upside down, left to right

Upside Down, Left To Right: A Letterpress Film from Danny Cooke on Vimeo.

Should have put this video up some time ago - it's been doing the rounds for a while. A really lovely documentary about our own Paul 'Inky' Collier and the Plymouth University Letterpress Workshop, produced by Danny Cooke. Makes me feel very proud to get to work alongside this fine, knowledgable gentleman.

compositions for several voices

'Sumer is icumen in'. Probably Reading Abbey, mid-13th century
British Library Harley MS 978, f.11v
Copyright © The British Library Board

Was at the British Library at the weekend and although it ended up being a real dash through, I (we) were rather taken by their new show Evolving English. It threw up a lot of things with reference to my Studies in Indirect Communication projects. I'm going to try and put a few of the books up here that are particularly interesting for me over the coming weeks. 

First up are two books relating to multiple voices, dialogues, exchange between voices. Sumer is icumen in (Spring has come in - there was no difference between summer and spring back then apparently. Sounds about right for Britain) is a Middle English song written for up to six voices. It's the oldest known rota or round in English - each voice sings the same song, to the same melody, but beginning at a different point in the song. The cross above the first line marks the point at which each of the four main voices enters. The red ink below the black English lettering is a Latin text on Christ's Passion. The text inset to the right of the pages gives instructions in Latin for its performance as a round.  The parts for the lower voices are written on the bottom two lines.

'Colloquy', Aelfric. c.1000. British Library MS Cotton Tiberius A.iii, f.60v
Copyright © The British Library Board

 Aelfric's Latin colloquium is a pupil-teacher dialogue for use in monastic schools. The interlinear translation into Old English is probably not by him, but is possibly one of the first recorded examples of an English 'conversation':

Pupil: We children ask you, O teacher, that you teach us to speak [Latin correctly], because we are unlearned and we speak corruptly.

Teacher: What do you wish to talk about?

Pupil: What do we care what we talk about, as long as the speech is correct and useful, not idle or base.

Teacher: Are you willing to be beaten while learning?

Pupil: We would rather be beaten for the sake of learning than not to know it. But we know that you are kind, and do not want to inflict a beating on us unless we force you to it.

Crikey. Serious stuff.

brass tacks

 

I'm trying to understand what my work is essentially about. This is the final shortlist that I've put up on my studio wall. I'm not sure whether to feel happy that I'm getting somewhere in nailing it, or depressed that all these words are linked by me!

all real lizzies?

From a student of mine at University of Plymouth,  Mella McKeown. It's so unusual to find old stuff with your own name on it - so thank you!

a successive kindling of eight lights

A Beginner's Guide to Hanukkah, by Jonathan Safran Foer.

I know I keep putting his stuff up here, but I just love his work. Humorous, erudite, thoughtful. 

A small Christmas gift.

sit back

Sometimes you read something and when you finish, you sit back and breath out a satisfied sigh. Because someone has done it. They've put into words what's been spiraling around in your head for a long time. Suddenly a few things seem to make sense.

Download a .pdf of About the Typefaces Not Used in this Edition by Jonathan Safran Foer here. You'll need to scroll down a little bit to the second paragraph of the main body-text. Alternatively read the piece on the Guardian's site here. But you don't get the illustrations.

absence to liberation

Click on this image to see it larger.

I made these years ago and just stumbled across them again. Sometimes it's nice to revisit old work and see that although the physical qualities of the work may be quite different, there are themes that reappear time and time again.

charm/curse

'For the bite of a sick dog or a serpent write these words round the bottom pf a vessel made of sycamore, and take clean water and delete that writing, and give [the water] to the bitten person to drink before he goeth to sleep.

+ zable + leo + fortis + decim + cephans + '

The Encyclopedia of Ephemera, Maurice Rickards, The British Library, 2000.

drastic editing

'A multitude of words doth rather obscure than illustrate, they being a Burden to the Memory, and the first apt to be forgotten before we come through to the last. So that he who uses many words for the explaining of any subject doth, like the Cuttle-Fish, hide himself, for the most part, in his own ink.'

John Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation, 7th edn, 1717, p.339


This seems to be good advice to heed as I sit here and try to write an article for Ultrabold magazine, the St Bride Type Library bi-annual publication.

salutation for a monday and the beginning of a new week

Drop

Ideas that didn't come to fruition.
But which should have/will.

Unworkable Shadow Working

Two shadows can't overlap, Letratone [10% or 65 lines per inch] on paper, 2008

Studies in Indirect Communication vol. V

Painting in a small convent in Mexico City, where the nuns had all made vows of silence. [There were also mummies in open caskets in the cellars. Didn't think I'd be disturbed by the sight - but really was.]

Studies in Indirect Communication vol. III

Source: The Encyclopedia of Ephemera, Maurice Rickards, 2000

The deeds on my house state that as it is classed as a residence, it is illegal to run a business from within my own four walls. In the past, people got round this problem of letting the 'right' people know that they were working from home by discretely placing small 'adverts' within their windows. Small and decorative enough to be difficult to read unless you were in close proximity, they were also explicit in their communication once you made the commitment and ventured nearer…

Studies in Indirect Communication vol. II

Motion picture & method of producing the same, C.F. Pidgin, September 1917, Patent: 1,240,774

The Negatives of Behaving

The back of the plan-chest

One thousand-thousand notebook gazes, 2000 - 2002

Not behaving

Misbehave

The shadows are simply not behaving. They keep peeling off the wall and flopping all over the place. They won't stand still. Appropriately.

I like their irreverence. Not like normal shadows at all. And any cheeky character traits are forgivable because they look so damn good under moonlight.

Chiaroscuro vol. III

"…Behaving properly, though still a little creased."

We spoke of typewriters and things

© Lizzie Ridout

These must be now nearly eight years old now. I made them wrapped in a duvet in the garden of a manor house out near Argal lake. All day, every day, until it got dark. Scores of variations. M's marching arm in arm across the page.

Time spent loving letters. The letter 'm' had a whole term dedicated to it. First typewriters, then letterpress. But then it is a pretty special letter. Particularly on a typewriter, where it's the only letter that whilst normally wider than all the other lowercases, in these circumstances is crammed into a space the same size as its far narrower brothers and sisters. Tubby little broad-hipped m. Something nice about his strokes. Something nice about his zebra stripes.

Thanks to Gabriele and her Gabriele and reminding me of this old box of stuff.

Chorus - Gabriele Beveridge

And Mr L., who spent many afternoons with me talking about old films and cinemas, and most importantly, typewriters. I wish I had come by that last day, rather than just thinking about it.

© Lizzie Ridout