Stundenbuch
“Remake” of a book of hours from the early 16th century and attempt to bring the content of a 500 years old book into a modern contemporary artist’s book form. In mid-2009, I came across the digitized version of a manuscript from the collection of the Duke August Library in Wolfenbüttel: Duke August the Younger's Book of Hours. I had been interested in the early book arts for a while already, and I wondered whether there was a way to focus on this area and produce a non-nostalgic, contemporary, artists’ book. I soon realized that the parchment manuscript would make a good starting point. The determining factor was the Middle Low German language used in the Book of Hours, which I as a layperson could read quite well after a while. I was able to transcribe the texts from the digitized version of the book. Transcribing from a language that had not been spoken for centuries (to me it felt like a mixture of German, Dutch and English, interspersed with Latin words and abbreviations I had never seen before) was an unfamiliar activity for me, but it turned out to be interesting and exciting. It was like time travel, and I was surprised by how well I gradually came to understand the psalms and prayers. Still, it was a laborious process. Even though I am quite familiar with printed Blackletter typefaces, the hand-written Textura scripts, with their many abbreviations, posed a constant challenge. In the end, though, I was able to include all of the texts in my project – with a few exceptions – and start my attempt at a remake.
For the most part, I followed the structure of the original. However, the original format (about 8.7 x 12.3 cm) was too small for my purposes, so I chose a format about twice that size. In some places I modified the sequence, for instance in the calendar. In the original manuscript, the month of January starts on the right half of a double spread and ends on the left half of the following double spread. That means the months (which always take up two pages) are never found on the same double spread. I changed that – in my version, each month is on one double spread. I also used contemporary photographs for the image pages in the calendar. The other image pages include elements from the miniatures in the digitized Book of Hours. Because oft he screening and the addition of other image elements, they are sometimes less recognizable, but nonetheless always there. The large halftone dots create an impression of abstract shapes when viewed up close, at reading distance. When they are seen from a greater distance, the motifs come out clearly, which was the intent. I edited the images on my computer and then printed them using polymer plates. I was able to draw on my experience with four-color printing the year before, in Aichinger’s Schlechte Wörter book. This time, however, I omitted the black plate, which made the colors brighter and more luminous. There is no black printing in the entire book – even the text is printed in a dark gray shade. The dark colors on the image pages are created by overprinting red, yellow, and blue. In addition to the printed colors, I applied 22.5-carat gold leaf by hand.
I chose the Akzidenz-Grotesk typeface for a variety of reasons. For one thing I didn’t want it to be a historicizing Blackletter typeface, which would have given the text a kind of pseudo-medieval touch. In addition, I wanted it to be modern, but not too cool or ultra-constructed. Akzidenz-Grotesk, designed around 1900, is considered the precursor to several modern sans serif typefaces, but it is not as perfected as its successors. So for those reasons, it seemed just right to me.
Handset and letterpress. Embossed cloth-over-board cover, in printed slipcase. 288 pages, 14.5/21 cm,
50 numbered and signed copies. Flörsheim 2010.