wrote: | I think at least part of the reason is that in the early-modern | period books as objects still had a lot of the specialness, for | lack of a better word, that they had when they were entirely | handmade and extremely rare. With the spread of machine | production books increasingly became mere vehicles of text, with | the content more or less abstracted from the physical form. | dr_dshiv wrote: | Book collecting is an absolute joy. It is a reasonable way to | store value (prices probably won't go down, might go up). | | And there are so many mysteries: Palimpsests, marginalia, and | simply unwritten history. For instance, I've got a copy of | "Natural Magick" mentioned -- which is this fascinating | connection between science and magic. Or, my favorite book, De | Mysteriis by Marsilio Ficino (1497). Like much work in Neo-Latin, | the book has never been translated to English---despite being | written by the guy who is famous for translating Plato (and many | other classics) for the Medicis, and helping to spark the | intellectual renaissance. | | Turns out that between Google Lens and GPT4, all the books in my | collection can now be translated!! | VHRanger wrote: | Why GPT-4? I imagine DeepL has better quality | Eumenes wrote: | if you order books on amazon you really have to pay attention to | what you're getting ... half the time the ink is bleeding thru | the pages or the text is misaligned. i love visiting rare book | stores for this very reason, its a time machine to the past. | Knee_Pain wrote: | I'm still trying to find a way to use the IM FELL typeface on my | terminal emulator. It just feels.... right | cbfrench wrote: | The best class I took in grad school was a course on | bibliography. (Few English departments still offer courses in it, | alas.) It was magnificent learning the ins-and-outs of how books | were manufactured and learning to reconstruct their processes of | manufacture from the physical artifact. The show-and-tell each | class from the rare-book librarians was a treat for exactly the | reasons the author mentions in the article. It was also the one | area of study in which I felt like I had done real work and | produced something of value (however marginal) at the end of the | day. | | Unfortunately, I lacked the punctilious and painstaking scholarly | discipline to become a bibliographer. (Our professor had produced | the standard bibliography of Alexander Pope's _Dunciad_ , which | required him to spend countless hours in numerous libraries with | a checklist to identify minute textual variants in editions, a | labor that demands a preternatural level of dedication and | attention to detail.) However, I can still produce a correct | bibliographical description if the situation calls for it--which, | admittedly, it rarely does... | mensetmanusman wrote: | Please let us return to absurdly maximalist: | | "To Eminent Favorers of ART and LEARNING | | and true examples of HONOR and LOYALTY" | cbfrench wrote: | Everyone buying a copy: "It me." ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-08-03 23:00 UTC)