Beware!  Lions, tigers and bears have been found in the Rare Book Department at the Free Library of Philadelphia.  Before making this discovery several weeks ago I wouldn’t have believed it either, but there really are lions, tigers, and bears in the Borneman Pennsylvania German Manuscript Collection.  I’ve only really met one lion so far, but I predict I’ll soon be meeting tigers and bears as well.  The lion who greeted me was wearing a crown; holding an upraised sword in his right paw; and a sheaf of arrows in his left.  None too friendly mind you! However, he was looking to his left, and safely enclosed in a shield, surmounted with a fleur-de-lis crown. He had lost part of his face, and tail, which made me none too happy because it’s always important to see a lion’s face.  I asked myself how long he had been living in the Borneman Manuscript 1, Hymnal of the Pietists of the Wissahickon, where I had found him.  This king of the beasts wasn’t about to tell me, and I totally understood because you see, he was in two pieces.  The bookbinder must have cut him in two before binding the blank leaves of paper into a narrow format.  While paging through the manuscript I also found a lily on a shield, surmounted by a fleur-de-lis crown.  The lily I had rather expected because someone had noted in pencil on the front pastedown (the leaf of an endpaper that is pasted to the inside of the front or back cover of a book) that one might find one.  No one, however, had ever said anything about a lion!  Both the lion and the lily are watermarks, and there are, indeed, lions, tigers, bears, other animals, flowers, and symbols used by papermakers as watermarks.

So, what is a watermark?  A watermark is a figure or design impressed in paper as it is being made.  Take one of your bank checks and hold it to the light:  You should be able to see a “security” watermark , which guarantees the check’s authenticity. Paper manufactured today, as in the 18^th and 19^th century, bears a watermark, which is unique to the producer of that paper.  It is his/her trademark.

Most paper made prior to circa 1817 is marked with finely and evenly spaced sieve-like line impressions left by the thin strands of brass wire that were fixed horizontally to a rigid rectangular wooden frame a bit larger than the intended paper size, and with vertical chain line impressions that were left in the paper by the slightly thicker brass wires laid at about one inch intervals across, and perpendicular to the finer horizontal wires.  Paper handmade on these types of moulds is known as laid paper, and is easily distinguished from wove paper, which, when held to the light will appear uniformly translucent, exhibiting no pattern whatsoever. Although there were wove paper moulds in use as early as about 1788, this type of paper did not begin to replace laid paper until after ca. 1817.

In the 18^th and 19^th century, watermarks were formed by hand from fine wire, and then sewn—also with fine wire—to the upper surface of the laid paper mould’s wire sieve. Most early American watermarks were simple in design, such as initials or a name on one half of the mould and a symbol or device, i.e. the countermark, on the other half.  Individual characteristics are always evident in both the design and execution, as well as in their positions relative to the chain and laid lines.  Paper and its watermarks are an integral part of a manuscript or book, and a vital tool in document identification. They help establish approximate dates for undated manuscripts. Often there are no dates given at all for a particular manuscript, or there are a whole lot of different dates, and names appended to excerpts with notations identifying the original author and when he wrote the piece, but no mention of the scrivener and when he copied the piece into that particular manuscript. In those instances where several people have made different entries over a period of time, the watermark is instrumental in setting time and geographical parameters. 

Records show that many American mills were in business for only relatively short periods of time, so a date before which and after which a watermark would have been less likely in use can be determined with relative certainty. However, because a mill may have held the paper for further seasoning (further aging of paper), or a printer may have delayed using the paper he had intended for immediate use, the interval between the production of a sheet of paper and its use is not so easily ascertained. Interestingly enough, research does indicate that approximately 94% of all paper featuring a date in the watermark was used within six years of the watermark date.

So far we’ve been able to look at about 20 manuscripts from the Borneman Pennsylvania German Manuscript collection, and have found 16 watermarks of which four have their countermarks.  Of those, we have five digital images obtained by using a backlit scan to capture the image. The cooperation of conservators such as Jim Hinz, Rebecca Smyrl, Mary Broadway, and Keith Jameson at the Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts  (CCAHA) has made it possible to do the backlit scans when the manuscripts are disbound for conservation. 

A few examples will show you how these watermark images are helping us determine when and where the manuscripts were created. 

Borneman Ms. 1, The Hymnal of the Pietists of the Wissahickon, is a commonplace book containing select copies of religious works, hymns, descriptions of religious ecstatic experiences, and poetry.  We do not know who the scrivener was or when he created the work.  However, we do know that the copy he made of Madame Guyon’s Short and Easie Method of Prayer  was an English translation "done out of French, and printed in the year 1704" (excerpted from title page of work).  We also know from a note to hymn #188 Der einsamen Turtel=Tauben…that it was sung by Johann Gottfried Selig (1668-1745) on July 24, 1709.  Selig was one of the leaders of the Johannes Kelpius Community along the Wissahickon.

Thomas’s Gravell’s American Watermarks 1690-1835 (New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 2002), has an example from 1709 (Fig. 619, 134) of our fleur-de-lis watermark, which belongs to Wintherthur Museum in Wilmington, Delaware.  Per Jeanne Solensky, librarian for the Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera at Winterthur Museum, this 1709 document (55.759) is part of their Legal Documents collection, Collection 268.  The record refers to a suit brought by Joseph Growden of Philadelphia for damages sustained (not specified), and is on paper made by the Rittenhouse Papermill, the oldest papermill in America (1690).

William Algernon Churchill was an avid collector of watermarks, and includes in his important work Watermarks in Paper in Holland, England, France, etc. in the XVII and XVIII Centuries and Their Interconnection (Amsterdam: M. Hertzberger, 1935; repr. 1967, 1985, and 1990) an illustration of our lion from his collection.  It was found on paper used in 1707 by the Republic of the Seven United Provinces, a republic in Europe existing from 1581-1795.  It is the watermark of the famous French papermaker Jean Villedary (1668-1758).  Should we be concerned that we’ve found a European papermaker’s watermark?  Prior to the American Revolution almost all paper was imported from Europe, so it’s not unusual to find European watermarks on paper used in the colonies predating 1775.  Both watermarks help us place the date of the Borneman Ms. 1 to ca. 1709, and the Rittenhouse watermark suggests that it had to have been written on this side of the Atlantic.

Borneman Ms. 98, Charles F. Egelmann's Commonplace Book of Remedies Along with Notes on Sundry Mechanical and Scientific Topics is undated. A watermark PB in outline in the center of one of the Ms. pages identifies the papermaker Peter Bechtel, a native of Germany, who owned and operated mills in Germantown, PA, and who is known to have ordered moulds watermarked PB on an annual basis from 1798 until 1820 from Nathan Sellers, America’s first large-scale maker of paper moulds.  Our PB watermark matches a PB watermark in a document dated 1806 from the Delaware Historical Society Collection (Thomas Gravell’s American Watermarks (Fig. 749, 163).  This information helps us estimate that Egelmann started writing the manuscript in America ca.1806.  Without the watermark, we would have no way to approximate the date of Borneman Ms. 98.

It is important to record paper and watermark information when cataloguing a book or manuscript: Both are essential tools in determining the age of a document, and are an integral and added dimension to the work.  Dr. Keith Arbour, noted author, and bibliographer has this to say on page xv of his Foreword to Thomas Gravell’s American Watermarks : “It is now up to bibliographers and institutional cataloguers of early American imprints to act on the widespread—and widely ignored—recognition that records for books under their scrutiny are unacceptably inadequate unless they include paper and watermark descriptions.”  

We have begun to record the watermarks we’re finding in the Borneman Pennsylvania German Manuscript collection.  Their digitization and availability online will provide a global audience unlimited instantaneous access to a resource, valuable not only to us, but also to the public-at-large.  Please be sure to visit our Facebook gallery for more watermark digital images.

Preservation of the Free Library of Philadelphia's Pennsylvania German manuscript collection has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Because democracy demands wisdom. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this post do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Tags: Pennsylvania German Collection, Rare Book Department

If I were an 18^th century manuscript, and had a broken spine, and detached boards, not to mention all kinds of other injuries to my pages, I think I would contact the Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) for a restoration appointment because I know that a lot of careful and expert work is needed to restore a manuscript.

Take for instance Borneman Manuscript 1, “The Hymnal of the Pietists of the Wissahickon,” part of the Borneman Pennsylvania German Manuscript Collection at the Free Library of Philadelphia, and presently at CCAHA for conservation. It has many of the problems common to 18^th century manuscripts. CCAHA technicians have focused on the leather cover which is very worn and has dried out over time. This has caused leather loss and deterioration to the boards and spine, leaving the boards detached.

The Borneman Manuscript 1 dates from ca. 1709.  Over time and with use, the pages have become discolored and soiled, and small edge tears and losses are present.  The unknown scrivener of this document used gall ink, the standard writing and drawing ink from about the 12^th century well into the 20^th century.  This type of ink contains iron salts and tannic acids, which eventually will eat into the paper, causing paper loss. Where heavily applied, the iron gall ink has begun to sink through the paper of our manuscript.

As a first step towards conservation, CCAHA technicians have carefully disbound the boards and spine, leaving the leaves in sections, called gatherings. Initially, the text leaves will be surface cleaned, and where necessary receive an aqueous treatment to arrest the corrosive properties of the iron gall ink, ensuring against any further paper loss. This is extremely important because iron gall ink can destroy whole sections of valuable text, and/or drawings, leaving major irreplaceable gaps in a work. After treatment, the paper leaves will be resized, and major tears mended. Following this, the technicians will bridge losses, and guard spine folds of text leaves with appropriate materials. They will then re-sew the volume, approximating its original sewing configuration as nearly as possible. The leather will be repaired; the book re-backed with sympathetic materials, including as much of the original spine piece as possible; and the board edges and corners mended. The conservation of this valuable link to America’s past will guarantee that the original will be preserved for future generations.

While at CCAHA, “The Hymnal of the Pietists of the Wissahickon,” will be fully digitized, enabling the Free Library of Philadelphia to offer it online as part its Borneman Pennsylvania German Manuscript Digital Collection. A global audience will soon have unlimited instantaneous access to fascinating and valuable historic insights of common and not so common men from a very important time and place in American history.

Visit our Facebook gallery for examples of other manuscripts undergoing similar treatment, and demonstrating some of the processes described above, but not yet undertaken on Borneman Manuscript 1.

Preservation of the Free Library of Philadelphia's Pennsylvania German manuscript collection has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Because democracy demands wisdom. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this post do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Tags: Pennsylvania German Collection, Rare Book Department

By Edward Pettit

The Vincent Van Gogh exhibition, Van Gogh Up Close, now open at the Philadelphia Museum of Art has been receiving lots of attention. The exhibition focuses on Van Gogh’s paintings of nature and one can see the vibrancy in color and texture of our everyday world  that the artist illuminates.  Van Gogh also brought this same urgency, this same blazing brilliance to mundane objects like chairs. 

And one chair that inspired him was an engraving by Luke Fildes of “The Empty Chair” of Charles Dickens.  Fildes had been illustrating Dickens’s last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, when the author died.  As a tribute, Fildes painted a watercolor of Dickens’s work space: the writing desk in his study and the now empty chair, prominently displayed, never to be filled again.  Fildes’s watercolor is on permanent display (along with Dickens’s writing desk) in the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

An engraving of Fildes’s “Empty Chair” was published in the journal Graphic (as well as many other magazines).  Van Gogh was an ardent admirer of illustrated journals (including Graphic), especially in their dedication to social realism in art.  Van Gogh greatly admired Fildes’s painting (and may have first seen it in Graphic) and even owned a copy of the engraving.  For Van Gogh, the empty chair symbolized the coming absence of the artist.  He wrote “Empty chairs—there are many of them, there will be even more and sooner or later there will be nothing but empty chairs.”

But for me, this kind of melancholic fatalism doesn’t come across in Van Gogh’s chairs.  His chairs have a pipe, flowers, books, a candle perched on their seats.  These mundane objects are hopeful in a way, placeholders waiting for the eventual return of a sitter.  And maybe that can serve as a blithe reminder for Fildes’s mournful chair.  Maybe the Empty Chair is welcoming, inviting us to have a seat in Dickens’s imagination and enjoy the works he created while seated there. 

Join us all year as we metaphorically sit in Dickens’s chair.

http://libwww.freelibrary.org/calendar/calbydateDickens.cfm

Edward Pettit is the Charles Dickens Ambassador for FLP’s Year of Dickens and writes about his adventures in Dickens at http://readingcharlesdickens.com/

Tags: Rare Book Department, Year of Dickens, art

This is the first of many blog posts about The Borneman Pennsylvania German Manuscript Collection, which has been part of the Rare Book Department at the Free Library of Philadelphia (FLP) since 1955.  Thanks to a 2011 grant from the prestigious Save America’s Treasures program, a select number will soon be restored to pristine condition, and digitized for online access.  You will find manuscript descriptions of every item, as well as a select number of fully digitized FLP e-books.

The initial digitization of the collection began in 2009 when more than 1,000 Fraktur pieces were fully digitized, and put online. This is one of the largest public Fraktur collections in existence, and is intended as “an ongoing and dynamic resource for public and scholarly information about Pennsylvania German families, history, and folk art.” Take a tour of the collection to appreciate just what that means. Among its assortment of birth and baptismal certificates, writing samples, awards, cutwork, letters from heaven, Christmas and New Year greetings, you will also find exquisite bookplates such as the bookplate for Johannes Funck, which is in the debit and credit ledger for which it was made. 

This ledger is an example of the more than 174 eighteenth and nineteenth century Borneman Collection manuscripts taken from several small communities in Lancaster County and Southeastern Pennsylvania.  They are eyewitness accounts of the commercial, religious, legal, and cultural practices of the period, and you will soon be able to enjoy their contents online. Johannes Funck’s account book will come alive as you meet his customers and learn about his trade as a tanner.  You’ll be fascinated by many other interesting entries in this ledger, jotted down sometimes in German, and sometimes in English and reflecting Funck’s day-to-day activities, and thoughts.  You will find the ordinary things of yesterday quite extraordinary!

Twenty-five of the manuscripts are currently at the Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) in Philadelphia for conservation treatment.  As noted on the CCAHA website: “Some have deteriorated covers and flaking leather bindings, and all need surface cleaning.  The iron-gall ink used in many of the manuscripts has corroded, resulting in damage and loss to the ink and paper…”

The restoration of these valuable links to America’s past will guarantee that the originals will be preserved for future generations.  Their digitization and availability online will provide a global audience unlimited instantaneous access to the fascinating and valuable historic observations of common and not so common men from a very important time and place in American history.

We owe the existence of these treasures to Henry S. Borneman, Esq., founder and first dean of the School of Law at Temple University. Borneman was very proud of his Pennsylvania German heritage, and at age 10 started to avidly collect books and manuscripts pertaining to the cultural transformation of these Germanic-speaking people, who for religious reasons or otherwise had immigrated to Pennsylvania during the late seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. His love of books and manuscripts through the years showed a scholar’s touch and a book collector’s erudition, and his appreciation of beauty and a desire to possess treasures no one else had ensured his collection would be like none other.  He devoted himself to acquiring a library which reflected the essence of Pennsylvania German art and culture.

Upon Borneman’s death in January 1955 at age 84, his family engaged the firm of Charles Sessler, a Philadelphia dealer in rare books and prints, to find a buyer for the collection. The asking price was $50,000. This was a formidable amount of money, and the competition among such giants as the University of Pennsylvania, the Free Library of Pennsylvania, and the Library Company of Philadelphia was enormous.  Ellen Shaffer, then rare book librarian at FLP, thought that all praise should go to Moncure Biddle, a member of the Board of Trustees, who single-handedly within a twenty-four hour period arranged the acquisition before either Emerson Greenaway, Director of FLP, or she knew about it. It was the largest acquisition through purchase in its history, and George H. Eckhardt, author and close friend of Henry Borneman, sagaciously pointed out in his letter of congratulations to Dr. Emerson Greenaway on June 13, 1955 that the institution fortunate enough to have the Borneman Collection would become a focal point of Pennsylvania history and research.

Preservation of the Free Library of Philadelphia's Pennsylvania German manuscript collection has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Because democracy demands wisdom. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this post do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Tags: Pennsylvania German Collection, Rare Book Department

Today marks the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens, and the Free Library joins the global celebration honoring the life and legacy of the world's first literary superstar.

Philadelphia is home to what for a long time was the world's only statue of Charles Dickens. Find out more about the statue in our digital collection. Each year a ceremony, hosted by the Friends of Clark Park, is held at the much beloved statue. The celebration is detailed in an article from yesterday's Inquirer.

The party continues this weekend. Join us Saturday at 2 p.m. in the Parkway Central Children's Department for readings, crafts, and some surprises - possibly an appearance by the man himself. Additionally, the Rare Book Department will be open from 1-5 p.m. for viewing our exhibition "From the Desk of Charles Dickens." While you're here, be sure to check out our lively and colorful exhibition on the first floor "Character Sketches from the World of Charles Dickens." And - you spoke and we listened - beginning on Saturday, February 18th the Rare Book Department will be open Saturdays from 9 a.m.to 5 p.m.

Events are scheduled all year long to explore the lasting impact of the Immortal Boz. Check our calendar frequently for events happening all over the area. On the third Thursday of each month we'll be holding a literary salon in the Elkins Room to discuss one of Dickens's novels. Next Thursday covers Oliver Twist. You can register for these free events on Eventbrite.

The salons are led by Edward Pettit, best known as the "Philly Poe Guy" who argued for Philadelphia as the true home of Edgar Allan Poe's literary legacy. As our Dickens Ambassador he has been helping to plan events for our Year of Dickens and he will give you a Dickens novel if you ask! Pettit has also undertaken the reading of all of Dickens's works this year, including the novels, plays, and journalism. You can follow his adventures on his Reading Charles Dickens website.

Celebrations are taking place all over the world, especially in Great Britain. A Dickens 2012 website chronicles the year-long worldwide schedule of events, exhibitions, and performances. This morning a ceremony was held at  Westminster Abbey, attended by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall. Ralph Fiennes read a touching passage from Bleak House as Prince Charles laid a wreath on the author's grave in Poet's Corner.

Finally, even Google is on board with a 200th birthday doodle!

For more information on  the Free Library's Year of Dickens visit http://libwww.freelibrary.org/dickens/.

Tags: Exhibitions, Rare Book Department, Year of Dickens