The dominant position of an mediocre book. The Perfect Dyer part two.

A few weeks ago the mailman brought a package that would complete my solitary standing second volume. To be precise: now that I finally got a copy of Delormois' Nouveau teinturier parfait' (1769), I have been able to read it in full.
And that includes the preface. Beside its state of the 18th century art recipes it is interesting to note how the booklets advertise themselves.
The name is already a nod to the standard guidebook of the time, the Teinturier parfait, but it comes clear from the text that it is not meant to replace, but to supplement. As a example, page 9 of the foreword mentions that the frequent use of vermillion (kermes) in the earlier book is totally replaced by cochenille. No wonder: most recipes from the Teinturier date from around 1650. It also explains the focus on 'special' colours (jujube, belette, ardoise - a deep granite grey bordering on lilac - ), as the regular reds green and blues had already had their part in the previous manual.
Surely, Delormois (anonymous still in this edition) had some harsh critique on his predecessor, but admits that the book is 'assez bon pour ce qui concerne l'accessoire de la teinture & qu'il s'en fait plusieurs editions'.
Especially the ardoise interests me at the moment: more on that in a later post.

What Dante felt like: Veltro and the feltro

I can truly admire when someone writes a book about something so specific that it should be nerdy and trivial, but in a manner that (at the end) you think to have read something really special.
This is exactly the case in Leonardo Olschki's 'The myth of felt'. Mr. Olschki is clearly a specialist in Dante literature, but he takes his reader on a journey on account of just one sentence in the first canto of the Divina Commedia:

E sua nazion sara tra feltro e feltro

No-one really knows what is feltro. Well, actually it is of course the word for felt as a fabric, but the meaning is obscure. To make things even more complex, one of the central themes of the canto is the 'Veltro', the Greyhound, as a symbol for the powerdul leader that would lead Rome/Italy out of its moral confusion. So it is also a grammatical joke(?) with its subject.
Olschki supplies a double explanation, first a tour in Tartaric tradition in which felt is also a royal fabric, and in which kings are lifted by their lower officials on felt, both at the start of their reign and at their burial.
Then he switches to the mythical twins Castor and Pollux, and their designation as the classical good sign/omen and their traditional depiction with felt Phrygian caps.

As the booklet build up slowly with its theory, the royal grandeur of the humble fabric works all over the pages. Felt-obsessed Beuys would have been proud (would he have known the book). One thing is clear at the end of the book. Felt can be seen as something royal, powerful, or if you want - that something this interlaced, and this strongly layered, can only be compared to life itself.
Fascinating read!

Coffin dyeing: black, white and ... yellow

In a very nice booklet called 'De volmaakte schrijnwerker' (the obsession with perfection is clear in the titles of craft books), published around 1860, some recipes are given especially for coffins. The reason for this is simple: coffins needed to be ready in several hours in the desired colour shade, and the usual recipes often called for days or even weeks of drying.
Black dye is made out of thin glue with Frankfurt black powder, and varnished with a mixture of 16 lood Venetian turpentine and 1 lood sandarac (thinned with hot turpentine-oil to the thickness of common oilpaint).
A more expensive version of the varnish was made with amber, which had to be boiled, mixed in small amounts with turpentine oil, and cleared through a clean cloth, and cooled afterwards before use.
In the text following more recipes are given for a luxurious white ('waardoor de kist zal blinken als glas') to glitter in the sunlight, brown (umbra or Keulsch aarde), and red (roode oker of Engelsch rood),
all more dark and sober shades of red.
But it surprised me to find a specific paragraph on yellow, to be made out of fine yellow ochre. Yellow is a rather unusual colour in the Dutch folkloristic spectre.
It just feels not Dutch, and out of its place. That must surely be my own prejudice.
Next time I visit an old cemetary, however, my thoughts will at least be more colourful than before...

The changing face of the Perfect Dyer

In my search on the development of dyeing literature a continuous focus for me is the 'Teinturier parfait', the Perfect Dyer, a handbook that was by far the most printed handbook in the 18th century. As I pointed out in an earlier post, there are several books printed with this title, but the major book (the (incorrectly attributed) Delormois book) turns also out to be a developing book.

I recently acquired a copy of the 1724 version as printed by Claude Jombert (the 3rd volume of a larger 4 volume set on many more arts and manufactures). While the later Teinturier Parfaits (as printed after 1747, maybe even the 1737 Avignon edition) have 4 parts, the 1724 edition has only half this text and describes in 23 chapters the same subject and chapters as the later editions till part 2, chapter 8. To make it even more confusing, pagination is almost the same in all editions. The earlier edition, however, uses a much larger font, and much less dense use of the pages. But is also offers slightly more: the descriptions are much more precise on some points, especially on provenance. And while some are clearly wrong (possibly simply gone corrupt and unintentional - f.e. p. 296: sieur Haghe de la Haye), most point in the same direction for authorship: a manuscript by Henri Gobelin from 1631 (p. 336), as copied by his nephew.

This also would provide the answer why some recipes are outdated, but in a highly conservative (still almost guild-like) environment as 18th-c. dyeing, they would probaly have counted as 'the good old way' and complemented with newer versions rather than replaced. It also explains the way this kind of recipe-books grew, and why the 1716 version could still furnish a reprint of a 16th century Ruscelli tractate. It depicts a closed culture where novelties were tried and tested over and over before acceptation, and excellent provenance of recipes was obligatory.

The starless, bible-black and cobblestone patterned.

Bible-black is a term that is loaded with emotion. It evokes something deeply religious, maybe sometimes in a negative way but also an honest piety.
It is a term that, perhaps only in my mind, must almost stand for one definite colour. There can be none, however. I remember an issue of the fashion magazine View on Colour (now merged in Provider) that was devoted to black, and had a small sample card of blacks that were deemed fashionable in the coming years. All blacks, but oh so different in hues, shinyness, and depth.
But it is probably just a perception of blackness. As Dali once proposed that he thought that the centre of the world was the earring in Vermeer's picture (as the light in the picture seems to come from the earring, instead of direct sunlight), I would propose another counterpart.

The way the simple stone casts a shadow on a child's grave in Walker Evans' Let us now praise famous men, that could well be bible-black.

The strange thing is that those black bibles, supposedly so basic and stark, in fact, have traits of fashion. While Dutch black bibles tend to be matte, in discreet sharkskin clad. German black bibles are made from bovine leather, polished with arabic gum. English-made bibles tend to be made from longer-grained morocco. It is not only by country that black bibles are divided, also preferences in taste over time are visible when carefully comparing.

The exact numbers are unknown to me, but certainly worth exploring. I owe it to my fascination with a word.

The joyful side of strict christianity

Combinations of religion and art forms have always fascinated me, and its more abstract components are even more interesting. To paint Biblical scenes is rather straightforward, but the clearly religious feeling in modern art (think Mark Rothko or Bill Viola) is more complex.
But also 'merely' decorative art sometimes has unusual roots. This interesting article show the link between Herrnhutter protestantism and brocade paper industry.

Job Baster and Philip Miller. The Dutch-English madder connection.

English horticulturist Philip Miller travelled to the Netherlands in the mid-18th century and is known to have met Dutch physician and scientist Job Baster at Middelburg. Shortly after, Miller published a book on the cultivation of madder in the Dutch Zeeland province (1758), probably helped in his desciption by Baster (who, in his turn, translated several of Miller's works on garden culture).
He advocates the culture of madder in England, but warns against a simple matter of planting and growing. He notices the details of soil selection for madder, and distinguishes three kinds of madder, all cultivated and traded as roots and shoots. A first without mention of origin, but supposedly the Dutch mother plants, are preferable as planting material. A second (aspera), imported from France and Spain, is decidedly inferior. A third, native to the English coast, is described as still botanically the same species, but clearly unsuitable for culture.

Painted vellum bindings: German Pietism

A few days after writing on painted vellum and with the subject still kind of murmuring in my head, I came across this beautiful, almost modern art, vellum binding on a typically Pietist German book, the Güldene Rose by Christoph Schütz.
Not unlike Jansenist bookbindings, Pietism seems to have developed an aesthetical standard of its own.

Mostly clad in solemn black on the outside (remniscent of the Dutch sharkskin tradition in Bibles), they often have fine brocade endpapers, - and even more baroque illustrations. This booklet, however, seems to imitate tortoise bindings in an abstract way. The technique is probably a simple bleach-out (unfortunately also often heavily deteriorating the leather, as are the diverse way of bleaching, staining and marbling with vitriol that were popular in the 18th century).

Painted vellum bookbindings in the 18th century

The batiked vellum bindings of the fin-de-siècle may be unique in their blend of Eastern technique with Western style, the extensive decoration of vellum in itself was not invented in this period. Although I have not yet seen much attention to it in bookbinding specialist books, there has certainly been a wave of painted vellum bindings. I have seen several Dutch examples during the past few years in auctions (alas, no pictures for now), and it seems to be a personalised trait in protestant Christian works. While the Protestant wing is for me most known for their black 'sharkskin' bibles with eleaborate silverwork (on which a beautiful book is written by Bernard van Noordwijk: De erfenis van Kortjakje - in Dutch), there certainly has been a fine and personal way of decorating religious books, maybe inspired by the baroque (but still deeply devotional) Pietist works that were made and published in Germany during the same time.
Most of these bindings feature a central gilt emblem (stamped but not from a clear mould, as front and back sides often slightly differ) and floral motifs (mostly in red). Of course the silver (double) clasps would not lack on such special bindings.
The colours that were used feature a distinct yellow (more yellow than the usual blank skin colour), the green that was also used for almanac bindings, and fiery red for the flowers.
I hope to collect more definite material, including images.
As usual: hopefully to be continued.

Lion Cachet - 'Catalogus der tentoonstelling' - 1898

Lion Cachet chose not to make a homogenous series of bindings for the (rather boring) subject of a catalogue showing objects related to the (Royal Dutch) Oranje Nassau family. Three copies for the royal family were made in purple and yellow (shown below), other copies had more orange/yellow hues.

Lion Cachet - Rembrandt portefeuille (1898)

Counterpart to the portfolio of the Maris exhibition, Lion Cachet made this time more use of an almost puzzle-like grid of entwining forms. When I have a picture with good detailing I will place it here.

Couperus - De stille kracht (1900)

Perhaps the most well-known batik design for Dutch literati and other book lovers.
Chris Lebeau designed the cover, but it was in fact executed by the 'Arts and Crafts' firm of John Uiterwijk, in Apeldoorn (an enterprise that was financially backed and run by Agathe Wegerif, an influential woman in the Dutch Art Nouveau scene, and inventor of some quite handsome batik work). Marjan Groot even claims that the actual execution of the binding was in the hands of the flamboyant Wegerif, in an well-written article that can be found
here

It is known in five versions, including a limited edition of 40 copies on pink velvet. Several variant bindings exists, mostly grouped in four similar types, on which van Vliet in his book on the bindings of Couperus' books extensively.
Although not made in vellum, I have included it in my list here, as one of the few bindings in which the batik motifs were especially designed.

Nieuwenhuis - Hofker - Gedachten en verbeeldingen (1906)

The binding Theo Nieuwenhuis designed for Hofker's book is rather conventional, but the most interesting thing about this book is actually the multitude of versions that exists in its colourscheme. Made in a luxurious edition of 50 copies. Both versions directly above and under this text are part of the bookbinding collection at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek of The Hague.



Antiquariaat Schuhmacher presented a red vellum version (with decoration and lettering in black) on the Amsterdam Book Fair in 2006 with the following description (the price was € 9250):

The text ornaments differ from the copies on ordinary paper. In most cases copies batiked on uncoloured vellum are seen (a copy will be shown and is available on the fair). Decorations and lettering might be in different colours: we know of copies with brown, and also with blue. No copy is exactly the same owing to the batik technique. Nothing is known yet about the executor of the design, it might have been Nieuwenhuis himself. Pencil lines setting out the decoration scheme are slightly visible under the red surface; in the uncoloured vellum copies these lines are (of course) removed.



Another copy (shown above) was auctioned at Dutch auction house Burgersdijk & Niermans (and sold for 2200 € excluding buyer's premium). Their copy is monogrammed MM on the back side, which they suppose to be made for Dutch/American detective writer Maarten Maartens. Probably most copies are monogrammed on their backsides (judging by recent copies showing up in the trade - one at a late 2011 catalogue of Dutch bookseller Fokas Holthuis, and another one at the fall auction of The Hague auction house Van Stockum) - makes you wonder whether the copies were made to order from a (yet un-)known list of subscribers.

Lion Cachet - Album Thijs Maris (1900)

C.A. Lion Cachet produced this folio map, which can be seen as a counterpart to the Rembrandt map of the same format. The huge size gave possibilities for an almost cloud like tree or foliage motive held in more solid coloured corners. In its decorative and repeating style it is still reminiscent of traditional batik but in a very individual take that is entirely original. Other details show more distinctively the time of its making, like the gilt type in the centre crafted in the fashionable vein of fonts around 1900.

A very well reproduced cover can be found here

Dutch antiquarian bookseller Fokas Holthuis sells this book with the following description:

Album Thijs Maris. [Haarlem, Kleinmann, 1900]. Original gilt and batiked vellum.(8) p. + 18 lvs. w. laid-down helio-engravings after work of Thijs Maris. [Printed in an edition of 75 copies]. (...) in astonishing condition. € 2500 (they earlier sold a mediocre copy for 150 €, so condition is really important for this book) Newprice of the book was 80 guilders, comparable to some € 950 today.

West-European batik bookbindings - Dutch Art Nouveau

At the end of the 19th century a (sometimes idealized) interest of Dutch artists in the craftmanship of Indonesian artisans grew. Some learned to make resists or tried to imitate it, in its Indonesian batik form.
While batik was applied to a large array of objects, the idea to make resists on vellum or parchment became a technique in which they developed a world of their own.
Also batiked wood forms a category in which European artists deviated from Asian models, which were more focused on textiles.



Batiked vellum was used for standalone objects (small screens and other household objects), but sometimes also produced in serial form, mainly as bookbindings.
While the use of natural dyestuffs would surely fit into the ideals (often influenced by English theoreticists like Morris and Ruskin) of these artists, it remains largely unknown which wax and colours they exactly used.

At first I will try to make a list of books that had trade editions in batiked vellum, later to be followed by a list of probaly unique presentation copies.
A lot of these books are described in the standard work on Dutch Art Nouveau bookbinding, by Ernst Braches (Nieuwe Kunst en het boek), but I hope this list will be able to bring together a combination of useful sources. I will make each in a separate message, searchable by the keywords batik and vellum.

Chayroot-renters and the high price of quality

In many sources, the better (or at least different) quality of chay (Oldenlandia umbellata) relative to madder (Galium sp.) is often mentioned. However, chay is less often found in textiles, and (in contrast to madder) seems not to have been exported - and therefore is a typical indicator of Indian provenance for ancient fabrics. But if chay was truly this superior to ordinary madder, why has madder always been the popular favorite?
The reason for this relative rarity, especially when compared to the fame of its dyeing qualities, may well be found in the possibility that chay was never cultivated as such as a crop, but harvested by specialised landless peasants.
Bancroft (after Roxburgh) talks of 'extensive cultivation' along the Malabar coast, but mentions also that only roots of calcium-rich near-sea plants are valuable.
As opposed to the plants on 'stiff clay', which would be worth next to nothing.
Sea-level sand beaches don't come up in my mind when I think of harvesting and agriculture, but maybe this is too black-and-white.

An interesting small text on this can be found in 'Madras versus America' (1866), in a part that discusses the plantation of American cotton by Arthur Lees in Tinnevelly (now Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu).
It continues:

'An obstacle, however, arose to his own cultivation from the claims of the Chayroot renters. These men paid a considerable sum to Government for the right to dig up all the Chayroot (*) produced in the Tinnevelly district, whether on waste land, or on land occupied with dry cultivation. This right had been farmed out from time immemorial ; and accordingly in December, 1850, nearly a whole year after the com-
mencement of the Cotton culture, the Chayroot renters claimed the privilege of entering the fields under culture by Mr. Lees, and of their digging up the Chay-roots with a kind of spear about a foot and a half long. Mr. Lees of course resisted this claim, especially as the digging for the roots was injurious to the cultivation of American Cotton.
(*) A root from which a certain dye is extracted.



The Clayroot renters then demanded compensation. The matter was brought to the notice of the Court of Directors by the Manchester Commercial Association ; and the Directors instructed the Madras Government to relieve Mr. Lees from any demand in excess of the regular assessment ; and on the renewal of the Chayroot farms to restrict the renters to the uncultivated lands. The Madras Government, however, had already anticipated those orders, by cancelling the existing Chayroot farm, and by restricting the terms of future farms in such a way as to debar the renters from all lands under cultivation. The matter led to some further correspondence as to the propriety of levying an assessment on the lands producing Cotton, equal to what was levied on lands producing Chayroot. As, however, it subsequently appeared that Mr. Lees's experiment had proved a failure, the quantity obtained being insufficient to pay the cost of culture, no alteration was made in the assessment, and things remained as they were.

The text is not completely clear on the status of the 'Chayroot farms', but these may well be places for collecting and milling to powdered dyestuffs. The chayroot seems to have been collected from special places, rather than grown in fields as a cultured and domesticated plant itself.

The emergence of synthetic red in Central America

It is often stated that synthetic dyes (especially red) took off fast and spectacular in Central America, and that the why of this is still an open question.
Just as wild hypothesis now, but could it be an anti-colonialistic reaction to the cochenille-trade that was largely in the hands of the Spanish colonizers/usurpers?
That synthetic dyes provided a way to break free of the obligation to buy their own product at overrated prices from the hands of the Spanish?
Besides, the obsession with bright reds would have found a welcome counterpart in the synthetic colours.
Just a mental note. More on this later?

Traditions in shagreen leather dyeing: black, green and blue

Shagreen leather (not to be confused with the shark or ray skin variety) was mainly made from horse or onager skin. Only a small part of the animals' backs is truly suitable.
After an initial treatment the grain side is showered with Chenopodium album (named alabuta) seeds, and covered with one or two layers of felt. This must be put under great pressure, so that the seeds leave their typical pattern in the still moist skin.

As several 19th century manuals (Hebert, 1838/Aikin, 1808) state: 'The beautiful green dye is given by soaking the inner or flesh side of the skin with a saturated solution of sal ammoniac, strewing it over with copper fillings, rolling it up with the flesh side inwards, and pressing each skin with considerable weight, for about 24 hours, in which time the sal-ammoniac dissolves enough of the copper to penetrate the skin with an agreeable see-green colour: this is repeated a second time, to give the colour more body. Blue shagreen is dyed with indigo, dissolved in an impure soda, by means of lime and honey. Black shagreen is dyed with galls and vitriol.'

Poplar cotton or poplar silk? The experiment continues...

As mentioned earlier, the late 18th century saw a rise in (protectionism-triggered?) experiments to make cotton from home-grown plants.
F.X. Herzer was the main German researcher in this respect, but he based his efforts mainly on the work by Lindquist in the Swedish Annals of the Royal Academy and the machine Lindquist invented for the process. (A description of L.'s machine can be found in Bd. VII, p. 51 etc.). He also refers to the product as such: 'Swedische Baumwolle', that is what it is supposed to be.
Local names would be 'Jolster' or 'Hälster' in Swedish, where it was collected (as Herzer states) in Ostgotland and Smaland. (Gesammelte Nachrichter, 1793).
But the actual use seemed limited: the suggestion was to use the 'silk' (Herzer gets more and more lyrical about the matter in the course of writing) for repairing worn stockings. And then still, seed removal remained hard and laborous.

A neglected treatise on 18th-c. dyeing in India, pt. 2

Earlier, I published a text on a supposed 'neglected' text by Buchoz. It turns out that he probably copied (at least partly, and, again, true to his reputation) the Journal oeconomique of 1756. The anonymous author in the June-September issues mentions at least the same M. Guillard as informant. Schwartz (1966) has some more information on Guillard. To quote him: 'Guillard, already in Yanaon in 1727, went to Masulipatam comptoir in 1738, and was in Pondicherry by 1742. He fought with Paradis at the siege of Pondicherry in 1748, and rose to be general treasurer of the company between 1754 and 1758.'
This makes the information by Guillard in his Yanaon function only possible before 1742. The Beaulieu report, made prior to 1735, could well be based on the same informant, or maybe Beaulieu was simply also the anonymous author of the Journal oeconomique.