Bea Nettles: Innovator and Rule Breaker

Bea Nettles’ 1975 Tarot deck, Mountain Dream Tarot was recently acquired for the Rare Book Collection and is currently on display in the Grosvenor Room. B&ECPL holds other important works by Nettles, most notably Breaking the Rules: A Photo Media Cookbook. Breaking the Rules has provided incredible insight into Nettles’ process when creating the Mountain Dream Tarot nearly 20 years earlier.

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In the early 1970s, artist Bea Nettles created the first ever photographic Tarot deck in the style of the iconic 1909 Coleman-Smith/Arthur E. Waite deck. Though Nettles’ created the concept while she attended the Penland School in North Carolina, the deck itself was produced in Rochester, New York, after Nettles moved there to teach at R.I.T. Only 800 of this first edition were printed in 1975. 

Though this is the first Tarot deck added to the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library’s Rare Book collection, tarot decks intersect with the existing Rare Book collection in very synergistic ways.  The Rare Book Room (RBR) collection already includes many notable artists’ books, occult texts, and book arts objects; this addition fits right in. The Rare Book Collection at B&ECPL in good company in acquiring this deck—Mountain Dream Tarot is in the collection of 23 other cultural institutions in North America, including the Toronto Metropolitan University, the George Eastman Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Princeton University Library—to name a few.

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The roots of Tarot go back to the game of Tarocchi in Italy in the 1420s, but it was only in 1909 that the modern Tarot deck we know today was created by two members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn: artist Pamela Coleman-Smith and mystical scholar Arthur E. Waite. While the first 22 cards, the Major Arcana, have established imagery and meanings, Coleman-Smith was the first to illustrate the pip cards, the four suits of Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles, with scenes and symbolic imagery. The illustrations Coleman-Smith created have become iconic as the Minor Arcana and are still the basis for many decks today–including Mountain Dream Tarot.

The Fool as depicted by Bea Nettles (left) and by Pamela Coleman-Smith (right) in the 1909 Rider-Waite-Smith deck.

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To really appreciate Nettles’ work, one must understand that her photographic art works were created in a pre-digital, pre-“Photoshop” era—all of the image manipulations visible in her photographic work were created through physical techniques involving chemicals, light, and iterative production. The experimental photography techniques Nettles first explored in Mountain Dream Tarot were later explained in Breaking the Rules: A Photo Media Cookbook, another book by Nettles in the B&ECPL collection.

Breaking the Rules is exactly what it claims to be—a “cookbook”, but not for anything edible! This cookbook is a compilation of Nettles’ personal recipes for how she created the formulas that allowed her to edit her photographic images the way she wanted. These recipe formulas involve complicated and precise chemicals, dark rooms, and targeted light. Over thirty years later, digital image manipulation such as Photoshop has long been the norm, but because of Nettles’ “photo media cookbook,” photographers who still work with darkroom technology can learn her analog techniques. 

This page shows the format of Nettles’ Breaking the Rules: Photo Media Cookbook–just like a cookbook for food, it has the ingredients needed and the process to follow.

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In the two images pictured below, one can see how Nettles keeps coming back to the symbolic imagery of the Tarot in her explorations with photographic manipulation. Mountain Dream Tarot is pictured on the top; below is a later image created by Nettles’ as part of her project, Knights of Assisi: A Journey Through the Tarot. In Breaking the Rules, Nettles included the image on the right to describe the process of “Hand Coloring” photographs.

Breaking the Rules: A Photo Media Cookbook is non-circulating, but available for patrons at Central Library.

If you’d like to see more images of Mountain Dream Tarot, the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY, has digitized the whole deck. Though the 1975 deck in the rare Book Collection will not be available for Tarot readings, a commemorative edition was published by Nettles in 2019, and is available for purchase on her website here.

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The year may be winding down, but there is still plenty to learn with the Grosvenor Room

Join us in November and December for a wide range of programs featuring Grosvenor Room resources both online and in-person! See our events page for full details: https://grosvenorroom.wordpress.com/events/

JUST ANNOUNCED:

Visit the Central Library’s Rare Book Room exhibit, Four Hundred Years of Bookbinding: the Jordan Collection, and try your hand at binding your own book! Our friends from the Western New York Book Arts Center will be here on December 2nd and December 9th from 9-11 am with classes to introduce you to the art of bookbinding. We will also be offering a tour of the beautiful examples of fine binding currently on display in our exhibit space.

Make a Chain Stitch Leather Journal
Date & Time: Saturday, December 2, 2023, 9:00-11:00 am
Location: The Ring of Knowledge, Central Library, 1 Lafayette Square, Buffalo, NY 14203
Registration required: https://buffalolib.libcal.com/event/11515274

Make a Simple Hard Cover Journal
Date & Time: Saturday, December 9, 2023, 9:00-11:00 am
Location: The Ring of Knowledge, Central Library, 1 Lafayette Square, Buffalo, NY 14203
Registration required: https://buffalolib.libcal.com/event/11515358 

John F. Grabau Bookbinding Specimen

 

One of the items to be featured in our upcoming architectural exhibit, Building Buffalo, is a uniquely bound guest book believed to have been owned by the Darwin Martin family.  The beautiful designs on the cover closely reflect the window designs of the Martin house, and the book includes the signatures of numerous Martin relatives.

The book, which was probably bound at the turn of the 20th century, was created by internationally renowned bookbinder John F. Grabau (1878-1948),  a local teacher, lecturer and master of the hand-tooled art.  Examples of his work were owned by four American presidents, European royalty and many literary celebrities, and Grabau’s works were exhibited at numerous significant exhibitions.

Among the visitors of the Martin family who signed their names as guests between 1907 and 1930 include American poet Carl Sandburg, who was presented to the Buffalo social organization the 20th Century Club in November of 1920, and organic architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

 

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Welcome Timothy Frerichs’ “Shale”

The Rare Book Room’s latest artist’s book acquisition is Timothy Freich’s creation Shale. Inspired by Agricola’s great geological work De Re Metallica (1556), Shale captures the  look and feel of the Marcellus Shale that can be found in Western New York along the shores of Lake Erie.

The front and back covers of Shale are made of a flexible rock material. The pages are hand-made papers produced from black denim. A hand-sewn Coptic binding makes the structure of this codex. Between the leaves, which look like layers of shale, digital reproductions of De Re Metallica‘s woodcut illustrations are printed onto the pages. The graduated shape cuts into the text block engender a geologic structure like that of the Marcellus Shale strata formation providing interior texture and depth to the work.

Shale joins Mr. Frerich’s Linnaeus Gardens  sketchbooks and folios in the Rare Book Room’s Book Arts Collection.

Book Sculpture in Garden in Front of the Central Library

Central Library staff decided to create a book sculpture–an homage to the book–and place it where those approaching the front entrance of Library and those inside looking out could see it through the seasons as an evolving member of the garden.

Though not belonging to the Rare Book Collection (and certainly NOT made of books from the Rare Book Collection!), the sculpture is another worthy demonstration of Book Art making it near and dear to Rare Book Room’s heart.

As stated before, the sculpture was a collaborative staff effort. Staff from the Maintenance Department, Graphics Department and the Grosvenor Room designed and installed this fine piece of book art [re]using superseded or duplicative books that had been discarded. Instead of destroying the no-longer-useful books, we turned them into art!

First Snow

Memento by Julie Chen. Flying Fish Press, 2012.

The latest artist’s book acquisition for the Grosvenor Rare Book Room (GRBR) is Julie Chen’s Memento. Limited to 50 copies, GRBR was fortunate to secure number 49. Reflecting upon the March 2007 bombing of a bookseller’s stall on Baghdad’s Al-Mutanabbi Street, the metal locket holds a miniature book to demonstrate the delicate nature of books and words, and to remind us about the power of reading. Also held in the locket is a triptych commemorating the booksellers’ street. Done with jeweler’s precision in miniature, Chen’s work speaks volumes with its few words.

Text:

You live your life
careless of the liberty that you have inherited.
For you, the printed word has become commonplace
a substance that you take for granted
like air
like the inalienable right to think your own thoughts
thoughts made visible through words on paper and then
thrown in the trash without consideration
a thing so basic that you are not conscious of its contingency.
You value the written word only abstractly
not as though this value could be translated into such things as
time or money or freedom from persecution.
What if with each word you ever read you risked losing
one millisecond of your life
And with each word you destroyed without thought
you risked bringing your community
one millisecond closer to destruction?
A book would be a force of reckoning
An object to he cherished and feared
The dividing line between the free world and the unfree world
This is the reality you pretend not to see
You focus instead on
We focus instead on
The idea of freedom for all
ignoring the simple fact that this has never been
the way things are.
What will it take to wake us
from our collective dream?

Phase Two of the Artists’ Books Inspired by Science Books Exhibit

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The second installation of artists’ books alongside the science texts that inspired them is on display in the Central Library’s Grosvenor Rare Book Display Room. In this phase of the exhibit artists’ books and science first editions pairings include:

• FAULT LINES BY DOUG BEUBE, 2003, with BRITANNIA: OR, THE KINGDOM OF ENGLAND AND DOMINION OF WALES, ACTUALLY SURVEY’D BY JOHN OGILBY, 1698.
• BERNOULLI’S EQUATION FOR UNSTEADY FLOW BY AMANDINE NABARRA-PIOMELLI, 2008, with ARS CONJECTANDI, OPUS POSTHUMUM. BY JAKOB BERNOULLI, 1713.
• DE RERUM BY TIM FRERICHS, 2013, with PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY BY (3 VOLUMES) BY SIR CHARLES LYELL, 1830-33.
• POWERBOOK #2 BY RICHARD KEGLER, 1996, with BIBLE, OLD TESTAMENT [LEAF FROM BOOK OF JOB] PRINTED BY JOHANNES GUTENBERG, C. 1450-1455.

New Exhibit on First Day of Spring!

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There is art to be found in science books and science to be found in artist’s books.

Although current society has come to think of science and math exclusively as “left-brained” functions while art and creativity are considered “right-brained” activity, some book artists are bridging this hemispheric divide with artist’s books and book arts inspired by science texts. These artist’s books reflect upon or interpret significant works and concepts of astronomy, medicine, geology, physics and more. Today’s mutually exclusive idea of “left-brained” and “right-brained” activity discounts longer understood ideas that science is a creative pursuit—that there really is art to be found in science—and that creative artworks often have some scientific basis and/or inspiration.

Rip Van Winkle Collection

 

Title Page

Since the short story “Rip Van Winkle” was first published by Washington Irving in his collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., 1819, numerous adaptations have appeared.  Among the first American authors to achieve international acclaim, Irving would argue for stronger copyright laws as his early works were often pirated for European consumption. 

Fine Bindings

The late author and librarian, Edward F. Ellis, would leave several book collections to the BECPL in his will, products of over forty years of book collecting. Perhaps the most unique collection of items are the books and other materials inspired by “Rip Van Winkle.”  Included among the many editions are fine bindings, such as the Roycroft printing of 1905, as well as editions by important illustrators such as N. C. Wyeth, Arthur Rackham and Barry Moser. 

Classics Illustrated

Prints and figurines are also part of the collection, including a 1954 Royal Doulton mug.

Rip Van Winkle Figurines

Antiphonaries

Antiphonarium de tempore et de sanctis choir, 1653

The antiphonary is a liturgical book of sacred vocal music used by the Catholic Church that generally consists of the antiphons, or responsory chants, sung by the cantor, congregation, and choirs of the Divine Mass.  The first of these collections of plainsong melodies can be attributed to Gregory the Great (590-604), and would often contain decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations on parchment or vellum to accompany the music and text.

Title page

The Antiphonarium de tempore et de sanctis chori monialium S. Nicolai nouelli lucet, 1653, is one of several illuminated antiphonaries in the Rare Book Room’s Manuscripts and Music collections.  Gregorian chant notes can be found in black, with musical staves in red.

Interior pages