[HN Gopher] Early Bookcases, Cupboards and Carousels
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Early Bookcases, Cupboards and Carousels
Author : diodorus
Score : 85 points
Date : 2024-07-30 19:34 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.lostartpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.lostartpress.com)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| How were scrolls stored? (I'm wondering if there's any backward
| compatibility going on with the cupboards...)
| Jun8 wrote:
| Information below is about the system used in Library of
| Alexandria but other libraries of that time, e.g. the one in
| Pergamum, was probably organized similarly: Each roll had a tab
| on the end (the circular end of the scroll) that gave the
| author's name and some other information, but often no title.
| Problem was that many rolls contained more than one work and
| many works took many rolls. Famous librarians have invented
| techniques to make the job of finding a work easier, since
| there were 490,000 rolls in the main library! The main library
| was reserved for the scholars of the Museum, while its sister
| library, with about 43k books, was open for public use.
|
| Zenodotus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenodotus) the
| Library's first director, invented alphabetical order as a mode
| of organization. Rolls were also arranged in different rooms,
| by topic, e.g. poetry, history. Another important device was
| bibliographic work, such as the _Pinakes_ (Tables) of
| Callimachus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinakes), which
| filled no less than 120 books (it has not survived but was
| widely quoted).
|
| If you want to delve deeper, _Libraries in the Ancient World_
| by Lionel Casson, from which I took the informatio above, is a
| very informative and readable book. It even has the only known
| depiction of how the rolls were arranged on shelves.*
| dredmorbius wrote:
| _Scrolls were stacked horizontally on a shelf or stored upright
| in a cylindrical book-box (capsa), which was fitted with a lid
| and straps for carrying (the scrinium was a larger container).
| According to Pliny, the only wood suitable for such capsae was
| beech, which could be thinly-cut (XVI.lxxxiii.229). If
| particularly valuable, rolls might be wrapped in a protective
| sleeve and tied with thongs...._
|
| <https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/sc..
| .>
| Jun8 wrote:
| Desktop book carousels look great but Capitano Agostino Ramelli's
| book wheel is a tour de force! These are still useful for heavy
| book such as unabridged dictionaries, the use of which has
| declined massively but are a joy to consult, with additional
| information you cannot find online (unless you subscribe to OED).
| I've always wanted one of these.
| Cyykratahk wrote:
| Woah, those book wheels are like the 16th century version of
| having 200 browser tabs open.
| perihelions wrote:
| I've heard of "bull in a china shop", but "ox in a library" is
| even worse! And a *flying* ox with wings at that!--so it can
| reach the top shelves, too, I guess.
|
| Wikipedia tells me a winged ox is old religious iconography
| associated with Saint Luke [0], which explains why they've
| inserted it into multiple paintings in otherwise-nonsensical
| contexts. (Wikipedia also has one additional painting of this ox
| ("Hermen Rode (1484)")--this one is actually standing on a
| bookshelf, why not).
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_the_Evangelist#Symbol
| kjellsbells wrote:
| Once you learn the iconography it's hard to unsee when you look
| at almost any piece of art from that period. John has the
| eagle, Mark the lion, Matthew the angel. That's why St Marks
| square in Venice has a lion, for example.
|
| Since we are talking nonsensical images with books, heres one
| of the eagle of St. John settling down for a nice read.
|
| https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-eagle-symb...
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> Some books were small enough to fit in one hand, while others
| were so large and heavy it took two people to lift one._
|
| That sounded farfetched to me so I looked up the Codex Amiatinus
| mentioned in TFA and wow, it really is that big:
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Codex_Am...
| mauvehaus wrote:
| A shop I was working at before I left Boston was building a
| stand for this one:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhutan:_A_Visual_Odyssey_Acr...
|
| Sadly, I moved out of town before it was finished. Would've
| loved to help with the delivery and see the book!
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Looking somewhat later, I find it interesting that "bookcase" and
| "bookshelf" become prevalent in Google's Ngram Viewer only
| comparatively late in the 20th century. "Bookcase" starts its
| ascent around 1900 and peaks in the 1930s, "bookshelf" really
| doesn't become particularly prevalent until after 1980.
|
| <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=bookcase%2C%20...>
|
| This corresponds roughly with cheap mass-market books becoming
| widespread, particularly paperbacks (mid-1930s, large growth in
| the 1950s).
| rsprinkle wrote:
| For wood workers, Lost Art Press is great. They have some truly
| unique books in their collection.
| jna_sh wrote:
| Go forth at your peril, getting into Lost Art Press is a good
| way to double the cost of your woodworking hobby. Truly
| beautiful books!
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Why do old illustrations so often seem to have distorted
| perspective. It's like artists at the time didn't understand it,
| but I can't believe that's the case?
| ketzo wrote:
| It's weird to think of it as such, but perspective drawing
| really is a technology that most artists did not have access to
| for most of history.
|
| I'm _super_ not an art historian, but I think the Renaissance
| era is when you really start seeing 3D perspective in 2D art.
| swatcoder wrote:
| The most inutitive purpose of illustration is to communicate
| some sense or idea, or perhaps a set of facts, or occassionally
| to express some bold aesthetic style.
|
| Those purposes aren't obviously served by rendering the exact
| detail of a 2D projection with accurate scale and perspective.
| Doing so can be an impressive technical feat, or a prevailing
| style (as it became for a while), but can also be seen as a
| somewhat stubborn rejection of visual language and editorial
| expression.
|
| Techniques for realism and perspective are evidenced throughout
| history, but even now you can see it rejected in plenty of both
| commercial and fine art because it's just not that
| important/relevant most of the time.
| wrp wrote:
| In some artistic traditions, visual style has been "conceptual"
| rather than "perceptual", meaning that objects are presented to
| emphasize their meaning rather than how they might naturally
| look in a scene. The two such artistic cultures you are most
| likely familiar with would be Medieval Europe and Ancient
| Egypt.
| BarbaryCoast wrote:
| If you liked this article, Henry Petroski's "The Book on the
| Bookshelf" is worth reading. He goes into great detail about the
| history, explaining why books were usually chained to their
| shelves, etc.
|
| If you don't know the author, his most famous is probably "To
| Engineer is Human: the Role of Failure in Successful Design". I
| liked "The Evolution of Useful Things", because now I realize
| Americans use their forks wrong. The design of the fork follows
| function, and that curve is there for a reason.
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