Then four, and more to come...

And then there were three.

Serendipity?

It seems serendipity struck on 18th November 2010 when, on opening a box at Special Collections, I found this binding.

A quick search on internet revealed the similarity to the coat of arms of the Pinto family, which also has five crescent moons. However, which family member was the bibliophile? The U.v.A description does not give further details. My query on this blog was answered by an Italian reader who enclosed a link to the Italian/Napoletan Pinto's with a coat of arms with the same five crescents. Meanwhile I was thinking in the direction of the most famous Pinto on the internet, being the 68th Grandmaster of the Sovereign Military Order of Saint John Knights of Malta, the Portuguese Manuel Pinto de Fonseca (1681-1773). And indeed it was long thought the armorial bindings were his (Guichard 1890). It wasn't until last week that further clues regarding the provenance came to me through K.G. According to Storm van Leeuwen the bindings are from the book collection of the Portuguese/Jewish Aaron Joseph de Pinto (1710-1758) from Amsterdam. 
A lucky find which merits my further research. Back to library and archive.
Serendipity with a birthday feeling.

J. Storm van Leeuwen, Dutch Decorated Bookbinding in the Eighteenth Century. 't Goy/Houten: Hes & De Graaf, 2006. 4 vols.

Ongoing

inspiration often comes from the unforeseen. At the present I am motivated from several directions. Firstly being asked to write an exposition on the value of provenance for book history. Secondly by an unforeseen flow of interaction with ex-University of Amsterdam book researcher K.G., who has spent the past thirty+ years, among other things, reassembling the library of the bibliophile 16th century Dutch pastor Jacob Buyck. And last but not least by a reader of this blog, omnivore like myself, who through her work in Rabelais.nl, led me to re-examine an insignificant paper on Samuel Kinser's monograph Rabelais's Carnival, written during my Comparative Literature studies, in which Rabelais is not so much the object of discussion, as is Kinser's research method.

How to trace specific ownership marks and marginalia? How to go about reassembling a long dispersed library? A day of testing several sites with provenance research options left me with ambiguous feelings. It appears that searching online for specific traces of use is not only a time consuming but also a daunting occupation. Unsatisfactory, because provenance records are not always included in descriptions and even then they are not always mentioned in the online entries. I entered the name of the well known bibliophile Marcus Fugger in the C.E.R.L. Thesaurus and got zero result. I find that hard to believe. The thesaurus is linked to a long list of European libraries and zero result would mean none of these libaries have a book formerly owned by Marcus Fugger? Ideally, every book should be checked from front to back for traces of use and a thorough description made of the evidence found, according to standard, searchable entries. A lot of work and not enough librarians to do the job. The ambiguity lies therein that looking for traces of use is a mountain of work and this is a good thing because that mountain covers a wealth of unidentified gems for the lucky finder.  
To end on a positive note, the provenance page of the library of Lyon is a feast for the eye. Multi searchable, very complete descriptions and with photographs of relevant details.

Temporarily finished the ABC with a final entry on 'Why study traces of use?', a subject that merits its own page. 

Continuing the ABC

Have reached 'potential pitfalls' and it is time for reflection. My own pitfall number one might be spending too much time on the ABC. Moving it to the Traces of Use site was much more work than I had counted on as the pictures had to be moved as well. And futhermore regularly going back and forth in the list, correcting, adding and deleting. Time well spent, but also a prevailing feeling that this ABC project will never end. Pitfall number two is the looming alienation of this blog. Do I want that to happen? Back to blog, books, and research next week!

Glitch

Once again a glitch during the uploading of new entries for the ABC, resulting in the loss of material going back to the beginning of February, so have decided to move the ABC to the Traces of Use site.

'Internetless in Burgundy', always makes me think of Eyeless in Gaza. Association of sounds. But, things seem to be getting better, because in all probability this time Burgundy will not be internetless. 10 days of peace and quiet and time to get on with the ABC, if not online, then offline.
As yesterday's comment says: with as much information as possible and RELEVANT. To which I would like to add: with as many photo's as is neccessary to illustrate the material.

How much information should a lemma contain?

The ABC is turning out to be a most time-consuming project. Production is hardly more than a lemma a day also because I'm meanwhile refining the earlier ones. With the purpose of producing a list of lemma's that will enlighten the uninformed without concessions to the reliability of the content.

When, on waking up in the morning, I find myself blind-typing my thoughts, I know I'm spending too much time behind my computer!
Posted an identification question on the C.E.R.L. platform. (Also in: 'Does anyone know'). 

Completed A, B and C, and a provisional restyling of this blog.
After which unfortunately the just completed C and D dissapeared from the blog.
22.12: Rewritten C and D.

Compiling an ABC of traces of use, inspiration toward a first chapter on the status quo of research into marginalia and book ownership. A list of lemma's. The accompanying descriptions will follow.

Back to book business after over a month of activity elsewhere.

Among other things a visit to the Baliem Valley on Indonesian West Papua. I now have an impression of what the Papuans were doing in the 16/17th century as this was probably more or less the same thing they are doing today. Life in the Baliem Valley has hardly evolved since the Stone Age, not even since the valley was discovered in 1938. Of course visiting westerners introduced the obligatory T-shirts and jeans, but these are mere accessories for tribal gear.

A visit to a remote mountain valley without books or signposts, where schoolteacher Simson wears his tribal headset with snazzy sweat shorts and teaches his pupils elementary stuff about the world beyond. A world one day's walk and forty-five minutes by airplane from their village, a world they might never visit. 

A valley where tourists leave marginalia on rocks.

 

Quest

Worthwhile trek on foot through Amsterdam blizzard to obtain two articles on provenance research by Goran Proot and Steven van Impe, both of which turn out to be very useful for futher development of my provenance research.

Steven van Impe, 'Pronto: een ontologie voor het onderzoek van herkomstmerken'. In: Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis. 2008. Nijmegen/Leiden: Uitgeverij Vantilt/NBV. 

Goran Proot, 'Gebruikssporen in programmaboekjes voor het collegetoneel van de jesuïten in de Provincia Flandro-Belgica (1575-1773). In: Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis. 2008. Nijmegen/Leiden: Uitgeverij Vantilt/NBV.  

Lion sitting on top of the gable of a seventeenth century warehouse on the Brouwersgracht, Amsterdam, built in the same period as the Lyon research corpus. The kinglike lion wears a golden crown, an element that features in many 16/17/18th century coats of arms, as on the binding of D'Este's Consolaçam Christaã above. This lion and a  companion lamb were pulled out of a disposal container during restoration activities in the ignorant 1970's by two resourceful ladies Dea and Han, and replaced where they had belonged for many centuries.

S.P.R. in L. continued: revaluation

A very inspiring day with presentations concerning the development of databases of ownership marks and other traces of use, by representatives of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, the Uppsala University Library and the Consortium of European Research Libraries. A most important undertaking which unfortunately is still very much a home country affair. There are however plans for international collaboration, which would hugely benefit provenance research. Some interesting case studies and a lecture by David Pearson, which had drawn me to the symposium in the first place. Prime provenance researcher, with an open attitude to innovation and to the range of the possiblities of research of traces of use; I felt reassured about my doubts about interpretation of (greek) annotations and went home eager to revalue my findings up until now.

The symposium was a joint initiative of the Leiden University Library and the Scaliger Insitute, also in Leiden. It seems the lectures will be made available on the site of the latter.

Symposium Provenance Research in Leiden

An uploading day! 

So many questions

Time goes by. Sometimes screening a pile of books a day. Some days just staring at the pictures on my computer. Wondering about the importance of detail, as when studying comparative literature, where every sentence could unveil a clue.
The Lisbon books do not disappoint. They appeal to me because I can read them. I can read the preliminary leaves in which the role of the inquisition and religion is illustrated beyond any doubt. I can feel the age in which they were written and published. If I were only looking for traces of use I would be disappointed: hardly any traces of use in the traditional sense. Does that matter? Researchers hope to find traces of use that will modify perception. Maybe it is also comforting to leaf through a book that clearly has been read, but has no annotations to prove it. Not a pristine copy, but thumbed pages.
And yet...
To remove the unasuming protective box and to find this on a binding is a thrill.

Diego de Mendoça, Guerra de Granada. 

En Lisboa: Por Giraldo de la Viña. Año 1627. 

U.v.A. call number OTM: O 63-6465

Future

Coming out was quite a step, but starting all over has many advantages. All forms of traces of use will remain my point of interest. As annotations could not exist without the text they refer to and in view of the fact that my decision to leave the Lyonese publications was instigated by my frustration at not being able to fully grasp the Latin texts, I have decided to switch to books in a language I do understand. Since my passive Portuguese is more or less fluent, I have chosen Lisbon editions as a starting point and postpone further decisions on expansion or limitation of the corpus until the size and content of this new corpus becomes clear. Interestingly an initial survey reveals almost all Lisbon titles in the collection of the University of Amsterdam to be in Portuguese, most of the Lyon books being in Latin.

In addition to the obvious traces of use I will look for any publishing information for the contemporary reader in the preliminary leaves and colophon, i.e. on content, price of the book, reason for publishing, and also make a cursory inventory of illustrations on the title pages, decorated initials (P.D. will surely appreciate that), head- and tail-pieces.

These past months have not been in vain as there is a bulk of material lying dormant in my computer for future reference.