Lost at Sea? (Stacking the Shelves No. 2)

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anne renier, Book Collecting, book collector, f g renier, freeman willis crofts, penguin, second hand books, the loss of the jane vosper, the renier collection, vintage books

Rummaging around local charity shops often rewards with a wee gem or sought after book but the this morning’s find turns out to be a little different.  I’m very fond of reading vintage crime fiction and Freeman Willis Crofts is one of my favourite authors in the genre.  His books were published largely in the early part of the 20th centre and are rarely reprinted, so finding one his books that I haven’t read being offered second hand makes for a good day and I almost always snap it up.  And this one comes in the lovely green and cream bands of classic Penguin mystery and crime, so was irresistible.  It is a little battered and dog eared but I don’t mind books like that if their just for reading, so long as they are not smelly, brittle or falling apart.

But its turns out that this copy has another twist which appeals in particular to that part of me which wishes I was a book collector as well as a reader.  When I got it home I found it had a bookplate in it.  When I find bookplates, I always google a bit to see if I can find out a bit about the previous owner – often they turn out to have been local or had local connections.  Turns out though that the Anne and  F G Renier, whose names appear on the bookplate,were themselves book collectors of some note.

Fernard Gabriel Renier (1905-1988) was a Dutchman, born in Flushing, who as a young man settled in England around 1918, studying languages at London University in the 1920s.  It was here he met his future wife, Anne Cliff (1911?-1988) through a common interest in collecting match box labels.  After university, Renier worked for the BBC World Service but he also translated several works from his native dutch and from German into English and produced various Dutch and German grammars and learning aids among other books,  at times working in collaboration with Anne . Together they built up an enormous and in elements important collection of books, illustrations and popular printed materials.  In 1970, they donated their collection of children’s literature to the Victoria and Albert Museum.  The Renier Collection was subsequently transferred to the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green and more recently to Blythe House, where it is now known as the Renier Collection and comprises some 80,000 books, games and printed materials. Two delightful colouring books from the Renier Collection were recently featured in a V&A blog post, Colour Our Collections.

Shelving Books the old-fashioned way

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Book Collecting, chained library, ezra the scribe, fore-edge painting, franceso righetti, libraries, odorico pillone, shelving, spines, thomas brooke, william cartwright

These days we tend to shelf books ‘spine out’ and publishers, conveniently, usually reproduce the title, author and other helpful details on the spine so that we can easily run our eyes along a shelf to find a particular book.  But it wasn’t always thus!

This 17th century painting by Guercino shows the Italian lawyer and one time governor of Cento in northern Italy, Francesco Righetti, at home in his library.  Righetti is surrounded by his law books, speaking to his learning and erudition.  But his books are shelved ‘tail end’ out, with the titles written on the base of the text block.

Portrait of Franceso Righetti by Guercino, 1626-8

Look too at this engraving of the poet William Cartwright (printed in 1651 as a frontispiece to his ‘Poems and Plays’).  Again, he’s in his library and his books can be seen – this time with the fore-edges facing out from the shelves and the spines neatly tucked in against the rear walls and hidden.  This was a common practice in the 16th and 17th centuries. Imagine shelving books with gilded page edges in this way – they would have gleamed and glistened, catching the candlelight, in quite a glorious way.  Some medieval manuscripts and early printed books now in rare book collections have the title and other details written on in several different places, reflecting changes in shelving the preferences of owners and book collectors over time.

William Cartwright and his books, frontispiece from his Poems and Plays (1651)

The Embroidered Book, The Miroir or Glasse of the Synneful Soul (1544)

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beautiful books, Bodleian Library, Book Collecting, Bookbinding, elizabeth I, embroidered books, Katherine Parr, Synneful Soul

Embroidered Binding of The Miroir or Glasse of the Synneful Soul, 1544

It is common now to associate old and antiquarian books with leather bindings – the cherished patinas and leathery smells, embellished perhaps with armorial motifs or previous owners’ library markings giving a sense of permanence and authenticity.   But it wasn’t until around the time of the Restoration in the latter part of the 17th century that English bookbinders took up the French fashion of working almost exclusively in leather. Until then “English bookbinders had never been content to regard leather as the sole material in they could work”.  Books bound in cloth (binders most commonly used canvas but velvet and satin were also used) and decoratively embellished with embroidery have a long history: there is a embroidered Psalter, now in the British Library collection, which was stitched by one Anne Felbrigge towards the end of the 14th century. Embroidery as means of binding books was especially popular, among those who could afford such luxuries, in the Tudor age.  Silver and gold threats were often used, with the base material perhaps studded with pearls or other jewels, to create an unrivaled decorative effect.

2015 in Review – BookAddiction Blog

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Book Blogging, Book Collecting

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for my BookAddiction blog.  I love my little blog but I think I need to work harder next year – more bookish posts, more reviews (I read loads of books but only review a tiny proportion) and lots more on book collecting as I love doing those posts most and they seem most useful to others too.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,200 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

The finely bound books of Monique Lallier

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beautiful books, Book Collecting, designer bookbinding, fine binding, monique lallier

This morning, while looking for something else entirely, I stumbled upon the stunning work of US-based bookbinder Monique Lallier.  I thought I’d use this post to share a flavour of her works with others.

Monique Lallier is, according to the Library of Syracuse University, an ‘internationally recognised’ bookbinder and book artist who trained in her native Canada and then in Paris and Switzerland with Hugo Peller.  She is now works and teaches out of studios in Summerfield, North Carolina which she shares with her husband, the renown English-born bookbinder Don Etherton.

Lallier’s work can be found in the collections of McGill University, Montreal; Louisiana State University, the University of North Carolina as well as in many private collections in the US, Europe, Canada and Japan (although, sadly, not in mine!).  She has exhibited extensively, including with the Guild of Bookworkers and is a Director of the American Academy of Bookbinding.  My interest in designer bookbinder is relatively new which may explain why I have not come across her work before – but given the beauty of her work, newness can’t excuse it.

This is one of my favourites from those I’ve seen so far.

La Petite Poule d’Eau bu Gabrille Roy, bound by Monique Lallier

In this example, Lallier has used a french binding technique and a process called lacunose, which involves sanding different pieces of leather as well as lots of time and muscle-power, to cover a copy of La Petite Poule d’Eau by Gabrielle Roy. La Petite Poule d’Eau tells the story of a village in Canada and Lallier has said of this binding that she was seeking to convey a sense of the village’s physical structure and its colourful characters.  I think it works.