A Cambridge Binding

Above: Origen, Origenis Adamantii Operum tomi duo priores cum tabulis & indice generali proxime sequetibus, Parisiis: Venundatur cum reliquis Ioanni Paruo: Jodoco Badio: et Conrado Resch, 1512. Binding by Nicholas Spierinck, c.1520. Special Collections, Baillieu Library.

This signed Cambridge binding by Nicholas Spierinck was purchased by the Library’s Special Collections in 2008. The book itself is an early printing of the two (of four) of Origen’s Works, titled Origenis Adamantii Operum tomi duo priores cum tabulis & indice generali proxime sequetibus, published in 1512. Spierinck’s binding is full calf over wooden boards, with blind-stamped patterns of dragon, wyverns and griffins, and includes his monogram NS. There are remnants on the back cover of the hand–decorated brass clasps that Spierinck used on his bindings.

Nicholas Spierinck went to England from Belgium in the early 1500s and was binding important works by 1515. In 1534, Spierinck and two other bookbinders became the first official University Printers and Stationers at Cambridge. Spierinck’s bindings were the last in the medieval style at Cambridge, and our binding is one of the finest known examples of his bindings and the only known one in Australia. The Ivy May Pendlebury Bequest made the purchase possible.

A Paradise of Flowers

Frontispiece from John Parkinson, Paradisi in sole: Paradisus terrestris, or, A garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre will permitt to be noursed vp …, [London]: printed by Humfrey Lownes and Robert Young at the signe of the Starre on Bread-Street Hill, 1629. Special Collections, Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne.

The book from which this image comes is an example of the development of natural history illustration. It was one of the first English books to show attractive images of flowers and plants, rather than showing diagrams of plants as medicinal items.

La Mama Exhibition

Baillieu Library, ground floor, 14 February to 8 April 2012

La Mama, named after the off-Broadway theatre in New York, was established in Carlton, Melbourne by Betty Burstall in 1967. La Mama was established as a venue for avant-garde theatre, music, poetry readings, improvisations and screenings of new films. Liz Jones has been artistic director and administrator of the theatre since 1977.

The display of items from the La Mama Collection, held at the University of Melbourne Archives, will showcase the unique place La Mama holds in Australian theatre. The vital energy both on stage and behind the scenes is seen in correspondence, play appraisals, and photographs relating to performances by Cate Blanchett and Stelarc, the scripts of David Williamson, and linocut posters by Tim Burstall.

Above: Stage set illustration for Stelarc’s performance ‘Event for Obsolete Body,’ 1980, La Mama Collection (1983.0065 – 1989.0072), File 11, Box 1, University of Melbourne Archives.

Treasures Revealed

Experience some of the most prized possessions held in the University of Melbourne Library with ‘Treasures Revealed’, available free for iPhone, iPad and Android.

Australiana includes convicts, gold diggers, the 1854 Melbourne directory; Rare Books includes a leaf from the Gutenberg Bible, Book of Hours and Middle Eastern Manuscripts; Prints include Goya, Hogarth, Callot, Lindsay and Piranesi. And more.

See: http://apps.toura.com/university-of-melbourne-library/treasures-revealed

Migration Tales

This image, from a pamphlet by Isaac Thomas, held in Special Collections, is about the fictional Morgan Bach who wishes to leave Wales to seek his fortune in Australia, much to the despair of his mother. In ballad form, the verses are a conversation between mother and son, in which she tries to talk him out of his plans. As much as it pains him, however, he will not be moved. A subsequent ballad by Thomas details Morgan Bach’s later return to Wales as a rich man, but his mother does not recognise him (this pamphlet is held by the National Library of Australia).

The performing and selling of ballads was very popular entertainment in 18th and 19th-century Wales. In the latter, many ballads written in the industrial south of Wales related to Australia, suggesting a preoccupation with emigrating to escape poverty and start afresh in a new country. The Thomas ballads about Morgan and his mother were two of the most popular and were printed in many editions, many of which survive to this day.

Above: Isaac Thomas, of Aberdare, Morgan Bach a’i fam yn ymddiddan yn nghylch myned i Australia, [Publisher] Caernarfon: argraffwyd gan H. Humphreys, 184-?, Special Collections, University of Melbourne.

A translation of this ballad is also available in Special Collections: Isaac Thomas, of Aberdare, Morgan Bach in Australia: Reproductions of two Welsh migration ballads from the 1850s, with translations and introduction by Geraint Evans, Melbourne: Ancora Press, 2010.

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