Category Archives: Turn-up Books

Viewing What is this? What is that (1905) and The Beginning, Progress and End of Man (circa 1650) under the microscope: What do I see?

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Jacqueline Reid-Walsh

A short time ago I had the privilege of working with Dr. Sarah K. Rich, Director of the Center for Virtual/Material Studies, and Dr. Clara Drummond to examine the materials of two books from two different periods, one composed totally of fabric and the other of early modern paper. I have been struggling to answer questions about the materiality and the interactive affordances of the two books by using a light box and magnifying glass, which was only partly satisfactory. Dr. Rich used a powerful microscope that allowed us to see the threads distinctly. Her analysis of the threads explained questions about the interactivity of the materials in the books published some 150 years apart.

The much more recent book is intended for babies and toddlers. Called What is this? What is that (1905), it is the second book in the series of Dean’s rag books published until the second world war. The books are described as being composed completely of rag for durability, safety and cleanliness for baby and caretaker (Cope and Cope, 13) and the logo on the book claims that the books were “quite indestructible.” The artifact is smooth to the touch, soft and very pliable, reminiscent of a cambric shirt and I was curious about what type of cotton was used.

Close up of Dean's rag book

While the weave of the material is suggested to the naked eye, under the microscope we could see how the material is composed of loose weave cotton thread.  We could even see the pattern of the threads which are in a plain weave, crossing over and under, with the longitudinal warp and the traverse weft clearly visible. What was also apparent was that the threads are of different widths and that the space between the threads is about the same as the width of the threads themselves.

Dean's rag book through the microscope

Another question I had was how were the colors were applied to the fabric? Was there any pigment or were they printed directly on the material? How was this achieved? According to Dr. Rich the method of color printing was coal tar dye. There are eight colors used, most are distinct, but as seen in the microscope enabled photograph, the orange is created from layering yellow with red. This demonstrates how the material was run through the rollers multiple times (Cope and Cope, 14). The green color is vivid but unlike the paint of the period there is no arsenic. Indeed, the colors are safe as the company claimed. Dr. Rich said that the smooth surface, so attractive even after all these years, is created by starch or by ironing.

The Beginning, Progress and End of Man (circa 1650)

By comparison, the much older object a religious turn-up book called The Beginning, Progress and End of Man circa 1650 and it is composed of paper. However, paper of the 17th century is not made of machine wood pulp as is modern paper but of linen rag. The difference between early modern paper and modern paper is obvious even to the touch of an interactor such as myself when working first with a facsimile and then the original. The facsimile feels smooth while the original feels soft but with an almost invisible texture that provides some substance. According to Bill Minter, the senior conservator at the university, this softness is due to the material itself which has not been treated.

Beginning, Progress, and End of Man turn-up book under the microscope.

Looking at the object through the microscope it is apparent to the educated eye that the linen was made of flax. Under the high magnification the fibres look like miniature bamboo with horizontal notches. The color is yellowish.

Looking at the edge of paper from the Beginning, Progress, and End of Man through the microscope.

Comparing the cotton rag book to the paper book made of flax, I wonder what is distinctive about these materials. The cotton rag book is very supple so the pages can be folded or rolled without harm. The flax paper book has more substance but is not stiff like modern paper so the flaps can be easily lifted up and down and stay in position when placed.  Looking up flax in both a general and an academic source I learn that in Western countries textiles made from flax are called linen and that while linen fibres are stronger than cotton they are also less elastic.

There is quite an extensive article on Wikipedia on flax with some cited sources at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flax#History. According to this article, flax fibers taken from the stem of the plant are two to three times as strong as cotton fibers. Additionally, flax fibers are naturally smooth and straight. Europe and North America both depended on flax for plant-based cloth until the 19th century, when cotton overtook flax as the most common plant for making rag-based paper. The article goes to explain that flax fiber is extracted from the bast beneath the surface of the stem of the flax plant. Flax fiber is soft, lustrous, and flexible; bundles of fiber have the appearance of blonde hair, hence the description “flaxen” hair. It is stronger than cotton fiber, but less elastic.

This information is supported by an academic article by Helmut Becker called “Growing and Hand Processing Fibre Flax and Hemp for Hand Papermaking” (2008). Becker draws on the work of Tim Barrett who has extensively researched both oriental bast fibres and western bast fibres like flax and hemp. They are fascinated by the quality and permanence of early handmade papers and try to make contemporary paper that has the same qualities. In terms of interactive properties of the material, Becker refers to the work of Douglas Howell who created successful, creative three-dimensional paper artwork stemming from his experiments in pulping raw fiber flax (Becker, 3).

comparison of two books under the microscope

Comparing the photos of the cotton and flax fibres under the microscope helps explain my questions about the materiality and the affordances of the interactivity of the materials in the books published some 150 years apart. I am struck in both cases how the books were not intended for an elite market but for middle and lower class audiences — babies in the case of the Dean rag book — and in the case of the turn-up book part of the “cheap’ or popular print culture of 17th century England consumed by a wide audience of people old and young. That these books have survived in very good condition through the intervening years is largely due to their material as well as their careful preservation in special collections. They provide a glimpse into how the playful literacies of earlier centuries were able to be achieved, and provides a topic that needs further examination.

References

Becker, Helmut,  “Growing and Hand Processing Fibre Flax and Hemp for Hand Papermaking.” Presentation at the International Conference on Flax and Other Bast Plants, Saskatoon, Canada, July 21-23, 2008. https://www.academia.edu/19693013/Growing_and_Processing_Fibre_Flax_and_Hemp_for_Hand_Papermaking

Cope, Peter and Dawn Cope. Dean’s Rag Books and Rag Dolls. London: New Cavendish Books, 2009.

“Flax,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flax

Material matters: Back to The Beginning, Progress and End of Man

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Jacqueline Reid-Walsh

This blog returns to the 17th century turn-up book, The Beginning, Progress and End Of Man held in Penn State Library Special Collections. I have long been fascinated by it for several reasons: its design as an interactive object, its broad range of implied reader-viewer-player including adult and child, semiliterate and literate, and its status as cheap print like the ballads, broadsides and chapbooks discussed by Tessa Watt (1991). I have focused on the design affordances and the visual-textual interactive engagements they invite. What fascinates me is the playful possibilities of the bi-modal text since an interactor may lift the flaps up and down according to the directions or against the “grain” of the conventional words. An interactor may also play with the accordion folds and arrange the panels differently.

What I never really considered was the paper and its qualities. My first engagements were in restricted conditions such as being attached to a large volume (1650,1688/9). Many times I work with paper facsimiles or digital copies. I have been able to learn about the interactivity-which is marvelous. But I never really thought about the substrate and how this impacts the interactivity.  After COVID closures finished and we are working with the items again, I am re-encountering the turn-up anew.

I have been reading up a bit on papermaking (Hunter, 1947), and fortunate to have engaged in a paper making session with Bill Minter. I also listen to lectures by experts, most recently by Professor Timothy Barrett of the Center for the Book at the University of  Iowa. In his fascinating lecture, he talked about the qualities of 15th century paper and also about paper that was not considered “good” quality. During the chat session after his lecture, he discussed the importance of all hand-made paper and how non-quality paper expanded the readership of different classes and ages. Emboldened by Dr. Barrett’s lecture, I had a question about 17th century cheap paper and was fortunate to have a zoom session with him. I asked about 17th century paper and I wondered if the affordances of the substrate provide fluidity to the strip and turnable flaps. I also explained I was intrigued by the color (which appears light tan) and what that might signify. Is this due to its age? Was this paper more durable? Was it whitened somehow when published? Or was it always not white?

I also consulted Philip Gaskell’s A New Introduction to Bibliography, 2nd edition (1972), where he talks about English hand-made paper. He writes that there was little English-made white paper in the mid-17th century so it was imported from abroad. Up to 1670, the paper English mills produced was brown and connected to the fact that English people wore mainly wool so there was a lack of linen rags (Gaskell, 60).

On the EBBA project site, there is an article called “Other Common Papers: Papermaking and Ballad Sheet Sizes” by Gerald Egan and Eric Nebeker (2007). They refer to Alfred Shorter who describes how “coarser rags, netting, cordage, canvas, bagging, and other materials of flax and hemp [were used] in the manufacture of brown and other common papers” (1971, 14; emphasis added). Egan and Nebeker continue, “Brown papers were used, as today, for wrapping objects and for other non-print purposes.” At the end they speculate about what paper was used for the cheapest of print products, broadsides: “To meet the needs of the lowest end of the print market, the broadside ballad market, papermakers probably used some combination of linen and the ‘coarser rags, netting, cordage, canvas, bagging, and other materials of flax and hemp’ that Shorter describes, in order to produce the cheapest “white” paper that was suitable for print.”

I have looked at Beginning, Progress and End of Man using a light and magnifier and noticed chain lines wires lines. It would be fascinating to examine the turn-up more closely to see if we can determine the paper’s original colour, make-up, and composition.

Picture of the center of Beginning, Progress, and End of Man turn-up book as seen through a magnifying glass.

References

  1. Egan, Gerald and Eric Nebeker (2007). “Other Common Papers: Papermaking and Ballad Sheet Sizes.” https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/page/papermaking
  2. Gaskell, Philip. A New Introduction to Bibliography 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1972.
  3. Hunter, Dard. Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft. New York: Dover, 1978.
  4. Shorter, Alfred Henry. Paper Making in the British Isles: An Historical and Geographical Study. Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1971.
  5. Watt, Tessa. Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1991.

 

Is Paper Key to Interactivity?

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Jacqui Reid-Walsh

After languishing for a year and a half away from Special Collections at Penn State, I have been privileged to once again been able to schedule times through the fall semester to work with “my” cart of movable books again. Seeing them, touching them, and sitting with them has allowed me to connect with my passion for researching early movable books and to ask new questions. When I am sitting with the books, I feel like Rip Van Winkle who is slowly awaking from a deep stupor.

One turn-up book has transfixed me for a while: The Beginning, Progress and End of Man circa 1650. During the time away from libraries, I had only been looking at photographs of the turn-up. While important memory aids, they only give minimal information.  Previously, I had worked mainly with the paper facsimile.  Importantly, unlike a digital image, this allows an interactor to learn about the kinds of transformations in the turn-up through being able to engage with the object. However, the interactor seems to be the sole engine of the effects since the modern paper is stiff and inert.

What is important about encountering the original turn-up again is that I am able to work with both the original and the facsimile. To my joy I have been able to place the original and the facsimile beside each other so that I can touch the paper and examine the flaps of both. The different experiences I have had with the facsimile and the original has led me to explore the history of handmade paper in the West.

While an obvious subject to conservators and curators, studying the substrate of early movable books is a new angle for me since previously I focused on the affordances of the interactive components. My new approach takes my questions about affordances to the level of the material: what kind of paper is the early turn-up composed of? How does the material effect the movable components? How am I affected by engaging with the original versus a facsimile? What can I learn from studying the paper through touch or from sparingly using a light box to see any marks in the paper?

I am learning about paper in several ways: by consulting specialists like paper conservators, engaging with suggested key readings, and participating in an occasional paper-making session.  I am pleased that two conservators have agreed to consult with me: Katie Smith from the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature at the University of Florida and Bill Minter from the Penn State University Libraries. This project is in its infancy but each new revelation is challenging me.

So, what have I learned so far?

The durability of the earlier artifacts stems from the strength of the rag paper. I wonder if the qualities of the rag paper and its innate affordances enable the transformations created with simple flaps that turn up and turn down to be so effective.

When I carefully touch the flaps, the paper feels soft and buttery. When I gently move the flaps, they are light and pliable and move beautifully. When I lift a flap up or down, it holds its place (so needs no weight). The transformations and mistransformations hold still so they can be engaged with. Similarly, when I turn the flaps back, they lightly stick together so two sets come down together! Since the paper seems to be an active agent, the impression of incipient or latent action in the woodblock figures is emphasized. The characters almost move on their own — the paper figures seem to possess their own vitality and enact the traditional “stages of man” life story stated by the words. The impression is that the paper and the human interactor are equal collaborators in creating the animation effect. This is the opposite effect to engaging with the facsimile.

Further questions stem from the qualities of the linen paper. For instance, could this be connected with the timeline of the harlequinade turn-up books? Could it be that the phenomenon of the turn-up book being later 17th and 18th century — then petering out — is linked to the change in paper and the shift to machine made paper?

Another stage in my project!

Good news to tell! The Beginning, Progress and End of Man turn-up book with colored illustrations

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Jacqui Reid-Walsh

If the world of rare books’ libraries were a consortium of print sellers we would blazon the news: there is a “new found” edition of the rare The Beginning, Progress and End of Man turn-up book! On the Cotsen Children’s Collection blog dated June 30, 2021, Andrea Immel describes and provides tantalizing information about the new acquisition. This five-part edition is the only known one that has colored illustrations!

First there is an illustration of the first panel, both sets of flaps closed showing Adam with a fig leaf and holding a red flower with yellow leaves. The bibliographic information beside Adam gives the title. When the five flaps are opened fully, we see the remainder of the information: beside the skeleton we learn that it is a J. Deacon edition and that his location is the Angel in Gilt Spur street.  The blog entry further relays how the turn-up book was bought at the Justin G. Schiller Ltd. Sale at Heritage Book Auctions in Dallas, Texas on December 16, 2020.

Immel provides a brief history of the turn-up book from the 1650 four-part edition printed by Bernard Alsop held at the British library, and the subsequent five part editions that include a Cain and Abel sequence.  All versions of the text feature metamorphic pictures and doggerel verse. The pictures transform as the flaps are lifted up and down to accord with the text: Adam turns into Eve and then a mermaid, the rampant Lion turns into a Griffin and then an Eagle who steals a baby, a young man turns into an inverted heart and then a money bag, and finally an older miser with his money bags turns into a skeleton.

The choice of colors or absence of color enhances the dramatic effect of the moveable images. Adam and Eve are colorless but for their red flower and the mermaid’s comb and yellow belt; the angry, yellow-haired Cain wears red, contrasting with the otherwise colorless Abel’s red hair; the regal, yellow lion is transformed in to a splendid bi-colored eagle; the young man and his purse are both red with yellow money, and the elegant bi-toned miser’s yellow money bags turn into a yellow hour glass in his yellow skeletal hand.

Important details make this version of The Beginning, Progress and End of Man significant for researchers. It is the only known 17th century one in color; it appears to be complete, despite some tears, and one of the few known ones in strip format. The 1650 Bernard Alsop edition and the other J. Deacon edition held at the Bodleian library are attached to large volumes by their collectors; George Thomason and Anthony Wood respectively. Two other editions are also strips –the 1654 one printed by Elizabeth Alsop held at Harvard, and one at Penn State with incomplete bibliographic information and in fairly poor condition. Since the Beginning, Progress and End of Man at the Cotsen is a colored, stand-alone artifact means that researchers can become bi-modal viewers and players and able to experience the object in new ways. In so doing we begin to appreciate the powerful interactive appeal of the 17th century religious turn-up book whose flaps may be lifted with or against the stated moral and religious text.

Images from the Penn State copy of The Beginning, Progress and End of Man for comparison:

The Beginning, Progress, and End of Man, part 1

The Beginning, Progress, and End of Man, part 2

The Beginning, Progress, and End of Man, part 3

Forms and Formats: flaps and folds—making meanings

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Gettysburg college. Photo courtesy of Bénédicte Miyamoto

Last week I presented at a conference hosted by the East-Central Chapter of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies in Gettysburg. The town and especially the college are exquisite. The conference theme was “Crossroads and Divergences” and my paper was part of a focused panel called “Folds and Formats: Fitting Knowledge to the Page.” The moderator and organizer was Bénédicte  Miyamoto who is an Associate Professor at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3. The other presenters were Dr. Faith Acker, a research fellow at the Folger Library, who presented a fascinating paper entitled “Shaping Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Folds, Formatting and Paratexts from 1599 to 1790” and Professor Eleanor Shevlin from West Chester University who presented a provocative paper called “ A Matter of Formats: Genre Interplay and Remaking Marketplace Attitudes.”  My paper examined the folds and flaps in both the strip format of the 17th century British The Beginning, Progress and End of Man, and the booklet format of the 19th century Metamorphosis, or a transformation of pictures.   My aim was to contribute to the panel theme about folds and formats in terms of two questions in particular. They were, “Were content and format closely intertwined?” and “How did printers, engravers, or book sellers experiment with new forms and folds of publication with what results.” ?

In the 20 minutes allotted I did not progress much beyond showing images, sharing the questions, and handing out facsimiles for the audience to play with and perhaps speculate with. I shared that my answer to the two conference questions was a resounding yes. Regarding the first question, the format I argue makes or enables different kinds of content, the images and verses, to appear in different orders as they are manipulated by the reader -viewer-player or interactor.  Regarding the second question, in respect to the strip format, the printers used the wood blocks in unusual ways by placing them under the flaps or over the joins made by the closed flaps. (See https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/theconveyor/2017/02/06/transformations-in-print/1-adam_trans/

and

https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/theconveyor/2017/02/06/transformations-in-print/3-mermaid_trans/)

In the discussion after the facsimiles were distributed, one participant, a co-presenter, was intrigued by how the inner images under the flaps form a secret or private space that is  only revealed when the flaps are lifted (Shevlin remarks, Oct 26, 2019). This perceptive insight draws attention to what images are not immediately apparent but hidden beneath the flaps. The mermaid, eagle with child, heart as money bag and skeleton only appear when the double transformation has occurred by lifting both flaps.  Is there a quality that draws them together in this secret space? Or, since the double transformation is achieved in different ways in each panel: in the first two panels this is achieved by turning the top flap up and the lower flap down, while in the last two panels the flaps are usually turned in reverse order, does the pattern of revealing serve different functions? Moreover, in all seen versions, whether 4 or 5 panels in the printed versions and perhaps even more in the homemade texts, the order of these key images remains the same.

Looking at the first and last images for example further questions arise. With the first panel, could the hidden mermaid be a lure for the implied male viewer? (the verses suggest so). Yet, the mythic mermaid by her positioning under Adam/ Eve has a hidden connection with Eve. On the one hand, Eve is created by lifting the top flap of Adam’s torso–perhaps enacting as it were the biblical origin story. On the other hand, by the mermaid’s placement under both biblical figures she may suggest an alternate origin story for women. What would female viewers think?

(See https://sites.psu.edu/learningasplaying/2018/02/16/mermaid-at-the-centre/)

With the last panel, could the contrast between the richly garbed man and his naked skeleton be intended to be a moral shock as well as a conventional memento mori? The first and last images form stunning contrasts and unless the strip is refolded so they are juxtaposed sit at opposite ends of the text.

For their part, the two middle hidden images seem to serve a linking narrative function to me. The eagle with baby and the young man’s heart that chases gold are linked to the final image of the rich man/ skeleton tying these three episodes together. Child, youth, age and death –the stages of man.

I have been discussing the images when the flaps are lifted in the intended order following the instructions. When we disobey the directions and turn contrarywise, we discover incongruities not referred to in the verse, like the merman and a monster made of the lion and eagle in the opposite manner to the Griffin. Yet due to the design and way the text and images are formed, no matter a reader-viewer-player’s patterns of engagement, the inner, hidden images remain

photograph courtesy of Bénédicte Miyamoto