Book Arts in Venice: Featuring Books

Today we travelled via vaporetto to a small island across the bay to visit a library located in an old monestary.  The monestary itself was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.  Lush green gardens, majestic pillars, and the kind of serene that makes you want to find a spot to curl up and take a nap.  It was lovely.  

The library was also a scene to behold.  It was comprised mainly by one large corridor with books from floor to ceiling on either side (and fantastic leather couches if I might add).  It kind of made me want to study.  What were we doing in this awesome monestary library you might ask? 

We were looking at books (makes sense).  But not just any books.  OLD books.  Like, really old books.  We spent hours flipping through ancient manuscripts studying the typography, illustrations, and talking about the history behind the books.  It was a fantastic way to spend the afternoon.  

Check out that guiding.  

Late 1400s typographical experimentation.

Check out that marbled paper, though.  

Calligraphy how-to's.  

Early foundations of the Golden Rule for typographical character design.  

I love the letter Q (and not just because it's necessary in order to spell 'Qdoba').

Geometrical shapes designed by da Vinci.  

A book about Saint Augustine (or Sant'Agostino) printed by Nicolas Jenson!!!  (He's the creator of Adobe Jenson and one of the most influential of the early Italian printers.  He was also the person I decided to research this past semester and I now know way more useless information on him than anyone ever needs to know.)  

More examples of early calligraphy. 

This book is called "Triompho di Fortuna," or "Triumph of Fortune" (as you might've guessed).  You can ask a question, for example, "when is it a good time to go to war?," and it leads you to different pages and has you answer different questions until it leads you to your answer.  We asked if it was a good time for us to go to war.  It told us that we were stronger than our enemies and we should attack at dawn.  

So, it's basically like a choose your own adventure, but the book chooses it for you...Yay!

It was a good day.  

Arreviderci for now,