My New Blog on Blooks (Things that look like books but aren't)

I digress from the subject of Alice C. Morse to let blog readers know that I have started a  new blog on the subject of BLOOKS, objects made in the emulation of books, either by hand or commercial manufacture. If you are interested in 19th century publisher's bindings, there are a number of blooks that have them and I'm very curious to find out more about their makers. This post comes from the first About Blooks post. Here is a link to the About Blooks blog: http://aboutblooks.blogspot.com/

All over the world, for hundreds of years, people have been making, collecting and presenting book-objects that reflect their devotion and respect for books and for each other. There are countless examples; they include bars, cameras, radios, banks, toys, memorials, food tins, desk accessories, book safes, musical instruments, magic tricks, furniture and jewelry. Blooks embody the same characteristics as books and many take the form of specific titles and book formats. They signify knowledge, education, taste, power, wealth and more. They have been treasured and passed down through the generations, and many thousands reside in private homes, public and private businesses and in museums and libraries around the world. Blooks have been used to celebrate and memorialize important occasions and personal losses and successes. They serve as reminders of memorable visits to important places, as receptacles to hold valuable and practical objects and are the source of great amusement.

The transformation of the book is an inescapable theme of contemporary life. As a result of the advancement of computer technology, the book as we have known it is experiencing a major cultural shift and many question the future of the physical book. Simultaneously, we know that there are many kinds of books for which there is no substitute and more than ever, artists, designers, collectors, and librarians are attracted to books for their physical beauty, historical significance, structural properties and emotional currency. Interest in rare books, the book arts, the use of the book in works of art, and book re-purposing is flourishing. Blook-objects have a prominent place in this reinvention of the role of the book, as you will see as the blog develops. If you ave an interest in blooks and enjoy writing, guest blog posts are welcome.

Why I Collect:

Many book lovers collect book-objects, either intentionally, or pick them up here and there. Book-objects are always amusing and often a bit kitschy. They are also perfect gifts for bookish people. For years I collected casually, until one day I found a book carved out of coal that was a memorial to a young person who died at the age of 21 in 1897. It is small and fits in the palm of the hand. It was an extremely powerful object; to me it seemed like a prayer book and a memorial book together, a relic of a life lost too soon. The book's maker used coal, a material that must have been essential to his life and through the making of it, imbued it with all of the love and sorrow they felt over the loss of their loved one. The little book retains those emotions today.

We know that reading books can be life transforming and the physical book plays a large part in our ability to absorb and be moved or inspired by information, but until I held the coal book object, I hadn’t experienced how an object made in a book’s image can be as transformational and as moving as a true book. I saw that book-objects lived in a parallel universe to real books and that they are also very close in purpose to contemporary artists’ books. I began to look closer at the subject and to research its scope and history.

There are other reasons why I collect book-objects. One is that an understanding of book-objects helps me to be more self-aware, at least professionally. Most bookbinders will tell you that the love of bookbinding is like getting shot with Cupid’s arrow. I was shot when I was 22, when I took my first class. My passion for making and living with books has never waned. It’s a wonderful way of life, but it’s hard to say why. For me, eliminating the text and studying objects that are made to look like books, tells me about what books mean to people. Book-objects are very fun to study and I also very much enjoy the real bookish attributes that the makers design in, leave out or interpret in unusual ways.

The book objects I like the most relate closely to particular subjects of books, book titles or binding styles, and also those that have contents that relate to the binding. I especially like those which have become heirlooms and were obviously treasured for a long time. So far, there has been no end to the variety of blook-objects I have seen and I am constantly amazed and entertained by them.

More on Morse's Larchmont Yacht Club Windows

These photographs of Morse's windows, as described in the previous posting, were sent by the Larchmont Yacht Club, which is still home to the windows. Unfortunately, the original transom window, shown in the New York Tribune article is no longer there.  Coincidentally, Club historian, Ed Padin wrote about the windows in Mainsheet: News Magazine of the Larchmont Yacht Club in the Spring 2013 issue:



 ...That Morse would have been commissioned to design these windows for the Club is certainly logical, as, infact, two members of that particular Haprer family -- Horatio and Henry -- were active members of the LYC during this time, with Horatio serving as the Chairman of the Art Committee for many years.... Although there is the clear connection between Ms. Morse and the Harper family, we do not know for a fact that one of them was the "generous" member referred to in the Tribune article. There is no recorded Turstees' "thank you," only the record of Horatio's appointment as Art Committee Chair...

  

I have noticed another possible connection that requires more research. One of Morse's window designs in the Cooper-Hewitt collection, in transom format, closely resembles the Larchmont windows and is annotated with a mention of the Harper name. (Cooper-Hewitt accession number 2009-6-57) See images below. 



Morse's Stained Glass Windows at the Larchmont Yacht Club - 1897



Slowly but steadily, more information about Alice C. Morse's career as a stained-glass designer is being revealed. Browsing through the Metropolitan Museum of Art's online resources I found mention of windows I had never heard of before -- this article about a suite of stained-glass windows that Morse designed for the Larchmont Yacht Club's Women's Room, in 1897. A query has been made to determine if the windows still exist and I have been told that they do, so hopefully you will soon see actual photographs of the windows.

From the picture below, you can form an idea of what Morse's garland design windows might look like. Since the type is so small, I've transcribed the part of the article that describes the windows below.  

New-York Tribune, June 5, 1897, pg. 5

Windows Designed by a Woman. Some Gifts to the Larchmont Yacht Club- New Decorations in the Women’s Room

The women’s room in the Larchmont Yacht Club, through the generosity of one of its members, is being transformed into one of the most charming rooms of this artistic clubhouse. … The same club member has also put in four opalescent glass windows to add to the decoration of the room. These lights consist of three transoms over the main window and a transom over the door. They are the work of Miss Alice Morse, who has added to her distinction in the book-cover field a reputation for thoroughly artistic work in several lines of decoration-notably stained glass, embroideries and zinc etching.

Miss Morse spent four years designing for stained glass in the Tiffany Glass Company, and as a result has a thorough grasp of the practical necessities as well as the artistic possibilities of this art. There are several examples of her work in and about New-York. She not only makes the preliminary sketch herself, but she also executes the working, drawing and choosing every piece of glass.

The general color scheme of the above-mentioned window is a warm one, the background being of a purplish hue, with green opal tints. The jewels in the garlands are amber and are what tare technically known as “broken” jewels, as are also the green jewels in the border.

There is a touch here and there of strong blue, to accent the opalescent effect of the whole. Miss Morse’s color sense is sure and her work graceful in line, and well thought out. We give illustrations of the mantel and three of the windows-two of the group of three window transoms-and the door transom.  



A Puritan's Wife - Everything Now Makes Sense

Max Pemberton

A Puritan's Wife

New York: Dodd Mead & Co., 1896

Printer: University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.

Signed AM, under the blossom below the title on the front cover

Dimensions: 18.2 x 12.7 x 2.5 cm.



The binding for A Purtian's Wife (Dubansky entry 01-1), never made sense to me. I found two adaptations, but never the original cover. Recently, Richard Minsky sent me a photograph of it, but thankfully, I've just found a copy for my Morse collection. For more information see the previous post on this title.

Bound in golden-tan linen finish plain-weave cloth, possibly a reverse cloth. It is stamped in olive green and a dull red, with gold lettering. The endleaves are plain off-white laid paper. Top edge gilt, foredge and tail are untrimmed.

House and Home Illustrated

Morse’s book cover design for Stevenson’s Ballads was featured in two nearly identical woman’s guides, published by Scribner’s in 1894-1896. Both include chapters on occupations for women, principles of housekeeping, the art of travel, house building and decoration, and books and reading. The Woman's Book and its successor, seen here, The House and Home, introduced Morse as an excellent example of the successful woman designer. In P. G. Hubert Jr.’s chapter titled “Occupations for Women,” the field of book-cover design was recommended as a viable occupation for women. The author buttressed his point by printing color illustrations of two woman-produced book covers: Morse’s Stevenson’s Ballads (Dubansky, 90-8); and Songs About Life, Love and Death, designed by Margaret Armstrong.

The House and Home. A Practical Book (in 2 volumes)

Multiple authors (beginning with Dr. Lyman Abbot)

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons

1894-1896

The binding for The House and Home is an adaptation of The Woman's Book. In this cover, the border and probably some of the spine motifs are Morse's design. To see the design as originally intended and read more about this entry click here.

Buy a copy of The Proper Decoration of Book Covers: The Life and Work of Alice C. Morse
http://alicemorse.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html

Morse's Window for Carnegie Hall

Notation on recto: Over Main Entrance - Music Hall (5 of these)
Cooper-Hewiit Museum, accession number 2009-6-2

As mentioned earlier in this blog, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum posesses a substantial collecton of original designs for book covers and stained glass windows by Alice C. Morse. As you may already know from reading this blog or my book, Morse was a stained glass designer before she designed book covers and she was one of the original 'Tiffany Girls', working for the Tiffany Glass Company from 1885-1889. From the addresses on the versos of the designs, it appears that Morse continued designing windows after leaving Tiffany. Morse felt that stained glass and book-cover design presented similar challenges and were akin to each other from a design standpoint.

Alice C. Morse originally donated these drawings in 1943 to the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration. Among the stained glass designs are eight drawings of windows commissioned for Carnegie Hall, or the Music Hall, as it was origianlly named. Morse's notations on the drawings indicate the location and quantity for each window as well as her name and address, which assist us in dating the designs. To my knowledge, these designs have not been published, but they should be available through the Cooper-Hewitt website -- if not now, at some point. While they have not been published, Jacquellann Killian of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum has conducted original research on Morse's window designs and has presented a paper entitled The Stained Glass Designs of Alice Cordelia Morse.

Scenes from the Life of Christ in a 'New' Color Variant

Jessica Cone. Scenes from the Life of Christ Pictured in Holy Word and Sacred Art. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1892.

Scenes from the Life of Christ is one of Morse's least seen designs from my point of view. It's a beautiful gift book, origianlly stamped in gold on off-white or tan bookcloth. Before the age of the Internet, it took me many years to find any copy of this book. I was recently suprised to see this copy on Ebay, and despite it's rough condition, I purchased it. The dark blue stamping on this color variant clearly shows Morse's drawing acumen. The pages of this book have black, decorative borders that may have also been designed by Morse, but that is unproven at this time. She isn't mentioned on the title page. This book is described in The Proper Decoration of Book Covers: The Work and Life of Alice C. Morse, entry 92-7, pages 61-62.