Indelible Images
National Library exhibition celebrates handwriting
"An Almanac for the Year of Our Lord 1811... by Theophrastus." Halifax. Printed and sold by John Howe & Son.
A dark blue cover enfolds information on planetary positions, weather and the winds. The book itself is not as interesting as the intricate handwriting and words of the schooner captain who owned it. Sprawled across two plates, he wrote: "Wednesday morning the 7th August at 1/2 past one George Henry born." And later, "Friday morning 8th November at 6 o'clock, George Henry died aged 3 months and one day...."
As acknowledged in the accompanying information panels, Impressions: 250 Years of Printing in the lives of Canadians "is in fact about people." It's their interaction with the printed word that tells stories far more meaningful than those told by the objects alone.
In the 1700s, Canadian printing concerned itself largely with the production of catechisms (Bibles were cheaper to import.). As with Bibles, people wrote their names and (fortunately) the dates in the inside front covers—"Neuvaine à l'honneur de St. François Xavier." Nouvelle édition . Montréal, James Lane 1817, 118 pp. Hence, this tiny book (about 4" x 2") contains three names of family members spanning over 100 years—Josette Latrimouille (1828) to Marie Claire Daveluy (1914).
In a motley assortment of 200 printed items, Impressions showcases historical fonts, paper and processes. It also turns a reading lamp on relatively unknown anomalies—the two consistently different endings of Little Red Riding Hood, for instance. In English, the wolf is killed. In French, both he girl and the granny end up in the wolf's stomach.
Today, printing is an art form on the verge of extinction. While fonts, typefaces, lettering and other intricacies have an afterlife, in an eye-blink, printing has gone through a metamorphosis. The product is no longer something to hold in our hands, touch or smell. The new papyrus is virtual—the website.
The digital age engenders a remarkable paradox: more written material, including very personal writing, is available to more people than at any other time in human history. yet this very availability underscores the problems of literacy, English literacy in particular, and access, given the extent to which North America dominates the virtual world.
Now, the evidence of our reading is reduced to a number in a web counter. Books, in particular, resonate with the personal evidence of human interaction—highlighted passages, inscriptions, notes in the margins, dog-ears and so on. This is especially true in the case of books once owned by a loved one—a long dead ancestor, a lover, a friend. Web counters are a mere mockery of this.
All of which raises an interesting question—what's the future of handwriting? In a voice-activiated digital world, will it too become obsolete?
Perhaps reading The Bible and writing our names inside it has gone the way of the dodo, but reading on the toilet and in the bathtub? Surely these stand, at least, as two of the last strongholds of individual privacy, peace and the printed word. Honestly, does anyone really want to take a laptop to the loo?
Published in The Ottawa Xpress, 2000
A dark blue cover enfolds information on planetary positions, weather and the winds. The book itself is not as interesting as the intricate handwriting and words of the schooner captain who owned it. Sprawled across two plates, he wrote: "Wednesday morning the 7th August at 1/2 past one George Henry born." And later, "Friday morning 8th November at 6 o'clock, George Henry died aged 3 months and one day...."
As acknowledged in the accompanying information panels, Impressions: 250 Years of Printing in the lives of Canadians "is in fact about people." It's their interaction with the printed word that tells stories far more meaningful than those told by the objects alone.
In the 1700s, Canadian printing concerned itself largely with the production of catechisms (Bibles were cheaper to import.). As with Bibles, people wrote their names and (fortunately) the dates in the inside front covers—"Neuvaine à l'honneur de St. François Xavier." Nouvelle édition . Montréal, James Lane 1817, 118 pp. Hence, this tiny book (about 4" x 2") contains three names of family members spanning over 100 years—Josette Latrimouille (1828) to Marie Claire Daveluy (1914).
In a motley assortment of 200 printed items, Impressions showcases historical fonts, paper and processes. It also turns a reading lamp on relatively unknown anomalies—the two consistently different endings of Little Red Riding Hood, for instance. In English, the wolf is killed. In French, both he girl and the granny end up in the wolf's stomach.
Today, printing is an art form on the verge of extinction. While fonts, typefaces, lettering and other intricacies have an afterlife, in an eye-blink, printing has gone through a metamorphosis. The product is no longer something to hold in our hands, touch or smell. The new papyrus is virtual—the website.
The digital age engenders a remarkable paradox: more written material, including very personal writing, is available to more people than at any other time in human history. yet this very availability underscores the problems of literacy, English literacy in particular, and access, given the extent to which North America dominates the virtual world.
Now, the evidence of our reading is reduced to a number in a web counter. Books, in particular, resonate with the personal evidence of human interaction—highlighted passages, inscriptions, notes in the margins, dog-ears and so on. This is especially true in the case of books once owned by a loved one—a long dead ancestor, a lover, a friend. Web counters are a mere mockery of this.
All of which raises an interesting question—what's the future of handwriting? In a voice-activiated digital world, will it too become obsolete?
Perhaps reading The Bible and writing our names inside it has gone the way of the dodo, but reading on the toilet and in the bathtub? Surely these stand, at least, as two of the last strongholds of individual privacy, peace and the printed word. Honestly, does anyone really want to take a laptop to the loo?
Published in The Ottawa Xpress, 2000
