Hollar etchings for Ashmole's book on the Order of the Garter

title page

Bookplate of Clements R. Markham, with notes

Elias Ashmole, The Institution, laws & ceremonies of the most noble Order of the Garter. London, 1672

Renaissance Center copy is in modern half brown morocco and brown cloth; license-to-print and errata leaves wanting (supplied in facsimile); errata list also supplied in ms.; armorial bookplate of Clements R. Markham on front pastedown; mounted on front pastedown is a ms. note (perhaps extracted from a list of bequests?): "Fellowes. To Lilian Mrs. Fellowes daughter of my dear old messmate and friend Sir Vesey Hamilton. 1. Ashmoles Knights of the Garter [i.e. this work; followed by two other titles, both by W.H. St. John Hope]"; the note is likely by Markham, as both Hamilton and Markham served in HMS Assistance (DNB); laid in is a small sheet headed: "Some errors in the engraved coats-of-arms [at p. 708 ff.] noted by Reginald Courtenay in Feb. 1928.


Thus far I have used these blog entries to write about items absolutely unique to the Renaissance Center's collection, that is, books with manuscript material, identifiable provenance, or one-of-a-kind bindings. But today's entry centers on a printed book, one that is not unique to our collection, yet one that because of its remarkable qualities nevertheless deserves our attention. Its illustrations particularly deserve our attention (and reproduction through digital imagery), for they are some of the most beautiful plates ever produced by the etcher Winceslaus Hollar.

The book is Elias Ashmole's The Institution, laws & ceremonies of the most noble Order of the Garter, an impressive folio volume that describes its subject in over seven-hundred pages of carefully prepared antiquarian detail. Elias Ashmole was known variously as an astrologer, alchemist, and antiquarian, and in this latter capacity helped catalog the curiosity cabinet owned by the Tradescant family of Lambeth, a collection that would form the cornerstone of Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum. A staunch Royalist, Ashmole conceived of The Institution in the 1650s, a time when he feared that the long-standing and prestigious Order of the Garter (the founding of which is most commonly attributed to King Edward III) would slip into oblivion. The Order the Garter is Britain's most exclusive chivalric order, the members consisting solely of the monarch, Prince of Wales, and no more than twenty-four other noblemen. Ashmole intended his book as a "formulary" for the various practices and customs associated with the Order, and he hoped the extensive antiquarian and heraldic research he poured into the book would preserve those customs for posterity. 

If the idea for the book began in the 1650s as a way to sustain Royalist and elite English culture in the absence of monarchical government, the book's post-Restoration publication in 1672 coincided with a reestablishment of the king's power and the Order itself, that "quintessentially Royalist cult" as Michael Hunt describes it (DNB). It may come as no surprise, then, that the book begins with a full-page engraving of Charles II  (signed by William Sherman).

To round out the Institution's information about the Order's customs and ceremonies, the etcher Winceslaus Hollar was commissioned to create dozens of illustrative plates. These etchings are  beautifully executed and amazingly detailed in their depiction of various buildings, material objects, and ceremonies related to the Order of the Garter. Even the book's historiated initials are beautifully illustrated, as seen in the images below (depicting St. George and the dragon, a symbol vital to the Order's iconography). 

Hollar was well known for his etchings of buildings and churches, especially his ability to represent even the minutest of architectural details. The following images of St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle—some of which appear in the book as folding plates—will give you a sense for Hollar's skill in this regard.

These images are also interesting because they depict a newly restored St. George's Chapel, a building which had suffered much damage at the hand of Parliamentary armies during the Civil War.  While these images depict a empty space others outline the various processions and ceremonies the Order would perform within such spaces. The fourth image's depiction of wall tapestries in St. George's Hall is truly stunning in its detail.

detail of previous image

Many of Hollar's plates illustrate the variety of material objects—most of them ornately decorated—that the Order of the Garter used in its elaborate ceremonies. The first image depicts objects worn by all Order members, such as the garter, collar, hood, surcoat, and feathered cap, as well as the "sovereign's mantle" worn only by the monarch.

This next image shows "the ancient habits and ensigns assigned to the Officers of the Order" juxtaposed against "the present habits, ensigns, and badges" of those same officers. The following images depict other badges worn by members of the Order.

Two other objects associated with the Order's ceremonies include the "bag of the seal of the Garter" and the "book of the seal of the Garter," both of which are shown below.

Finally, the book's plates also depict scenes related to European monarchs and their "investiture" into the Order of the Garter, as part of a chapter on "the investiture of strangers." The plate below shows "the manner of sitting at dinner" performed by Maximilian II (of the Holy Roman Empire) and King Ferdinand II of Spain during their feasts of investiture. 

Probably my favorite image in the whole book also comes from this chapter. During the investiture of Charles XI of Sweden in 1668 (at Stockholm), his court put on an elaborate fireworks display to celebrate the conferment of this signal honor. Etchings of fireworks are simply beautiful, and this plate is no exception. There is something about the contrast between the light of fire and darkness of night that I find so striking in these images. As such, this delicate composition between light and dark is easily lost in poor photographic reproductions; the EEBO image of William Marshall's brilliant engraving of Egyptian fireworks in George Sandys' A Relation of  Journey (1615) is a prime example. Here are Hollar's etchings of the Swedish fireworks:

detail

detail

To accompany the etching we have Ashmole's detailed description, which outlines the elaborate fire- and water-works shown in the image:


"The Fire-works above mentioned, which the King of Sweden caused to be prepared, to close the Solemnity of his Investiture, and manifest to the world his great satisfaction in the honor received, were ordered in the following manner. In the middle of the work was erected a great Pillar 52 foot high, on the top of which was placed a gilt Crown; 18 foot below the Crown were the initial Letters of the Soveraign's and King of Swedens Christian Names, set breast to breast: and below at the Foot were placed several Military Colours, both of Horse and Foot, filled with Fire-works. This Pillar stood in the middle of four antique Trophies, filled with Fire, and upon each side of the Pillar, 40 foot distance from it, was placed St. George on Horseback, having the Dragon under his Feet, of 24 foot in length, and 28 in heighth, and on each side of St. George two Pyramids of 36 foot high. In several places of the Work were set great Wind-Pipes, filled with Water, for playing of Water-Balls, and round the Work about 2000 Musket-Pipes, 60 together in a Frame, with 72 Chests in and about the Work, full of Rackets 12 foot high, besides 28 Chests with Swarmers in the Earth, 2 foot high; and above 1000 Pattroles fired by Degrees, which flying high threw from them all sorts of Figures of Fire. Lastly, at each corner a Fire Murser, which threw up all sorts of pleasant Fire-Balls, and in their breaking presented several figures" (423-4).

Hollar etched another image of fireworks based on a display he saw in Hemissem, Belgium, which you can see at the University of Toronto's spectacular digital collection of Hollar etchings. 

I hope that the images I've provided above do justice to this beautiful book, yet I still encourage you to see it in person if you can, for it is truly a remarkable piece of craftsmanship, not only in its marshaling of a vast body of antiquarian knowledge, but also in its composition as a material book.

Manuscript verse on the Death of Queen Elizabeth

Raphael Holinshed, Third Volume of Chronicles. [London : Printed by Henry Denham, for John Harrison, George Bishop, Ralph Newbery, Henry Denham, and Thomas Woodcock, 1587]
3 v. in 2 ;  39 cm. (fol.)   STC (2nd ed.) 13569

Renaissance Center copy is in contemporary diced calf (rebacked); stamped in gilt on each cover of each volume is the garter, enclosing a griffin crest, surmounted by a ducal coronet (perhaps one of the dukes of Montagu?); this copy includes an additional physical volume, containing most of one of the 18th-century editions (attributed to 1728) of the sheets that had been removed, in which the units are signed a-zz (units a, b, and zz are not present; see Maslen for details); in this copy, v. 3, p. 1328-1331 are not cancelled; in v. 1, A2 is misbound following A3 ; only the text of the title page to v. 3 is present; the woodcut border incorporating 11 portraits (McKerrow and Ferguson 131; this use not noted) has been cut off; the text has been remargined and the page bordered with ms. ink rules; the full title page is supplied in facsimile; front free endpaper and flyleaves of v. 3 detached; there is crude hand coloring of initials and headpieces in v. 3; ms. verse on the death of Elizabeth on p. [1593], v. 3.

In the third volume of our copy of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a former owner has added in manuscript a short poem commemorating Queen Elizabeth I. In all likelihood the poem was written shortly after her death. It reads as follows:

Cum sistures hellep hur body to intear
whose lyuef to us wase odures and swet mear [myrhh]
you sacred nimpes hang gearlandes on hur tome
whose corpes doeth reste till hur redemur Cum

deum Elisabeth

While the italic hand (possibly belonging to a woman) is easy to read, the spelling makes for a relatively challenging transcription; for instance, by rhyming "mear" with "intear" ("inter"), I was able to determine the correct reading of "myrhh." The verse here is not spectacular, but its structure is interesting since the poem begins and ends with the same word. I am assuming the "sistures" and "sacred nimpes" are the muses, whom the poet calls upon to "hellep...intear" the Queen's body.

The volume has several more interesting features. The diced-calf binding features a gilt armorial stamp, which depicts "the garter, enclosing a griffin crest, surmounted by a ducal coronet (perhaps one of the dukes of Montagu?)" (according to our catalog record). The verso of the flyleaf bears an associated book label, which repeats the armorial design from the binding. This particular volume was housed in "Case H, Shelf 1." 

Several of the volume's ornaments and historiated initials have been hand-colored, perhaps by a contemporary. The unpolished coloring job possibly suggests it was executed with a stencil.

 

Special thanks to John Lancaster for finding this poem and cataloging this book. With the end of the semester and the holidays quickly approaching, this will probably be my last blog post of 2010. We've acquired some interesting materials in the last few weeks that I plan to write about in January. Thanks for reading and I'll see you in the New Year!

Bookplates and Provenance II: late 19th-early 20th centuries

Since I am giving a talk next Wednesday at the Center (Reading Room at 4pm on 11/10) on "Bindings and Bookplates" from the collection, I have focused this post on some of the materials I plan to discuss. During the talk I will demonstrate the historical styles and materials used in bookbinding with items from the collection, some of which I will pass around. I also plan on showing digital images of bookplates and labels from the collection representative of different styles and subjects. What follows are several bookplates from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. 

Nineteenth-Century Circular Style (1897)

Charles I, King of England, Reliquae sacrae Carolinae, or The works of that great monarch and glorious martyr King 

Charles I 

Hague [i.e. London] : Printed by Samuell Browne [i.e. by William DuGard for Francis Eglesfield], 1651.

[16], 276, [6], 268, 10, 149-324 p., [2] leaves of plates (1 folded) :  ill., port. : ;  18 cm. (8vo).

Renaissance Center copy 1 is in contemporary calf (rebacked; front inner hinge cracked); armorial bookplate of Alan Stepney-Gulston (printed in red, with printed date "1897" and place "Y Derwydd"; an additional portrait, of Charles II at age 19, is bound facing p. 231 of the Eikon basilike. 

Demonstrating the typical nineteenth-century "circular style," this bookplate belonged to Alan Stepney-Gulston of Derwydd estate, Carmarthenshire, Wales. Ownership of Derwydd estate has been traced back to 1500, but it is in the eighteenth century when the Stepney-Gulston family (arising from marriages to Sir Thomas Stepney of of Llanelli and Joseph Gulston) anchored its identity there. It seems the estate was in its heyday during the eighteenth century, went into a slow decline thereafter, and was eventually sold in 1998. Nonetheless, Derwydd's nineteenth-century residents had tried to restore the estate to its former splendor. Alan Stepney-Gulston (1844-1919), an avid collector of artifacts and sometime president of the Carmarthenshire Antiquarian Society, refurbished Derwydd and filled it with curious antiquities. Alan was also an accomplished poet, painter, and photographer. The Stepney-Gulston motto—"crescit sub pondere virtus"—commonly translates to "virtue thrives under oppression."

Bookplate as book: Vienna, 1916

Hugo Grotius, De jure belli ac pacis libri tres. Amstelodami : Sumptibus Abrahami à Someren, MDCLXXXIX [1689].
[14], XXXIV, 904, [16], 32, [108] p. :  ill., port. ;  21 cm. (8vo).  
Renaissance Center copy is in contemporary sprinkled calf (hinges partly cracked); bookplate of Oscar Ladner (dated in the plate 1916) on front pastedown

This bookplate adopts the form of an actual book, the title page bearing the typical ex libris information and an "imprint" noting where and when it was produced (Vienna, 1916). The plate belonged to Oscar Leopold Ladner,  an Austrian Jew of Bohemian descent who owned a factory in Vienna. With his wife Alice (depicted in the bookplate's "frontispiece"), he had a son Gerhart, who would become an accomplished twentieth-century art historian and produce important work on papal portraiture. In Vienna, the Ladners were acquaintances of Sigmund Freud and his daughter Anna.

The Lotos Club plate

Thomas De Laune, Tropologia, or, A Key to open scripture metaphors
London : Printed by John Richardson, and John Darby, for Enoch Prosser, at the Rose and Crown in Swithins Alley, at the East-End of the Royal Exchange in Cornhill, MDCLXXXI [1681].
[20], 207, [9], 14 p., 15-16 leaves, 17-328, 76, [12] p. ;  32 cm.   
Renaissance Center is in 19th-century full brown morocco with brown and blue morocco doublures; bookplate of Georgie Briar Slater on verso of front free endpaper; bookplate of the Lotos Club, New York, on front flyleaf; a signature at the top of A2r, dated 1755, with a strip of paper mounted over it, appears to read "John Gweilnap". 
Renaissance Center copy bound with: Benjamin Keach. Troposchēmalogia. London : Printed by John Darby, for the author, 1682. 

"In the afternoon they came into a land / in which it seemed always afternoon." The quote is from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "The Lotos Eaters" and serves as the motto for the New York City based "Lotos Club" (1870-present). It is one of the United States' oldest literary clubs and was apparently founded as a place to host and impress visitors from abroad. According to its constitution as cited on the club's website, “the objectives of this institution shall be to promote and develop literature, art, sculpture, music, architecture, journalism, drama, science, education and the learned professions, and to that end to encourage authors, artists, sculptors, architects, journalists, educators, scientists and members of the musical, dramatic, and learned professions in their work, and for these purposes to provide a place of assembly for them and other persons interested in and sympathetic to them, and their objectives, effort and work.” The design of the bookplate itself was clearly influenced by Egyptian art and the aesthetics of the Art Nouveau movement.

Harold Chapin's plate, with harlequin

Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso. In Venetia : Presso i Sessa, MDCIX [1609].
365 (i.e. 265), [5] leaves :  ill. ;  17 cm. (8vo).   
Renaissance Center copy is in contemporary (?) vellum (title page mutilated, removing most of date; date and description of 2L7,8 from Agnelli & Ravegnani); ms. "C.W. Heckethorn" on front; bookplate of Harold Chapin on front free endpaper (with the designer’s initials "S.L.R.") and his signature on front pastedown.

Harold Chapin (1886-1915) was an English stage actor and playwright who worked in London for the majority of his career. His plays were produced in the West End theaters as well as in New York City. He wrote several one-act plays and is best known for his three-act "The New Morality." Tragically Chapin was killed in action during World War I in the service of Britain's Royal Army Medical Corps. His "pictorial style" bookplate features a harlequin, one of the comic descendants of the zanni characters from commedia dell'arte and a fitting image for an actor. Chapin's four-act "Marriage of Columbine" features the typical theatrical trio of Columbine, Pierrot, and Harlequin. 

Ex Libris of Frederick Keel

William Hone, Ancient Mysteries Described: especially the English Miracle Plays 
London : Printed for William Hone, 45, Ludgate Hill, by J. M’Creery, Tooks Court, 1823.   
[2], x, [11]-298, [2] p., [4] leaves of plates (1 folded) :  ill. (1 col.) ;  22 cm.    
Renaissance Center copy is in a binding with a modern calf spine and earlier marbled boards and leather corners (lacks final advertisement leaf); bookplate of Frederick Keel on front pastedown, with his note on front free endpaper: "given to me from grandfather Compton’s library 1909. F.K." 

The German-American baritone singer Frederick James Keel (1874-1954) had a keen interest in the songs and ballads of early modern England. In 1909 he edited Elizabethan Love-Songs (London: Boosey and Company), which he dedicated to his wife. Keel also edited collections of folk songs and wrote his own ballads, including several with nautical themes. His pictorial bookplate exhibits influences of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century Art Nouveau movement. The pastoral scene represented on the plate depicts two young lovers listening to a harper within a picturesque landscape. As in the Chapin bookplate above, artist-book owners often used the iconography of the bookplate to symbolize their chosen artistic vocations.