[HN Gopher] "The most beautiful of all printed books," the Kelms...
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"The most beautiful of all printed books," the Kelmscott Chaucer
Author : geox
Score : 137 points
Date : 2023-08-05 01:35 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.openculture.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.openculture.com)
| billfruit wrote:
| I have one edition of Chauser illustrated by Rockwell Kent. But
| considering his usual standards, it is rather subdued.
| [deleted]
| lukas099 wrote:
| To me it looks like one of those adult coloring books.
|
| edit: actually read words of the article, which says "But thanks
| to Goodman, younger readers -- even much younger readers -- can
| enjoy it in coloring-book form."
| Pxtl wrote:
| Yeah, I thought the same thing. edit: of course the coloring
| book is a $40 CAD hardback. I mean $40 isn't a lot of money but
| I have a hard time justifying that for a disposable gift for my
| tweener kid.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Well, the PDF is freely downloadable - you can just print the
| drawings directly:
|
| https://www.kelmscottchauceronline.org/colouring-book
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jkingsman wrote:
| Love that it's fully digitized! I was so hoping for a PDF or
| equivalent I could peruse offline but alas maybe that's a project
| for this weekend.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Not fully:
|
| > The only aspect they cannot investigate fully is the whole
| text. The Kelmscott Chaucer is very much a book to be looked at
| rather than read.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Lovely.
|
| The Book of Kells is also a candidate. [edit: though it wasn't
| printed as such]
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=book+of+kells&tbm=isch
| DFHippie wrote:
| The Book of Kells wasn't made in a printing press, though.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| Very cool, thank you for sharing.
|
| I do feel the need to comment on one particular line of hyperbole
| though:
|
| > the likes of which we seldom, if ever, see in the printed books
| of our own, infinitely higher-tech century.
|
| Advances in technology have generally been used to increase the
| availability of books and lower their cost.
|
| Yesterday I purchased "The Hogwarts Library" for I think $40 and
| it included 3 large books full of hundreds of pages of full color
| images. That type of quality, especially at that price, would be
| unheard of in the 1800s.
|
| And if you want books with similar features (and more!) to those
| this article describes you can get them:
|
| Folio Society: https://www.foliosociety.com/usa
|
| Easton Press: https://www.eastonpress.com/home
|
| Amaranthine Books: https://amaranthinebooks.com/
|
| Lyra's Books: https://www.lyrasbooks.com/
|
| Suntup Editions: https://suntup.press/
|
| (Also Arion Press, Centipede Press, Curious King, Subterranean
| Press, and St. James Park Press)
|
| Books with those features are far more common today than they
| were when the Chaucer book was published.
|
| And if you ever want to get into collecting rare, limited
| edition, and antique books come join us! We're a fun community
| (though like all things collectable bank accounts will suffer the
| consequences).
| Bluestrike2 wrote:
| > And if you ever want to get into collecting rare, limited
| edition, and antique books come join us! We're a fun community
| (though like all things collectable bank accounts will suffer
| the consequences).
|
| Oh, god. Some of those links and names are new to me. I'm not
| sure whether to thank you or curse you. I've bought Easton
| Press and Folio Society books for years, and that was bad
| enough.
|
| Still...there's nothing quite like sitting down and reading a
| really well-made book. It's a totally different experience.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Did you see the new Curious King and Arete Edition roman
| numeral editions that were teased this week?
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I had not but once I read your comment I went and looked!
| They're beautiful, thank you for mentioning!
| _1tan wrote:
| Where does the community hang out online? Reddit or some
| private forum?
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Mostly Facebook groups, from what I've seen.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| It's mostly Facebook groups.
|
| Vintage, Rare, & Antique Books:
| https://www.facebook.com/groups/657123184415628
|
| Small Press Limited Book Collectors:
| https://www.facebook.com/groups/193517360836341/
|
| Fans Of The Folio Society:
| https://www.facebook.com/groups/60943174501/
|
| (^ Each press typically has their own following so you can
| find groups for Fans of Amaranthine Books, etc.)
|
| + dozens of more groups.
|
| ---
|
| Maurice is working on building out a more cross platform
| community for collectors, still early days there:
|
| https://www.collectiblebookvault.com/
|
| ---
|
| There is a Reddit: r/BookCollecting but I don't go there
| often.
|
| ---
|
| Edit:
|
| Oh and Youtube! Booktube is a real corner of the internet and
| lots of discussion happens in the discords of individual
| creators people enjoy.
| fho wrote:
| > That type of quality, especially at that price, would be
| unheard of in the 1800s.
|
| Just compare role playing rule books from 30-40 years ago with
| those today. Back then they were mostly text with the
| occasional b/w line art and 10-ish full color pages on the
| middle.
|
| Today every single page is full color and most of them feature
| some sort of art piece.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| How do book rights work? I'm working on a novel and it's my
| dream to have a beautifully illustrated hardcopy, but I thought
| that publishers had the exclusive rights to make copies
| CSMastermind wrote:
| These prestige book makers will negotiate with the publishers
| for the rights to do a printing. Almost always this is done
| for a set fee to publish x number of books within a set
| period of time (limited edition runs) or with a set fee per
| book printed (I believe this is the arrangement Folio has for
| the A Song of Ice and Fire books).
|
| This is the main reason that these shops will always have
| 'the classics' in rotation but their printings of more recent
| books are typically one and done.
|
| This is not my area of expertise but my understanding is that
| publishers are generally happy to have these collectors
| editions of books made, the limitation is typically with the
| prestige makers themselves needing to sell 800 to 1,000
| copies to make their economics work. Keep in mind they
| typically commission illustrators to make art for the books
| in addition to acquiring the rights and the actual production
| costs.
|
| One thing I will say is that if what you're after is a single
| personal copy then there is an entire community of amateur
| bookbinders, similar to woodworkers, some of whom make truly
| beautiful works of art. If you're willing to pay an
| illustrator, a designer, and commission one of these
| bookbinders you can get yourself a bespoke copy that's
| exceptional.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Thanks for the information. I want many copies as personal
| gifts to friends and family, but not on the order of 800.
| So if my book is commercially successful and my publisher
| is supportive enough it could happen. Thanks again
| dekhn wrote:
| Oh, some of these images will engrave nicely on my laser.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| If you're ever in NYC I'd recommend visiting a museum called The
| Cloisters. It's way up at the tippity top of Manhattan, but it's
| worth the visit. They have a lot of old religious artifacts,
| which includes the most beautiful book I've ever seen in person.
| It's called the Belles Heures of Jean de France. Here's a photo I
| took of it:
|
| https://www.instagram.com/p/BXRsj4rApGZ
| causality0 wrote:
| Am I crazy or is this book not remarkably beautiful? I mean, the
| illustrations are nicely clean and consistent for a woodcut but
| I've seen books that took my breath away and this ain't one of
| 'em.
| MichaelDickens wrote:
| It's in this extremely busy style that used to be popular, it's
| not exactly the same thing but it reminds me of Gothic
| cathedrals where every square inch of the building has to be
| covered by some sort of carving or design. I find it
| distracting and hard to look at.
|
| (It also reminds me of that quote from Rick McCallum, producer
| of the Star Wars prequels, who praised the prequels by saying
| "it's so dense, every single image has so many things going
| on.")
|
| But I do enjoy the book's physical size. I have a thing for
| giant books.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| You're not crazy - particularly given that there were other
| pre-Raphaelite artists producing other stunning volumes around
| the time, like Dulac with the Arabian Nights and Millais and
| company with the Moxon Tennyson.
|
| It's just so called as Yeats said so.
| p-e-w wrote:
| Pity the digitization is from a facsimile, not an original print.
| But the justification doesn't convince me:
|
| _> Given how few copies of the Kelmscott Chaucer were originally
| produced, thirteen copies on vellum, and another 58 on pig's
| skin, "any special collection's library who are lucky enough to
| own an original copy are likely to be very reluctant to embark
| upon any form of digitization due to the significant risk of
| damage that the process could inflict upon the book."_
|
| Huh? Damage from leafing through the book with gloves and
| snapping a photo of each page? For a book printed on animal hide
| (which can last millennia) in the late 19th century?
|
| Meanwhile, papyrus scrolls, which are infamous for crumbling to
| dust from a sharp look, are routinely digitized around the world.
|
| That makes no sense at all.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Do you have any evidence or expertise to support this take?
| I've heard many times of other texts not digitized for the same
| reasons; I trust the experts have a reason.
|
| Also, as the author doesn't have access to an original copy,
| what should they do?
| jkingsman wrote:
| I'm guessing that it's much more reasonable for him to do high
| res scans of the version he has on hand than to go through the
| process of getting access via a library and proving archivist
| bona fides. Certainly not impossible, but I'm grateful for
| seeing this incredible work in any form.
| floil wrote:
| > leafing through the book with gloves
|
| Rare books are typically handled with bare hands rather than
| gloves. Gloves increase the risk of damage.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/arts/rare-books-white-glo...
| diiaann wrote:
| Wait, I thought an original was already digitized:
| http://www.rarebookroom.org/Control/chkwks/index.html
| [deleted]
| mdp2021 wrote:
| I would love to see an automated style replication from these
| tables by Edward Burne-Jones.
|
| I had seem some articles about replication from limited sets; the
| 87 drawings in the PDF found at
| https://www.kelmscottchauceronline.org/colouring-book should be
| enough.
|
| There is probably some model already available at
| https://replicate.com/
|
| --
|
| Edit: I cannot find the article I was thinking of, nor online
| implementations:
|
| does anyone remember studies which spawned from the 2017 "Neural
| Style Transfer" cone, but were based on giving a limited set of
| source images to the engine to study the source style thoroughly?
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