MIDDLECOASTS

Today's #YearOfHours #BookOfHours is Ms. Codex 2030, written and illuminated in France, possibly Paris, ca. 1500. It has four complete miniatures, five spaces for miniatures that contain outline drawings, and ten spaces for miniatures that are blank.

🔗:

200 million ya, Ireland and Scotland were a part of the same range as the Appalachian mountains, where, funny enough, the majority of Scottish and Irish emigrants settled in America.

It's Fine Press Friday!

This Friday we turn once again to our recent donation from the estate of artist and book collector Dennis Bayuzick with an edition of Nataniel Hawthorne's 1837 short story from Twice-Told Tales, Sights from a Steeple, printed here by Ronald Keller in 1988 at his Red Angel Press in Bremen, Maine, with an original 38 x 18-inch color wood engraving by Keller, printed in an edition of 100 copies signed by the artist/printer.

The engraving sits folded above the text, but can unfold and surround the text when opened. Hawthorne writes as an observer sitting in his lofty perch of a steeple in a New England seaport, presumably Salem, where he describes the surrounding countryside, distant sea, and gathering storm clouds. The text was printed in hand-set Plantin type, with Caslon titling, on Frankfurt paper, with the wood engraving printed in green, blue, and black on Sekishu paper.

View other books from the collection of Dennis Bayuzick.

Acrylic on paper mounted on hardboard.

Marbled Monday

This Marbled Monday our marbling has an unsettling vibe. This green, yellow, black, and red marbling with little gold flecks adorns the cover of The Maides Tragedy by English dramatist Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625) with wood engravings by Scottish artist Freda Bone (1905-1991) which we shared in a previous post. The book was printed in 1932 for Cheshire House in an edition of 1200 copies, but the play was originally published in 1619.

Frankly, I find this marbling somewhat unpleasant and it gives me a swampy feeling—I’m thinking the boiling lake that Grendel lives in/under from Beowulf. It is closest to either a Schrottel or Shell pattern, but appears to have been swirled a bit at the end of the process creating this uniquely stylized pattern. 

View more Marbled Monday posts.

Periodic table of US metro areas over 2 million people

by u/TheMapStack