In further investing the books of common prayer, I wanted to learn more about Sir Simon Clarke who owned the book published in 1745 with the zodiac painted on the fore-edge. I quickly found that Simon Clarke is quite a common English name. However, I did find the biography of a Sir Simon Haughton Clarke… (read more)

Having uncovered some of the content of my split fore-edge nature studies, I set out to explore their context. Conscious of the unique subject matter of the paintings and hoping to identify an artistic tradition that could encompass their focus on nature as well as their meticulous attention to detail, I stumbled upon botanical art,… (read more)

Welcome back everyone! A lot has happened since my last post in terms of the overall exhibition. Now that a substantial amount of the research has been completed by my fellow classmates and myself, it has become time to consider how we are going to display the books within the exhibition space in a way… (read more)

The past week or so, my class and I have been working on planning the fore-edge painting exhibit of the Knott Collection. Everyone has a lot of ideas and different focuses and today I am going to consider potential themes for the exhibit and how the books would work with these themes. Some ideas we… (read more)

This week we have been focusing on the actual layout of the exhibition—including the arrangement of the display cases, the positioning of the books and information inside the cases, and the incorporation of other materials and information on the walls and around the space. To start this process, each of us came up with our… (read more)

Upon entering this class, my knowledge of fore-edge paintings was fairly limited. Last semester, I researched a pair of books from the 19th century, both with personalized fore-edge paintings, for another art history class. The process was absolutely fascinating, and opened my mind up to a technique I had never even heard of in the art… (read more)

Good Morning Readers, Lindsay here! I am back today writing about the mysterious works of art that are fore-edge painted books. This week I would like to focus in particular on the Coronation scene of Queen Elizabeth II leaving Buckingham Palace, 1952, on Richard Dimbleby, Elizabeth, Our Queen, 1953 (Knott Collection 252). In case you forgot… (read more)

My first objective in researching the split fore-edge paintings with natural studies was to try to identify some of the plant and animal species they portray. This seemed to me the logical place to begin, as it could potentially lead to further insights about the books, or at least inform my understanding of the paintings’… (read more)

Since my last post, I have learned some key facts about my books that make them even more interesting to me than before. Of course, I do not know everything about my books just yet, but the horizon is broadened. The Lord Byron book, although not the better of the two in terms of history,… (read more)

As I begin further researching Books of Common Prayer, I have already come across some interesting things. Unfortunately, some of my predictions and assumptions from my first post have not panned out, but I have quickly found new questions and ideas to pursue. First, in my last post, I assumed that people knew what a… (read more)