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!