Symphysis
Kinnari Thakker's Personal BlogArchive for September, 2010
Inspiring Layouts from Ancient & Forgotten Books
The visual quality of the pages in the above pictures is so inspiring. But its these last three pictures that fascinate me the most, because they involve participation from the people who have read this particular copy of the book – and have left their comments/quotes/ideas/understanding about it in the margins. The book changes completely when that happens, because for the next person reading it, he is reading not only the printed set text but also the handwritten comments by another person, which changes the experience completely.
Image Source: http://kc-cieszyn.pl/index.php is the library website I got all the pictures from.
The last three photos in the post were shared by Professor Dan Boyarski at the CMU School of Design, who photographed them from a book in the Ksiaznica Cieszynska Library, in Cieszyn, Poland.
Annotated Bible
When Dan spoke about the design of books in the olden days with large margins, so that the owner/owners can comment on the text as well as on each others comments – I was so interested in this idea! Its a linear book design with the most fascinating integration of non linear information with a different time-line, different theme, different character… A quick search yielded the following result – more findings ensue in following posts…
Image Source: http://homepage.mac.com/rmansfield/thislamp/files/20060808_a_survey_of_wide_margin_bibles_by_version.html blog by Rick Mansfield
