An Unknown Work from an Unknown Time

In the second case of the exhibit, we throw viewers a bit of a curveball by introducing a modern woodblock. It is, of course, there for a reason: to compare and contrast work from perhaps the premier wood engraver of today with work by unknown artists from an unknown time.

The modern piece is the work of Gaylord Schanilec. On display is a woodblock from his Ernest Morgan: Printer of Principle, published by Schanilec's Midnight Paper Sales Press in 2001. Schanilec has this to say about the book:

In 1997 I traveled to Yancy County, North Carolina, and spent three days with Ernest Morgan. He had been described to me as an old printer (ninety-two years of age) with plenty of good stories. On the first day, much to my surprise, he mentioned that he had been an apprentice in the shop of William Rudge in 1923 and yes, Bruce Rogers had been there. In the course of my visit Ernest went into detail about his experiences in Rudge’s shop. He gave me a line of type ornaments designed by Bruce Rogers that he took with him when he left in 1924.... He also talked extensively about his own enterprise, the Antioch Bookplate Company, where he had dealings with such bookish notables as Rockwell Kent and Lynd Ward....

Ernest was also a social activist. During the Depression he had been a union organizer, a regional barter organization manager (as well as the printer of its currency), and Chairman of the Socialist Party of Ohio (as well as its candidate for governor).

The text of Ernest Morgan: Printer of Principle is a transcription of his stories. Will Powers, who contributed an introduction and afterword to the text, started his career as a printer apprentice at Ernest Morgan’s Antioch Bookplate Company in 1968. From there he embarked on an illustrious career as a printer, designer of books, and a fine typographer.

Juxtaposed to the Morgan block are two blocks used to print prayer flags. As with our ancient works displayed in the first case, these prayer blocks are scantily identified. Labels on the blocks identify them as Manchu and Mongol; both are undated. We do not know much more about them, not even the wood from which they are made.

Part of our mission is to collect and document examples of global writing and printing technologies from antiquity to the present. Artifacts acquired from dealers at an earlier time occasionally present gaps in our knowledge. Dealer’s descriptions of items were often incomplete or incorrect. The age of these prayer blocks, for example, are unknown; their labels or other identifying marks potentially misleading. Artifacts such as these present opportunities for additional research, in the quest for fuller, more robust descriptions and of information about the cultures that created them.

While we know little about the prayer blocks, we take some solace in what they represent, and what they create: the promotion of peace, compassion, strength, and wisdom. In days such as these, there is some small comfort knowing that somewhere, on the roof of the world, winds blow these prayers and mantras, spreading good will and benefit to all. And as the flags fade, exposed to the elements, new flags take their place. Hope is renewed; the power of the press is reaffirmed.

James Ford Bell Gallery, Case Number One

We took a brief break to attend the Association of College and Research Libraries/Rare Books and Manuscript Section conference, and then the American Library Association Conference, both in New Orleans. We'll be in and out a bit during the month of July, but will continue to post about items on display in "The Best from Pen and Press."

Our earlier posts described items displayed in the Bell Gallery's first case. Now that we've completed those descriptions, we thought you'd like to see what the case looks like.

On the top shelf you'll see our scroll of the Book of Esther, one of five megillahs (Hebrew word for scroll) read during Purim.

On the bottom shelf you'll see our cuneiform cone, bulla, and tablet along with the papyri fragments, ostraca, and figurine.

A Source Map

We're starting to develop a map that pinpoints the geographical source for each item in "The Best from Pen and Press" exhibit. This map will continue to grow with more points as we review each item in the exhibit.

Pins on the exhibit will give brief information about the site and/or about the exhibit item associated with the location. We thought this would be an interesting way to highlight the global reach of the materials on display.

A Figurine and a Scroll

Today we continue our tour through the first part of "The Best from Pen and Press" with two remaining items found in our first exhibit case: a figurine and a scroll.

Neither piece, upon their arrivals to the Library, carried much additional descriptive information, what librarians and others call "metadata," that is, data about data. We like to know such things as: Where did this item come from? What did we pay for it? Who previously owned it? What is its value? (However you wish to define value. The Society of American Archivists created and maintains an informative glossary, which includes at least nineteen narrower terms for the concept of value.) In the case of the figurine and the scroll, we know little else beyond what they are.

Additional information about an item can be immensely helpful. It can also be exceedingly distracting. Even the word "data" can divert one away from a task (such as writing this post) and lead down a rabbit hole, as we're about to demonstrate.

A recent article entitled "Data! Data! Data!" by D. L. Dusenbury, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Leuven, in the Times Literary Supplement Online illustrates the point (made even easier as it involves one of our other interests: Sherlock Holmes). At the same time, Dusenbury provides a bit more data on the word "data."

Dusenbury begins by introducing a scene from the very first Sherlock Holmes adventure, A Study in Scarlet. 

In the scene I have in mind..., Dr John Watson, is seated beside Holmes in a hansom cab which is taking them to a vacant house on Brixton Road where the Metropolitan Police have identified the corpse of an American gentleman. Asked by Watson what he is thinking, Holmes snaps that he has “no data yet.” “You will have your data soon,” Watson says soothingly.

Watson’s reply now reads like a sort of prophecy. In the last decade, IBM has invested roughly $1 billion in a front-wave computing platform called Watson. Whatever IBM’s Watson may lack – a mind, or at least, a blood-suffused brain in a warm body – this “cognitive” entity can mine, and scan, and sift, and analyse titanic, oceanic amounts of data. Or, as IBM’s brand-consultants prefer to put it, “Watson can ingest, enrich and normalize a wide variety of data types”. And what are “data”?

Data is a plural form of the Latin word datum, which originally referred to a gift or a symbol of high office. In premodern terms, then, data were things given or attested. “Data” entered English in the middle of the seventeenth century, but only seems to settle into its current meaning – a “mass of information”, as Edgar Allen Poe writes in his true-crime tour de force, “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” – towards the end of the nineteenth century. The Holmes canon signals the meteoric rise of “data” as a term, and a concept, in the years between 1890 and 1910.

It's nice to know that the Sherlockian canon (as the gathering of fifty-six short stories and four novels are collectively known) contributed to the term and use of data. The Google Books Ngram viewer provides additional insight on the appearance of "data" in texts.

But none of this gets us any closer to what these two items are, or how to describe them. All we know about the figurine--absent an ability to read hieroglyphics--is found on a small label: "Egypt, 11th Dynasty." The 11th Dynasty in ancient Egypt ruled from Thebes in Upper Egypt and reigned from about 2134 to1991 BCE. Obviously, there's more work to be done to pull out additional information on the figurine.

As to the scroll, we again were left with a simple label: Book of Esther, scroll, 18th century. A colleague, Kate Dietrick, archivist for the Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, provided additional information about this item in an email after viewing it in the exhibit. We quote:

The scroll is the Book of Esther, which is one of five megillahs (Hebrew word for scroll) read during Purim (Jewish holiday taking place in March). While there are five different megillahs read (Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther) it is the book of Esther that is the core of the readings, and thus is most widely considered THE Megillah. It's also where the phrase "the whole megillah" comes from, referring to the lengthy and all-encompassing reading of all of these books.

This is useful data indeed, something we can add to the metadata for this item!

Part of what we do is similar to the enterprise of Mr. Holmes: we investigate, deduce, induce, or otherwise reason our way to fuller descriptions of items in our collections. We also use our networks of scholars, including those most useful and knowledgeable of colleagues--curators of collections around the globe. By obtaining and providing this additional information, we also provide new avenues of access to each item. It is one of the many joys and adventures in our work as academic librarians and curators of world-class collections. Or, as Holmes would say of our work: "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”

An Early Morning View

Here's an early morning view looking into the Bell Gallery in the Wallin Special Collections Research Center, and a peek at the first part of our exhibit. The logo on the glass wall was designed by a UMN graduate, now graphic designer, Jerod Johnson (and son of our Rare Books and Special Collections curator).

Moving Ahead About Two Thousand Years

Our cuneiform tablets, cones, and bulla are the oldest objects held by the Special Collections & Rare Books unit in the Archives and Special Collections Department of the University of Minnesota Libraries. They may be the oldest items held by the University Libraries, although our colleague and University Archivist, Erik Moore, might disagree. (Perhaps Erik will share, at some time, his contention on the oldest item in our collections.)

If we move ahead in time by about two millennia we arrive at the next items on display: papyri fragments and ostraka. An ostracon is a potsherd used as a writing surface; papyrus sheets were made from a plentiful wetland plant growing along rivers in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The papyri fragments come from Egypt, from the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus (Greek: Ὀξύρρυγχος) located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Cairo. 

For over 120 years, archaeologists have excavated in and around the ancient rubbish sites of this city. Their digging uncovered numerous historically significant (and everyday) texts from about the third century before the common era into the time of Roman rule. Rediscovered texts include pieces from the Gospel of Thomas, Euclid's mathematical text, The Elements, and plays from the Greek dramatist, Menander.

Our papyri fragments and ostraka are of a more ordinary type. Here are their descriptions and a few images.

Papyrus Fragment 3 

Description: Text of Uncertain Character in Hieroglyphics, verso: blank. 
Accesson number: 554187
Date of Acquisition: January 6, 1933. Erik von Scherling (dealer).






Papyrus Fragment 5 

Date: III century CE. 
Description: recto: Receipt for the Return of Some Marriage Goods, verso: blank. 
Accession number: 762403
Publication: K. A. Worp in BASP 44 (2007), no. 2 (http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.0599796.0044.001:05) 
Date of Acquisition: December 22, 1937. Erik von Scherling (dealer).






Papyrus Fragment 4

Date: 89-93/4 CE. 
Description: Declaration to a Strategus of the Oxyrhynchite Nome, verso: blank.
Accession number: 762402
Publication: K. A. Worp BASP 44 (2007), no. 1 (http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.0599796.0044.001:05) 
Date of Acquisition: December 22, 1937. Erik von Scherling (dealer).



Papyrus Fragment 12

Date: 120/1 CE. 
Description: recto: Receipt for the Price of Green Fodder, verso: blank.
Accession number: 1381984
Dealer: Erik von Scherling (G63)
Publication: K. A. Worp in BASP 44 (2007), no. 4 (http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.0599796.0044.001:05) 
Date of Acquisition: in or after 1952




Ostrakon 1

Date: 4th to 5th Century CE
Description: Receipt, Red Pottery
Accession number: 554185
Publication: K. A. Worp in BASP 44 (2007), no. 11 (http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.0599796.0044.001:05)
Date of Acquisition: January 6, 1933. Erik von Scherling (dealer).


Ostrakon 2

Description: Text of Uncertain Character in Hieroglyphics
Accession number: 554186
Date of Acquisition: January 6, 1933. Erik von Scherling (dealer). 

Panoramic Views of Andersen Gallery

Here are two panoramic views of the second part of our exhibition, located in the Andersen Gallery on the first floor of the Elmer L. Andersen Library.

The library is located on the West Bank Campus of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Parking and other building information may be found here. 

The gallery is open Monday, Tuesday, and Friday from 8:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. and on Wednesday and Thursday from 8:30 a.m. until 7:00 p.m.

We hope you'll visit us!